Faculty Spotlight: Anna Nuttall

This week's faculty spotlight Anna Nuttall, PMAC's queen of creativity.

If you know Anna Nuttall - you KNOW that when you are around her, you are going to have FUN. Bringing creativity to the forefront of any situation, Anna keeps you engaged and ready to paint, draw, design, think, sculpt...to name a few! Encouraging her students to use their imagination, think outside the box and make every piece a masterpiece, Anna's classroom is always flowing with positivity and art. As someone who is very close to the community, over the past 15 years Anna has been doing many things to strengthen Art in the Seacoast: teaching youth students at Little Harbour Elementary and now Portsmouth Middle School, serving her community as a board member of Art-Speak, serving PMAC as the past Director of our Visual Arts Department, and serving as Chair of the Department of Visual Arts for the Portsmouth Public Schools.

PMAC: What is your teaching philosophy?

Anna: Visual arts is both my profession and my personal passion and I feel lucky every day that I am able to work in an area I’m so passionate about!  I love working with youth and teens, and am continually inspired by their incredible deep thinking, creativity, perseverance and motivation, and I am honored to be able to part of that process.  

I see the visual arts is a language of expression, and form of recording and communicating that has been part of humanity and society, since the beginning of history. We create works of art not to match the couch, but to celebrate, record, and express our lives as individuals and as members of our communities. 

I believe that we all are artists, and we all can visually communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings, opinions and experiences in a unique way that other forms of communication cannot.  Conversely, I believe that the visual arts is not only a language used to express, but also one to interpret and interact with our world – art is a universal language. This, and our image-rich culture, makes visual literacy a critical area of learning for youth and for us all!  For these reasons I believe strongly that teaching and learning in the visual arts is a critical element to a holistic education for young and old alike.

Through providing thoughtful and dynamic arts experiences I always hope to encourage curiosity, imagination, creativity and innovative thinking that can reach our youth’s many interests – be it art or any other subject area, and even several at once!  Science, history, literacy, math and more all have inherent artistic connections, and I love teaching integrated arts projects!. The visual arts provide processes through which to investigate, analyze, interpret, problem-solve, construct and create in an exciting way, and these skills serve us in many ways beyond just art-making.

Like learning to read, write, walk, or perform math computations, art is a teachable and learnable way of thinking, set of skills, and way to practice creativity and critical thinking. It isn’t magic, nor talent that ‘makes an artist’. It’s inspiration, curiosity, creativity, motivation, and hard work –and we all are born with that! Coupled with our beliefs, passions, and lives art becomes a wonderful way to share, learn and engage with our environment and community. Art is not ‘a thing’ but a way of thinking.

PMAC: Who is your favorite artist (or top three!)?

Anna: Honestly, I can’t name a favorite artist or even top 3. Like movies, books, music(ians), and other creative genres and folks, I find that they reach me, teach me and move me in many different but equally important ways. It may be their technique that amazes me; or their incredible concept, unique voice, message, or mission that engages me and makes me think more deeply. I am often drawn to artists who have an original voice and who work with forms of abstraction, as I love seeing what the artist can translate from his or her surroundings (or mind) versus accuracy in copying our visual world. I love work that also has multiple layers of meaning, or ‘puzzles’ to solve while viewing it –I like to be challenged by art. It is always wonderful ‘getting lost’ while looking at a piece of work.

PMAC: What is your favorite medium? 

Anna: I enjoy mixed-media adventures, often using printmaking as a foundation and then working inks, pastels, watercolor, and even stitching and metal into the piece. That said, many art mediums intrigue me and I am constantly exploring and experimenting with new ones, and non-traditional applications of tried and true mediums. For me that is one of the glories of teaching art, that we teach many mediums, styles, and methods of artistic thinking. If I do not keep exploring, then I couldn’t in good conscience push my students to take creative risks.

PMAC: If you were a musician, what would you play?

Anna: I like to think I am a musician, just a very, very, very beginner one! In a past life I loved playing saxophone, and I currently practice piano. I had always wanted to learn how to play piano when I was a child so I figured ‘it’s never too late’ and started up a couple years ago with lessons.  I am looking forward to more lessons with Mike Effenberger. For me the hardest part is the theory, but that’s also the part I especially want to learn! I want to be able to play anything I can read!