Teaching Residency Program expands K-12 students’ learning experience by bringing artists to the classroom.
The ARTx3 Campus / The Arts & Science Center partners with Arts in Education (AIE) teaching artists to enrich students’ learning experience.
The ARTx3 Campus, with the teaching artists, collaborates with Pine Bluff area schools on innovative ways to engage students and help to improve literacy and classroom engagement.
“If we’re able to engage the students in a way that is interactive, that engages a different part of the brain, that shakes things up, then we’re more likely to be able to see a result because it’s something completely new and it changes the environment,” said Dr. Rachel Miller, former executive director of the ARTx3 Campus.
The ARTx3 Campus seeks to make a meaningful impact in Pine Bluff through its AIE program.
For more information about teaching. residencies, contact Program Manager Shakeelah Rahmaan at srahmaan@artx3.org.
These workshops and programs are made possible by the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education Program.
Mixed-media artist Angi Cooper is working with students in sixth grade and above in after-school programs during the 2024-2025 academic year. In both the fall and spring programs, she led the students in creating sculptures from cardboard, and one-day workshops open to the public. The workshops are made possible by the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education Program, as part of an after-school teaching residency.
Cooper will work with the Pine Bluff Community Center and the Boys & Girls Club of Jefferson County to create relief sculptures Feb. 18-21, 2025. Cooper aims to help the after-school program students gain knowledge of nature and the animals native to Pine Bluff through art. In addition, students will broaden their sculpting and hand-building skills.
Cooper will lead students in the project with an emphasis on Pine Bluff nature. Students will make beautiful sculptures using flat pieces of cardboard layered and glued together on a base to create a three-dimensional image that projects. The workshop is inspired by our community. Students will celebrate the nature and animals around Pine Bluff. Students will learn about their community and explore the process of designing a sculpture and use those techniques to produce mixed media pieces.
This workshop is also open to any student in sixth grade or above. To enroll, please contact Shakeelah Rahmaan at srahmaan@artx3.org or call 870-536-3375. There is no cost to attend.
COMMUNITY WORKSHOP: Cooper will also lead a mixed-media sculpting workshop from 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22. It is open to all ages and is free. There is no cost to attend the community workshop but registration is requested. REGISTER HERE.
Cooper worked with the students from the Pine Bluff Community Center to create Cubist-inspired sculptures program Nov. 5-8, 2024. Cooper aimed to help the students gain an understanding of the Cubist art style, which is transforming natural shapes into exaggerated geometric shapes, and using that style to create a sculpture from flat materials.
The November workshop was inspired by the ARTx3 Campus' Delta Upcycle Challenge, in which recycled materials are used to create sculptures. Students will learn and explore the process of designing a sculpture and use those techniques to produce mixed-media pieces.
Cooper also led an all-ages sculpting workshop Saturday, Nov. 9, that the public.
Angi Cooper was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and graduated from the University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design.
She is a professional mixed media artist and a practicing teaching artist in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas. Some of the workshops she has conducted with students include: printmaking, bookmaking, mask creation, drawing and painting techniques, zine design, paper sculpture, puppet construction, paper-cutting techniques, and mural design and construction.
Her work is part of private and public collections both in the United States and internationally. Part of her public art collection includes: a nature walkway mural approximately 265 feet long in Texarkana, Texas; student collaborative murals in Arkansas and Mississippi; interior mural in the Kroger store café in Hernando, Mississippi; a triptych panel mural at Germantown Community Library in Germantown, Tennessee; a California sea lion painting for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; a temporary installation of 1,000 origami cranes at the Children’s Museum of Memphis and the MAX Museum in Meridian, Mississippi.
National and regional publications in which she has appeared include: Cat Fancy Magazine, The Commercial Appeal, DeSoto Magazine, The Animal Times, The Pet Gazette, Writers on the River, Grandmother Earth VII, and the 7DV7 exhibition catalog.
Angi is also a hiker and amateur birder. She enjoys exploring trails in state and national park systems, always has her camera and binoculars in her backpack, and has started a series of zines based on the birds from her life list. One of her favorite songbirds is the wood thrush. She describes it as “poetry personified.”
Visit her website angicooper.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Multidisciplinary artist Aneesah Rahmaan will work with grades 9-12 from Feb. 24 to March 1 and March 4 to implement the Kicks and Culture program. This workshop is available to Shalisha Thomas’ Visual Art 1 scholars at Pine Bluff High School.
