It’s important to Angie Cole to expose her art students at Pillow Academy to different types of mediums.
“The funny thing is, you never know who is going to love it and then keep going with it at home,” said Cole, who not only teaches but also is an artist herself, known for creating paintings featuring vivid and colorful Mississippi Delta scenery.
Recently, she taught her high school students about creating art with gold leaf.
“A lot of times, what we do in here will be following what I’m doing at home,” she said. “The gold leaf, I thought they would enjoy so much, and I had brought some of my own here — I did some portraits with the gold leaf.”
She made a request to order the gilding supplies from the school’s principal, Rodney Brown, and head of school, Barrett Donahoe, which was approved. “They are so supportive. I really am thankful for that.”
Then, she made the lesson plan.
“What I’ll do is I’ll show them work from an artist, and we get some background on the artist,” she said. “We discuss it. We look at their artwork, and then that will be the inspiration.”
For the gold leaf class project, Gustav Klimt was the artist discussed. Klimt, who died in 1918 at 55, was an Austrian symbolist painter. During what’s called his “Golden Phase,” many of Klimt’s paintings included gold leaf.
“We looked at his work, discussed it, talked about how some of his paintings were stolen during the Holocaust, so it brings in the history,” said Cole. “Then we do a project based on that inspiration.”
The students each had to create a painting or drawing and then apply gold, silver or copper leaf.
“It’s something that they haven’t tried before, and I wanted them to experience it,” said Cole. “I learned to use gold leaf when I was young, and I can remember doing frames and going, ‘This is like magic.’”
In some of her classes, such as her art II class, she gets the students to write down something that they’ve always wanted to try in art class.
“One of them said wood burning, and I said, ‘I’ll see,’” she said.
Cole was able to get the supplies needed, and the students were able to hands-on learn about pyrography, or wood-burning art.
“They loved it because it’s just something that they’ve never gotten to experience,” she said. “That’s how you find what your medium is. You have to play with it, and sometimes we’re surprised what we end up gravitating toward.”
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Cole has been teaching art at Pillow Academy for about 10 years. She’s been teaching art longer, graduating from Delta State University in 1998.
“I taught in public school right out of college, and then I taught privately,” before she started teaching at Pillow, she said. Cole began working just a couple of hours a day, and now she works at the school full time.
Cole teaches high school art. Pillow students need an art credit in order to graduate, whether they take Cole’s class or theater or another arts-related subject.
“A lot of students will come back for art II and art III and IV — you can take four years,” she said.
The students come to Cole with a good foundation established in Pillow’s elementary art classes taught by another accomplished Greenwood artist, David Taylor.
“I think that Mr. Taylor certainly sends them to me prepared, and he does a wonderful job,” said Cole. “His own work is exceptional. I’m a big fan.”
Cole also teaches an after-school art class for kindergarten and elementary students.
For her high school classes, Cole kicks off the year teaching basic skills.
“I’m looking for how you hold a pencil, how you hold a paint brush, how you see things,” she said. “Teaching them to see is really the most important thing. We can recognize a lot of different objects, but when you try to draw something without looking at it, you’ll see that you’re not getting the detail. The way we remember things is not exactly the way it is.”
So she has the students look at actual photos while they draw. “It gives some responsibility. It holds them accountable for getting the lines right or getting that shadow in,” she said.
Cole also teaches shading with a pencil and how to get various shades according to how much pressure is used.
“We do a lot of practice with that,” Cole said. “If you can shade, all of a sudden your drawings are no longer flat; they have a lot of depth to them, and they look a lot more realistic.”
After the Christmas holiday, the students pick up brushes and begin painting.
“We’re incorporating the drawing skills. Everything’s building,” said Cole.
It’s a fun experience for the art teacher to watch her students progress and see some discover a natural talent for art.
“It’s amazing what they can do,” said Cole. “Giving them different mediums, letting them explore, that is pretty interesting as well. Everybody starts off drawing, but then they veer off. It’s really cool to watch them develop and favor a medium and also watch their skill level improve due to, I think, them using a different medium, where they see it a different way.”
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Cole has a talented group of students. “They’re all pretty amazing,” she said.
Alex Holeman, a 10th grade student, picked up a pencil to draw for the first time about three years ago.
“I was bored one day, so I got a piece of paper and a pencil and started drawing,” she said.
Her talent began to flourish when she took Cole’s art I class in the ninth grade.
“I like drawing and painting,” she said.
Last year, Holeman won first place in the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools art competition, along with another of Cole’s students, Lindsey Oswalt. They were then selected to represent not only Pillow, but also MAIS in the 2020-21 Southeastern Commission of Independent Schools art show. There, Holeman won first place in the open/mixed media category and Oswalt won second place in the drawing category.
Additionally, Holeman’s artwork was also entered in the Celebrating Art national contest and placed in it. Her art was published in Celebrating Art’s book.
Holeman and Oswalt, who is also in the 10th grade, are both taking art II this school year.
Cole said she remembers when she first saw each of the two girls draw in her class: “I just heard angels sing.”
This school year, two more of Cole’s students have advanced to the SECIS competition — ninth graders Melanie Camarena, who placed first and Best in Show at the MAIS contest, and Marley Claire Scates, who placed first in sculpture at the statewide competition.
“I came from a public school in Louisiana, and I started talented art there in seventh grade,” said Scates, who began drawing early in her childhood. “Then I came (to Pillow) in eighth grade, and I took Mrs. Cole my last semester, and this is my first time having art all year.”
Scates was drawn to mixed media and sculpture. She said she has a lot of fun in Cole’s class.
“You actually get to do stuff,” said Scates. “She lets you take creative responsibility of your own work.”
She learned an important life lesson this year in Cole’s class — never give up.
Scates had completed her colorful skull sculpture for the MAIS art competition.
“Then, two weeks before it was due, I came into class and it wasn’t here,” said Scates. “We searched far and wide for it.”
Then a student came forward who had accidentally broke the sculpture and disposed of it in a panic. Accidents can occur in art class, said Cole — “Things get knocked over, paint gets spilled.” So the students learn how to adapt.
And that’s what Scates did. She created another sculpture in two weeks. “I stayed after school until 5 o’clock every day doing it, and I got it done,” she said.
This is the sculpture that won first place.
“That is a true testament to not getting discouraged. She hung in there,” said Cole. “I was really proud of her.”
Although the MAIS district and state competitions are the ones Cole and her students look forward to the most, the art teacher enters her students in various contests. Recently, one of her after-school students, a fourth grader, won the State Treasury’s College Savings Mississippi Art Contest. He received a $500 college scholarship.
“There were 1,600 entries, and he won first place,” said Cole. “Competing is going to make you work harder. If there is a prize at the end, the students always want to know. Sometimes it’s a ribbon and bragging rights, and sometimes there are cash prizes. Sometimes you get your work published. ... They are just so good. We’re not a big school compared to all these other private schools in Mississippi, so I’m so proud of these kids.”
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Cole, who taught herself how to draw as a child by tracing pictures in her grandmother’s old encyclopedias, said she hopes her art students have fun in her class and gain an appreciation for art.
“I hope they will continue to have an interest in creating,” she added. “I hope they will understand what I’ve always told them: You can use every subject in here to create something. If you’re good in math, use those skills. In science, use those skills. You will be able to create some type of art, and there are so many different types.”
- This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
