UPTOWN — Rachel Myers' love for art began before she could even read and she hopes to pass that on to the youngsters around the neighborhood with her new art studio, StudioUs Art.
The owner and director of the studio and art gallery at 4806 N. Clark St., set to open later this month, started drawing as a kid with her dad, who always dreamt of being a comic book artist, she said.
"One of my earliest memories, is he lined the hallways of our house with butcher paper and he would draw landscapes on them for me to fill in with cool animals and stuff," Myers said. "I was always reading comic books and doing that stuff with him. He actually taught me to read with old Calvin and Hobbes strips."
Myers embraced the arts, studying it in college and using her free time to draw and make comics. During her senior year of undergrad, she began teaching art to juniors at a private school in Washington, she said.
"I worked at the studio for about a year and a half and really loved it. And I had a lot of opportunities. I really enjoyed working at the studio with the students that came in there, but ultimately decided to go to grad school and got into journalism," Myers said.
At West Virginia University, she got into visual media and graphic design. After receiving her master's there, she decided to pursue a doctorate at the University of Missouri researching things like media psychology and media psychophysiology — studying how people understand and process aspects of the media, she said.
"I focused on visual media and everything I had learned in graphic design, especially online graphics and interactive infographics," Myers said.
She also fell in love in Columbia, Mo., the small hometown of Mizzou. When her husband lined up a job at a startup in Chicago, they packed up and moved to the city.
Myers also found a job in the city focusing on her doctoral research, but she didn't enjoy it. That's when she began asking herself what she was really passionate about.
"I was very lucky in that I got to have the opportunity to step back and say 'what am I really passionate about and what jobs have I loved? What do I really want to do with my life and how can I build that out for myself?' That's what brought me back to teaching art," she said.
"It's always been my absolute favorite job. I got to teach at other schools and in other capacities, but working at the studio with kids was really my favorite job, so I decided to do that and bring in the experience I had from working with graphic design and all of that research ... and bring that all together to make my own curriculum," Myers said.
After developing a plan, she needed a location to execute her dream and was drawn to the Uptown area, one of the first areas she discovered when she moved, she said.
Plus, the demographics of the area show it has a lot of children of various ages, she said.
"I really enjoyed just walking around the streets. It had a really nice feel to it," she said. "There also seems to be a really vibrant art community. ... It's a good fit. It's a beautiful area. It's a little quieter outside the city, but still accessible. It's got a lot of really great attributes to start up a business."
The curriculum is designed to make art teachable like math by breaking it down into its simplest form first. It begins with simple line drawing and moves into more advanced techniques like realism, she said.
The studio will have two classes of line drawing; one that is simple and another more complex. Students will use everything from crayons to colored pencils to oil pastels to complete the work, she said.
"It's all about looking at shapes that make up an object breaking it down into different components and figuring out how to get them lined up so it looks like what you're drawing," said Myers, adding the more advanced class will have "smaller more delicate shapes."
While StudioUs Art is targeted at children, it will accept students of all ages even teens and adults.
"People think 'Oh you're an artist, you've got to have this specific creative spark and not everyone can do it.' I want to counter that and say everyone can do it. If you're motivated to learn it you can absolutely learn how to draw," Myers said.
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