Meet the Masters Teacher Spotlight: Karen Packer

I began working for Meet the Masters in 1990 after I had been volunteering for four years in the program at my children’s elementary school in Lake Forest.

My Master’s degree is in theater design, so the volunteer position as art facilitator was a good match for me.  I’m not an artist, but I do enjoy color, balance and most anything abstract!  Meet the Masters was presented as a very used friendly “art with non artist” program. That was enough to make me think I could do this.  My children loved it!  I believe we still have our best success with our “non artist” teachers.

My favorite artist to teach is Michelangelo.  I love that we create “granite” in the project.  The architecture component appeals to the frustrated general contractor in me.  I think the Renaissance history is amazing and  it is so important and fun to integrate history, math and art in this one project.

My teaching style involves humor and fun and “if I can do this, you can do this”.  The students are often quite sympathetic when my sample is not what theirs is!  I think I get the best results when children try something new and are so successful, especially if they haven’t had success in other areas that morning.

One of my success stories comes from my own home.  When my youngest daughter was in the second grade, our family was in a local Italian restaurant  for dinner.  She gazed at the painting next to us and said, “Mommy is that a Degas?”  She, of course, was correct.  My husband to this day, does not believe she could pick that out (probably because he couldn’t).  She is 27 now and has a great appreciation of art that carries her through school and life.