Ceramics, Sculpture and Jewelry Teacher Samantha Harris
November 28, 2018
Living in Georgia all of her life, art teacher Samantha Harris’ environments have ranged from urban to rural, all the way to the town she works in today.
She said that growing up she lived in a town where people either wanted to be a mechanic or go to technical school. So she went to Southern Poly Tech — now part of Kennesaw State University — for architecture and engineering.
“I realized after a couple of years, I hated it,” said Harris.
“I was never computer savvy and outside of drawing architecture, you were spending a lot of time behind a desk,” said Harris. “And that just wasn’t what I wanted with my life.”
The University of West Georgia was then Harris’s new university with her major being art education.
Immediately, she dove into level one courses and foundational lessons, learning everything she could about art.
After graduating from West Georgia, Harris started to work in an elementary school in southern Fulton County.
“I was like, “Yes this is where I’m supposed to be,” she said.
Harris is currently on a break from making art for the public and is focusing on making mainly sculpture-based work in her free time.
Harris said that most of her works revolve and center around the depths of agriculture and farming in her childhood.
“And a lot of my artwork had to do with farming. West Georgia’s in Carrollton so it’s very rural. I really got into [the topics of] genetically modified organisms, factory farming, consumerism and the life of a living organism,” she said.
Harris said she’d love to see more collaborative classes, like combining two or more subjects to teach a career path that Cambridge may have not seen before.
“I would love to collaborate. I would love to collaborate with Mr. Thompson for engineering and welding, or work with set design for the performance arts, because we’re all essentially a family, we take and borrow from each other,” she said.