Meet the Owner - Lorina Harris!
After high school, Lorina Harris successfully completed the foundational fine arts year at the University of Hartford Art School located in West Hartford Connecticut in 1986. She found though, at 17/18 years of age, that she was a bit short on life experience. Since she desperately wanted to be able to say something worth while with her art, it would be nearly a decade, after gaining quite a lot of the aforementioned "experience" before continuing her education, and receiving a fine arts degree after completing a 4-year Artist/Art teacher study, at the Amsterdam School of the Arts in the Netherlands.
From the time she was a student in 1994-1998, she had been taking opportunities to teach art to students of all ages, and in various capacities. To specify, after graduation, she worked as coordinator of the preparatory course for the Academy of visual arts, for potential students, for 2 semesters. She spent 2 years working in a 50% position as an art teacher with young adults at the Driestar, a teacher.s training school, in Gouda, The Netherlands.
From 1998-2005, she simultaneously worked at a seasonal arts camp (Buitenkunst) for families and other individuals, as one of the visual art teachers, teaching primarily adults. In the same period of time Ms. Harris worked at 2 different community colleges, VU-Amstelland and Volksuniversiteit-Haarlem, as well as 2 different art centers, SAKB and Werkschuit Aalsmeer, teaching both children and adult classes. Next to this all, she held private art classes, birthday parties, and did community projects with fellow artists, and workshops for businesses. In this time she also had several solo art exhibitions, and a number of group exhibitions.
At the time of her relocation to the U.S. in 2005 she had been teaching via the College of Southern Maryland's Kids College for a couple of summers, and taught a small art class for home school students until moving in the fall of 2007 into her own home which included a detached over-sized 2-car garage. This was fairly quickly cleaned, painted and filled, eventually replacing the garage door with a wall and windows to resemble a studio, and has been holding classes there ever since.
Presently Lorina Harris is in her second year of serving on the board of the Charles County Arts Alliance. She can also be seen with a team of models or other arts enthusiasts at various community functions, such as the Charles County Fair, and Celebrate LaPlata day.
"The bottom line is that I love the arts and I thrive on seeing others progress in art. I believe that studying any of the arts has a very positive affect on individuals, and thus to communities at large. I spend a good deal of the visual art classes teaching about basic elements, aspects and techniques of art that will equip students to increase their ability to think out of the box and to make better art. I like to challenge my students to expand their horizons, solve visual problems, and work through techniques which will in turn serve them well as they go forward with their art, and also, I believe, in other areas of their lives." - Lorina Harris