Scholarship enables Highlands students to learn from artists around the world

Teresa Emeloff’s classroom at Highlands High School is a factory of creativity.

Her art room is adorned from floor to ceiling in the work of her students, including graduates who have left their mark — some quite literally, as handprints on the wall.

“I’m super passionate about the arts,” said Emeloff, a 1990 Highlands graduate. “It just brings some sanity and calmness and peace to my life. Just the act of creating something feels so good to do.”

Now, 15 students in her printmaking and mixed media class are able to learn from beyond her classroom walls, past the confines of their school and, in fact, from artists around the world thanks to an online course scholarship she was awarded.

The students are participating in “Life Book” offered by Willowing Arts, which Emeloff took part in herself last year.

Willowing Arts is run by Tamara Laporte, a native of Holland now based in Devon in the south of England. According to her website, Laporte started running her own business full-time in late 2008, and primarily teaches online.

Emeloff compared it to someone using YouTube videos to learn how to repair a car.

“I took it as a way to grow as an artist,” said Emeloff, 47, of South Buffalo, who has been teaching for 25 years. She has taught at Highlands since 1999, in the same room where she was once a student.

The scholarship gives Emeloff’s students access to hundreds of recorded online classes. They’ll be watching them through the rest of this school year, in and out of school.

The courses feature artists from all over the world. Students can follow them along and do what they’re doing, or take a concept or technique and use it in their own way, she said.

“The kids are really picking what they’re interested in doing,” she said.

The students taking part are sophomores, juniors and seniors. Emeloff described them as motivated, curious and talented.

“No matter what I give them to do, they grab a hold of it and turn it into their own thing,” she said.

Maddie Cincala, 17, a senior from Harrison, said the courses have helped her expand her technique.

“I do stuff I never thought I’d do on my own,” she said.

Cincala said she mainly worked with colored pencils. Through Life Book, she’s learning to work in different media such as watercolors.

“I’m learning different ways I can use it,” she said. “It’s been fun.”

Madison Bernat, 17, a junior from Harrison, said she’s able to learn from different artists.

“I don’t have to follow what they’re doing,” Bernat said. “I can take bits and pieces of what they’re doing and do my own spin off that.”

The students keep track of what they’re doing in a journal, and get feedback from the artists directly through a private Facebook group.

“There’s such an uplifting feeling in this online community,” Emeloff said.

While the scholarship covered the cost of the courses, Emeloff’s students still needed about $1,900 in supplies and materials. That need was quickly fulfilled through a fundraising effort on donorschoose.org that was shared with the Highlands and Willowing Arts communities. Laporte featured Emeloff and her class in her newsletter and social media pages, resulting in the Highlands class getting help from all over the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

“It was amazing to see how quickly the world supported us,” Emeloff said.