I enjoy working and collaborating with teachers. I’ve always liked and respected teachers just as people. They are a different breed, so it’s just as fun and stimulating to be around them, as it is with children.
Children are special beings and their art constantly amazes and surprises me. When I teach, I speak to them as one artist to another. I respect them as artists because at this young age, they are at the peak of being a creative being. Creativity is still a natural accessible part of them, so as a teaching artist I need only to let it loose.
I like to give children a lot of freedom within the parameters of my art projects, so they can explore on their own. I encourage children to take risks. I emphasize that there is no such thing as a mistake. They should not be afraid to make a “mistake” I tell them, they are artists, so they can problem solve by using their creativity to turn it into something else.
In the end, I’d want children to be able to see things in different ways and to know that even if there are boundaries, they are free to go around, up, down, enlarge, decrease etc. There are an infinite ways to see and do things and I’d want them to be able to apply these problem-solving skills to their personal lives.
I don’t teach children to be artists. I teach them to think like an artist.
Fae Yamaguchi received her MFA from the University of Hawaii in sculpture. She moved from creating kinetic sculpture to video art in the form of live action puppetry. Yamaguchi is currently a painter. Her surreal paintings have exhibited locally and can be found in many private collections. Yamaguchi’s videos in the form of live-action puppetry, have screened in film festivals, theaters, and museums nationally and internationally. Selected national grants include the Western Regional Media Arts Fellowship, and the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and Arts Individual Artist Fellowship.
Yamaguchi has been teaching art to children in Hawai‘i for over 30 years and has taught at numerous public and private schools including Kamehameha, Mid-Pacific, La Pietra, Iolani and Hanahau‘oli. Yamaguchi also taught through the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawai‘i Alliance for Arts in Education, Downtown Art Center, Art Bento-Hawaiʻi State Art Museum, and the Artists in the Schools Program.
Fae Yamaguchi is also familiar with the workings of public schools and special needs students, as she was an Educational Assistant with Special Education for 12 years at Noelani Elementary School.
The Artistic Teaching Partners (ATP) Roster is an adjudicated directory of Hawai‘i professional teaching artists qualified to conduct in-depth residencies in educational settings. Each artist or arts organization has a page in the directory with contact information, a short bio, and an artist statement. The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts draws from this roster for arts education programs including Art Bento at the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum and Artists in the Schools.
