AP Art Teacher Natalie Hudson

Art Department Chair Natalie Hudson’s room is what an art studio in a movie might look like.

The room is decked out with a multitude of supplies littering the tables and paintings on the walls. Canvases and easels are scattered everywhere, and the brushes lie across the table like fallen leaves.

Hudson said she never expected to work in education.

In her young-adult life, Hudson didn’t know what she would want to do. Her aunt, with whom she was very close, proposed the idea of her getting involved with art education.

At her aunt’s suggestion, she decided to apply to Ohio State to major in art education.

However, after becoming a teacher, Hudson said she realized she was not getting enough practice at producing art herself, so she decided to pursue a master’s in art education from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

“I felt that I had this hunger to keep making things,” she said.

Family conflicts Hudson faced growing up inspired her to create a piece for her master’s thesis. The piece represented the breakdowns in her family throughout her life and her perceptions of them.

The step-by-step ritual Hudson followed to create the piece was lengthy and took extreme patience.

Hudson said the piece was almost a performance piece, but intertwined with printmaking and visual arts, as well.

She would put out ornaments on a clean cement plate over which the audience would walk. As audience members crushed the ornaments, they would leave scratches on the plate.

Each time she exhibited the piece, Hudson would wait for all the ornaments to be broken before making a print of the plate. Over time, the viewer could see the plate deteriorate, and eventually, the viewer would see that the plate is on the verge of being destroyed.

“Every time I’ve set up this piece,  it almost seemed like a social experiment,” said Hudson. “And you can always see someone look over their shoulder like they may stomp on it if they see it at all. It’s fascinating for me, which may say something about my psyche.”

Once Hudson graduated from SCAD with her master’s degree, she worked at Northwestern Middle School for a short time and later joined the school.

“I tell my students all the time, I’ve died and gone to art-teacher heaven,” Hudson said of her current job.

“It’s amazing, and the students are incredible,” said Hudson. “And it makes me feel shameful that I don’t have to deal with some of the complex things that my friends at other schools have to deal with.”