Art Educator of Year is honored

PROVO — A teacher of art teachers is this year's recipient of the Utah Art Educator of the Year award, presented recently at an art education convention in Chicago.

Joanne Smith, 60, who teaches at Timpview High School, has taught many of the teachers who now sit on the board of the Utah Art Education Association. Some were student teachers under her tutelage years ago, while others are fellow teachers she has mentored.

"It's really a group effort," she said. "We mentor each other."

Smith attends the UAEA conference every year in St. George, where she has presented art techniques and workshops to other art teachers. She is also a producing artist with many of her works sold through "A Gallery-Studio A" of Salt Lake City. Her works have also appeared in local galleries and in the Springville Museum of Art.

While getting her master's degree at Brigham Young University a few years ago she taught other budding artists as a graduate student.

"Painting is my personal medium," she said. "I hand stitch fabric and glue it to stretched paper. Then I paint over that."

Sometimes she creates a collage of printed text and paints over that.

Her contemporary art may also feature realistic images in an unrealistic space. Sometimes she uses fruit representing people. Smith also enjoys sketchbook art.

She began teaching in the early 1970s in Columbus, Ohio. Raised in Salt Lake City, she graduated from the University of Utah and taught a year at what was then Central Junior High School before moving to Ohio. After returning to Utah in 1981, she worked as a graphic designer for three years before going back to the classroom. She began teaching at Timpview High in 2001.

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