It can be said that art is a way of expressing oneself through artwork. Whether it be painting, drawing, or digital art, art is a great way of displaying creativity and talent to art such as paintings, sculpture, or drawings. These are just some of the traits that art instructor Tera Reed Schulz advocates for her students for her art program and all her classes.

Shultz graduated from Chanute High School in 2002 and then went to Neosho County Community College to get an associate’s degree in art. She then went to Pittsburg State University to get a bachelor of fine arts with an emphasis in painting. She then entered into graduate studies at Pittsburg after getting her bachelor’s degree to get a masters of arts, where she did digital artwork.

She started working at Allen Community College in 2011 after seeing an opening for an art instructor job. She is currently in her seventh year at Allen. When she first started, the class sizes were relatively small, with one class having only two students. Over time, the art program has grown and more classes are now being offered from drawing to graphic classes, like Photoshop.

There are always different things going on in each of her classes that she teaches. For example in Drawing 2, the students are currently working on perspective drawings. They have to draw a particular object from a certain point of view to get the right impression in terms of the object’s height, width and depth.

Schultz also likes to take her students to see some professional artwork around the springtime. On March 3, Schultz took some students to Kansas City to go see the artworks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. They went to see the Picasso and Dreams of the King exhibits.

“The Picasso exhibit had a bunch of references to his work like his African sculptures and masks,” Schultz said. “They had a lot of his own pieces that he (Picasso) had purchased over the years in the exhibits with his own artwork. It was really amazing!” (See pictures for some of the artwork they went to see!)

Schultz has enjoyed working with the students in each of her classes. Because of the smaller sizes, she is able to better advise them and help them with transfers.

“I like the atmosphere of the college because everybody knows everyone,” Schultz said. “I get the one-on-one personal connection with students that I wouldn’t get at a larger setting.”