This program will briefly walk through the highlights of the Sneakerhead Movement, its impact on fashion culture, urban culture, and how the Black community turned sneakers into a multi-million dollar industry through collaborations while promoting confidence and strengthening identity. In addition, students will customize their own shoes by learning and understanding color theory, design principles, and the visual impact of their choices.
Their unique shoes will emphasize their identity, using paint and other materials. The workshop is inspired by the urban sneaker movement that has turned shoe culture into a fashion, community, and an artist statement in urban societies.
The ARTx3 Campus will host a Kicks and Culture Sneakerball exhibition 5-7 p.m. Friday, March 21, where the students and Rahmaan will be in attendance. This event is ticketed, but open to the public, and appropriate for all ages.
Aneesah Rahmaan is a Little Rock-based artist who has been creating art in one aspect or another throughout the majority of her life. She is a University of Arkansas at Little Rock graduate with undergraduate and master degrees. She works as a programs director and as a director of curation. Her identity stems from all the experiences in her life both good and bad and by all portions of her culture, heritage, and traditions. She often uses her family as inspiration, and a great degree of her portraits are likenesses of them.
Rahmaan is represented at The ARTSpace on Main and at Art DeCentrale in Springdale. Her art has been exhibited all over Arkansas. In March, she is slated as the guest juror for the student exhibition at Lyon College in Batesville. She is a former art teacher at Mohammed Schools in Little Rock, and has been featured in several magazines and papers including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Idle Class magazine, and Women's United Art Movement Magazine.
Artist Statement: “My artwork reflects cultural elements emphasizing components that contribute to and blend African American culture in the United States. The narrative explores personal staples from my background such as hair and streetball as well as worldly explorations such as pop culture and hip hop.
“The images were created to induce nostalgia that recalls memories from the past that may be delightful or painful. The use of the colorful outlines serves to emphasize certain factors and to draw attention when viewing the art. The pieces were created to teach some history of my culture as well as take the viewer on a stroll down memory lane.”
Visit her website aneesahrahmaan.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Visual teaching artist Elly Bates will lead the art and literacy program My Community and Me, in which students are prompted to explore how they see themselves within their communities and environment.
Bates will work with students in Sherita Thomas' sixth-grade English language arts class at Watson Chapel Middle School from May 5-9, 2025. She worked with Torres Eskew’s eighth-grade English language arts class at Pine Bluff Junior High School from Sept. 30–Oct. 4, 2024.
This project encourages reflection and retrospection of themselves and developing an awareness of others and their surroundings. It provides scholars an opportunity to use their voice through art.
Scholars will be strategically guided through conversations that are designed to develop a community of empathy and understanding while talking through difficult topics. They will use journaling to write out their answers to questions that they will have during the program’s activity, giving them the ability to formulate their words before engaging in conversation. At the end of each session, the students will write another journal entry about how the conversations have either strengthened their opinions, gave new perspectives, or even changed their opinions. Having young scholars write and read daily in this program will help strengthen literacy skills by encouraging them to analyze a question and write out a response that articulates their opinions and perspectives.
The students will also create visual art. The works will be a mixed-media collage paired with descriptive and detailed artist statements. The prompt is how scholars see themselves within their communities and environment. This prompt will encourage reflection and retrospection of themselves and develop an awareness of others and their surroundings along with providing scholars the opportunities to use their voice through art. The works will be showcased in an exhibition at The ARTSpace on Main on the ARTx3 Campus as the culminating event in which the students, families, and the community will be invited.
Elly Bates is a Little Rock-based visual teaching artist who specializes in mixed-media paintings and portraiture. Her mixed media work often explores the natural world and connections that exist within. Bates received an honors Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her work has been showcased in group and solo shows in Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas.
Bates has taught throughout Arkansas with students aged 4 to 84. She has almost two decades of teaching experience and has partnered with many different organizations including Crystal Bridges Art of American Museum, Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas. She is part of the Arkansas Arts Council’s Arts in Education roster.
Virmarie DePoyster was the Arts in Education artist-in-residence for spring 2024. DePoyster led students in a mural portrait project that highlights famous faces in history.
Students will learn and explore the process of designing a mural and use those techniques to produce a beautiful piece of art. The workshop is inspired by the murals created throughout the ARTx3 campus by Amanei Johnson.
