Interview by AFA Intern Danaley Silan in Spring 2022
Q: Who are you?
Briget: My name is Briget Villanueva. I was born and raised in New York City. My main discipline of art is Painting, specifically Portraiture.
Q: How did you first get involved in your specific discipline of art?
Briget: Since I was younger, I just loved to draw. When I was in elementary school, I had an art teacher that recognized that I loved the arts and really encouraged that. She was very understanding and was very willing to expose her students to many different mediums. I think finding that I loved to paint was a result of me being very shy growing up. It was hard for me to talk to people and make friends, but because it made me so observant, art became something that I gravitated to. I love observing people’s faces and their energies, and I think that became something I could read much more easily.
Q: What role did art play in your childhood?
Briget: Growing up, I loved the arts. My dad and grandpa were also artists, so I learned that that was a way for me to be able to express myself when I wasn’t able to in other ways.
Q: What is your educational background?
Briget: I went to the High School of Art and Design, and that experience definitely broadened my horizons and taught me that there are so many different cultures that people come from. It exposed me to being more open minded and also very creative since I was fortunate enough to go to an art school. I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to pursue the arts or education at first. Coming from an East Asian family, they wanted me to pursue a medical field, and I was going to do it. I did not apply to any art schools because I thought I had to do something that would “get me money.” I applied to the Fashion Institute of Technology because there was a joke at my high school that everyone gets into FIT. I applied and got in. It made me cry of happiness because I then knew that I should be pursuing the arts. I studied Fine Arts in college and loved every bit of the experience because of the community and the teachers. I was really able to learn and grow as an artist.
Q: How did you become involved with teaching?
Briget: At FIT, I had to do an internship as well. A friend told me that the Children’s Museum of the Arts was looking for interns. I applied and got it, and I fell in love with the experience of being there for kids– creating my own lesson plans and being in charge of these spaces that educate kids on how to nurture that feeling within them that they want to express things visually. I ended up figuring out that I wanted to become a teacher to be able to be someone that could guide the youth a way to express themselves because that was something I was learning I didn’t have the best access to when I was younger.
Q: Is there a story of an interaction or experience in the classroom that made you fall in love with your job?
Briget: I have so many! At my old job at the museum, I was teaching my first after-school program that I wrote up. It was a landscape painting class. It still means the world to me that I had this experience. It was for fifth graders, and they were super engaged in everything I had to say to them. At the end of every class, there were students that would hug me, and their parents would thank me for giving their kids a chance to grow, learn, and expand in this area of their life because they needed it. That meant everything to me because that is exactly why I wanted to be a teacher. It is the fuel that gets me going. Teaching is hard, but every moment like that counts and keeps me here.
Q: How do the children you work with inspire you to keep being a teaching artist?
Briget: It is funny because you are the teacher and they are the students, but a lot of the time, you learn from them as well. They are so young and so curious, and I feel like they ask you questions that you have not thought of since you were a kid, or they will see answers for problems in different ways. We have been taught that something is taught this way, and they figure it out in other ways that you cannot see. They inspire me to think more outside the box and not be afraid to do things outside of my comfort zone.
Q: What is one important lesson that you hope the students learn from your classes?
Briget: I just want them to find confidence and be able to be independent in what they want to say and how they want to say it– to be able to express what they need to in a safe space and carry that with them. It is not just about the art that they are making. It shapes who they are as a person and who they are growing into in all aspects of their lives. I hope it has that positive influence in everything that they do moving forward.
Q: What is your favorite thing about working with Arts For All?
Briget: One of my absolute favorite things is having such a tight-knit support system. Everybody has been so warm and welcoming and open, and it is very refreshing after being in different areas of the arts education world. I’m very grateful for that. I am also really loving the schools that I am at. It is very nice to be surrounded by teachers and students who love what I bring to their classrooms.
Q: What does art mean to you?
Briget: Art at the end of the day is a way of thinking. It is something that lives in every aspect of your life, whether it is a literal piece of art that you’re creating or the way you think or what you see on the streets or how you carry yourself. I always think that there is some sort of aesthetic energy that is being carried throughout your life or what you do. It is just a part of your life.
