Portraits of a Division

For Adam Reinhard, an art teacher at Western Albemarle High School, teaching art at any level is about helping students discover what they’re capable of by challenging them, not by making assignments easier.

“I like for my students to look at their art and think, ‘If I can do that, I can do anything,’” he said. 

But he doesn’t just throw his students into the deep end and expect them to swim. They begin the year sharpening foundational skills and gradually increase the rigor of their assignments.

“I want to set them up for success so that when we get to those challenging assignments, they’re motivated to try their best,” Adam said.

At the elementary level, Adam explained, students practice a lot of technical skills to bolster their confidence in creating art. In high school, he aims to prepare students for the types of art assignments they encounter at the college level, projects that often require more emotion and vulnerability.

One of his favorite projects is coordinated through the Memory Project, which pairs students with children from around the world, many of whom are orphans or refugees. Adam’s students are tasked with creating art for their partner and gifting it to them, a uniquely vulnerable act, he said.

“They really put their heart and soul into those projects,” Adam said. “You’re putting your skills out there for public consumption, and that can be hard to do.”

But Adam doesn’t ask his students to be vulnerable with their work without modeling it himself. He often works on art alongside them in the classroom and, in his free time, creates his own pieces to hang in local galleries and businesses—and, hopefully, sell.

“I want them to see that art is a viable path,” he said. 

Most recently, three of his pieces were purchased for display at UVA Health’s Cancer Care Pantops location. As a UVA alum, Adam said having his work hang in a UVA care center is “very validating, and I still feel like I’m part of the UVA community.”

More importantly, he said, it’s an honor for his art to offer peace or comfort to patients and families going through difficult times. His own family has firsthand experience with these kinds of places, having supported his sister through a cancer diagnosis a few years ago.

“Those rooms can be a place of hope, too, and I’m honored to be a part of that,” he said.

It’s just one more place, Adam said, where people interact with art in their daily lives, which is another lesson that he hopes to instill in the students who pass through his classes.

“It’s impossible to live your life without interacting with art in some way on a daily basis,” he said. “Art isn’t really a thing, it’s a feeling. Once you’re moved by art, you won’t forget it, and that’s what I really want my students to get out of creating.”