DePoyster led students from the Pine Bluff Community Center in this after-school workshop during the week of April 2-5, at The ARTSpace on Main. This workshop was also open to any student in sixth grade or above.
DePoyster also led a free, drop-in self-portrait workshop April 6 at The ARTSpace on Main. The public was invited and it was open to all ages.
Virmarie DePoyster is a Puerto Rican-born multidisciplinary artist, educator, and community leader. As a practicing artist, she explores the complexities of identity. As an educator, she develops therapeutic art programs, providing safe spaces for self-reflection. And as a community leader, she advocates for equality and inclusion. She mainly works with pastels, but is skilled in multiple mediums. She has taught as part of the Arkansas Arts Council's Arts in Education Roster since 2011.
The Arts & Science Center hosted her solo exhibition Beyond Labels | Más Allá De Las Etiquetas in 2021. In the pastel portrait show, DePoyster explored how in today's world — a melting pot — the labels we assign each other have the power to either divide or connect us. Rather than focusing on the boundaries these labels can create, DePoyster's goal with these works was to inspire a sense of community as each subject's intrinsic beauty is illustrated. Beyond Labels was recently on view at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, and will be on view later in 2024 at the South Arkansas Arts Center in El Dorado.
The Arkansas Arts Council recently announced DePoyster as the 2024 Governor’s Arts Awards recipient for Arts in Education.
She lives in North Little Rock with her husband, David. You can find her work at the Art Group Gallery in Little Rock. Visit her website virmarie.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
Jasmine Harris was the Arts in Education artist-in-residence for fall 2023. Harris led students in learning about the art of spoken word. This included a focus on poetry in an after-school residency. Harris lent her extensive artistic talents to the Pine Bluff Community Center and Townsend Boys & Girls Club with after-school programs Oct. 10-13, at the Arts & Science Center.
Students created, learned, and explored the process of spoken-word poetry. The classes were available to middle- through high-school students at no cost.
She also led a free poetry workshop for the community.
Jasmine Harris is a secondary educator for the Little Rock School District, living and learning in central Arkansas. She’s a certified wordsmith, holding a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in Secondary Education, and an Educational Specialist degree in Building Administration. She’s also a published poet, featured in the International Poetry Digest, Ink & Voices, Rigorous, and more. A collection of poetry I May Have Been In My Feelings focuses her writing on identity, relationships, and the climate of society. Harris frequently quotes her inspirations as Maya Angelou, Ntozake Shange, and Tupac Shakur.
Alica “Aida” Ayers was the Arts in Education artist-in-residence for the 2022-2023 academic year. The multidisciplinary artist led students and workshop attendees in music and art, with an emphasis on African culture. This included a focus on music in the fall and art in the spring.
Ayers lent her extensive artistic talents to Pine Bluff-area students in a weeklong after-school ceramics class March 6-10, 2023, at the Arts & Science Center. Students created, learned, and explored the process of designing beautiful, African-inspired clay pots. Workshops were open to any student in sixth grade or above.
Alice “Aida” Ayers is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but has lived throughout the United States and a few African countries. Since 2018, she’s been based out of El Paso, Texas. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and on the Arkansas Arts Council’s Artist in Education roster.
She holds degrees in fine art, design and art education, and has exhibited work in America, Europe, Mexico, and several countries in Africa. As a teaching artist, she has conducted residencies in more than 250 schools, colleges, and community centers. She has painted more than 20 public murals.
Her work is created with strong colors and shapes and she loves depicting the female figure. The work is created with a sense of joy, depicting women as nurturers and lovers. Whether working with canvas and paint or fabric and thread, the color and pattern choices come through.
Traveling and meeting new people, seeing new environments and experiencing life is what inspires her most. Whether she is working in pastels, glass or textiles, her art has a direct correlation with the environment she is in.
Ayers works in a variety of media and whichever one she is working in at the time, is her favorite. She enjoys pushing the medium in innovative ways and combining several different media to create with. She is concerned with the value that art brings to people’s lives and chooses to focus on subject matter that shares her point of view.
She was an Arts in Education artist-in-residence at the Arts & Science Center in April 2022, with a focus on collage quilting. She worked with students at Dollarway High School and led a collage quilting workshop at ASC in May 2022. An exhibition in the Loft Gallery of The ARTSpace on Main displayed her collage quilt creations.
Visit her Facebook page or Instagram to see more examples of her work.
