With years of experience in preschool & early learning classrooms, I believe that introducing arts and building creative confidence at a young age has profound effects on a child’s future.
Customize a Pre-K art residency, where your class will explore curriculum with hands on, sometimes unconventional, exciting ways to create and observe! All art projects and experiences will incorporate auditory, kinesthetic, and visual elements to engage all learners & encourage holistic development for all keiki. Get ready for an abundance of heartwarming artworks accompanied by proud smiles and energetic excitement!
During elementary & high school residencies, I hope to challenge individual creativity, build technical skills, and encourage introspection, while students experience curriculum in new ways. I look forward to co-designing classes that feature diverse projects and introduce various 2-dimensional & 3-dimensional media. This may include pastels, watercolor paint, acrylic paint, printmaking, scratchboard, modeling clay, air dry clay, jewelry, repurposed/eco friendly materials, and/or much more. Please email me, if you are interested, but looking for other specific media.
Project styles may be realistic or abstract, and inspired from various art movements. Whenever relevant, I love to share historical, cultural, and rhetorical context, allowing students the opportunity to connect dots, while bridging past, present & future, for a more profound understanding of the many roles of arts and crafts within societies and historical periods. This also helps children begin to realize the unique place & pivotal times we live in.
Discussions during classes will provide opportunities for students to learn how to analyze and appreciate artwork, as they contemplate personal interpretations, and technical details within the works of others. These conversations become an opportunity to articulate complex thoughts, while connecting with peers through unique perceptions.
By the end of a residency, students will not only be confident in creating art, but they will also see how artwork can communicate ideas and how design has become embedded in our daily lives.
With access to arts education for all, we can build a stronger, more beautiful and resilient community.
Julie Matheis attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Jewelry and Light Metals, with a minor in Art History. Prior to this, she attended the Chicago Academy for the Arts, high school, where she studied fine art in a variety of 2-d & 3-d media. Her fine art jewelry has been featured in galleries internationally and in printed publications, most notably 21st Century Jewelry, by Lark Books. After moving to Hawaii, her jewelry focus shifted to production work, but she continues to handcraft each of her pieces, which are available at boutiques around Maui. As a mother of 4 children, her teaching focus has changed from teaching art classes to all age groups, to focusing primarily on creating keiki lessons that are arts integrated experiences, layered with learning, integrity, and empowerment. She hopes that inspiring our youth to observe the world around them, while developing their creative problem solving skills, will help guide her children’s generation into a place where all
can thrive.
She is currently on the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts teaching artist roster, has taught at the Hui No’eau Visual Art Center since 2006, and has taught Can Do Day! At the Maui Arts and Cultural Center Since 2014.
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.
