Our Story
Meets Art Educator?
Tons OF INSPIRATION!
Everything has a beginning and our story started before we even met.
Both Nellie and Erika grew up in New York City with a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge, especially when it came to their Latino culture.
When they entered their college years, they both hit the same bump in the road. Nellie felt underrepresented in her art history courses and Erika felt invisible in the literature she read.
They would later discover that this desire to be represented would become their passion and inspire their life’s work as educators.
Throughout Nellie’s college career, most of her art history courses concentrated primarily on Western Art so she had to be creative in incorporating artists of color in her final projects. After she graduated, it became clear to Nellie that she needed to continue to fill in the gaps and consciously chose to work in smaller culturally specific museums like El Museo del Barrio and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Nellie is currently a member of the teaching team of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET) where her position as a Museum Educator of color informs her museum programs. She is also a published author on special-needs parenting.
As a NYC public school teacher, Erika did her best to provide a multicultural education for her students through the use of diverse, high quality books. When she became a mom and, later, a homeschool educator, Erika continued to read children’s literature with her daughter that reflected their heritage as well as other ethnicities. Her work has broadened through her website, Charlotte Mason City Living, where she shares multicultural books of quality for educational and personal use, as well as writes about her homeschooling journey. Erika is also co-host of the Charlotte Mason for All Podcast and an aspiring children’s author.
Years later, Nellie’s and Erika’s similar paths would converge through Instagram. Nellie posted a creative recreation of Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Juan de Pareja, and a mutual friend, who knew Erika was also fascinated by Pareja’s story, connected them.
Erika and Nellie began wonderful conversations on art, culture and education. As they got to know each other, Nellie expressed her desire to offer diverse art history resources to school-aged children and Erika shared the need for a larger multicultural representation within Art Appreciation homeschooling resources.
At that point, it was clear to them that their individual experiences had brought them together for a greater purpose: The Art of Color Artist Studies.
Now Home Educator and Art Educator are joining forces in creating Multicultural Art Appreciation resources. Especially designed for students, these resources bring Artists of Color to the forefront who are either unknown in the mainstream world of art or for whom very limited information is available. Using their knowledge as writers and their passion as educators of color, sprinkled with a mama’s touch, Nellie and Erika are carefully crafting each Artist Study. They are working diligently to produce resources that are historically accurate, engaging for the student and honor the artist being studied.
It is the hope of Erika and Nellie to create a new Artist Study every term but please be patient with them. They are mothers first, wearing a gazillion hats. 😉
And so they begin this new journey together with the man who first inspired their friendship: Juan de Pareja.
Thank you for your support and helping to spread the word so that
more students have access to a Multicultural Art Education.
If you have any questions, comments or recommendations
on Artists of Color, please feel free to contact us!
