“You should be an art teacher.”
As a senior in high school, Sarah McRae MFA’96 brushed off this comment repeatedly when it came from her own art teacher, Crystal Thorson. McRae was fully on board with the art part, but she dismissed the teaching aspect.
“I wanted nothing to do with teaching at that time,” she explains. “I just wanted to create.”
But McRae couldn’t escape the idea of teaching, nor the educators who had such an impact on her life. Her parents, both former faculty members at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, motivated her to pursue an art degree at Concordia after the birth of her son. With more encouragement from McRae’s college adviser and graphics instructor, Jean Gumpper MA’81, MFA’82, she finally gave in. After all, Thorson’s words had never left the back of her mind.
McRae switched to an art education degree and completed her student teaching with Thorson. She continued to coteach with Thorson in the Moorhead public school system until Gumpper inspired McRae to pursue her MFA in graphics in Madison. At the UW, McRae studied under yet another inspirational force: Truman Lowe MFA’73, dubbed the ultimate educator-encourager by his family.
“Truman wanted people to get an education, and he wanted to see students succeed. He watched out for students,” McRae says, “and I took note of that.”
McRae has been watching out for her own students at Velma Hamilton Middle School in Madison since 1996. Not every kid will become an art teacher like herself, but she works to inspire at least an appreciation of art, if not a love of art. McRae says that success is “When a student enters my classroom hating art and after day three, they come up to me and say, ‘I can do this! I had fun today!’ ”
And despite 18-year-old McRae’s worries about an art education path, she’s still creating. Now primarily a painter, McRae uses her graphics training in her pieces. “You can take graphics away from the artist,” she says, “but you can never take graphics out of the artist.” Her precise paintings feature limited color palettes, geometric patterns, and natural elements. A member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, McRae also takes inspiration from traditional Ojibwe beadwork, and often incorporates her loved ones into her paintings as birds and butterflies.
With the influence of her parents, Thorson, Gumpper, and Lowe, McRae has grown as an educator and an artist. “[I had] five amazing educators with their hearts in the right place, five educators cheering me on,” she explains. “All five of their voices [are] in my head, encouraging me to be my best version of me.”
Enjoy a sample of McRae's work below, and see more on her Instagram page.
Summer Night
Earth Diver
Fly Away With Me
