Today is May 28, 2023. I am rescuing an art academy. My own.
Just two months ago, in March, I signed the divorce papers. A marriage that started out hopeful and ended up falling apart as I tried to hold it together with one hand and my career with the other. In April I was notified that I would not continue as an ESL teacher in Delaware - I had barely been in that position for four months. Two strokes in less than 60 days.
I was without a partner, without a job and, for a few days, without direction.
But I was also left with something that no one can take away from me: 11 years of teaching experience - non-linear, back and forth, but solid. I started teaching fine arts, then commercial arts. I was a college professor in commercial arts. I also taught two years in high school as a commercial arts CTE teacher. The rest of the time - eight years, here and there - I was out of the system, surviving, learning on my own, falling down and getting up without anyone seeing me.
During those years within the system I saw how the visual arts were used as a "repository" for students who had already given up. I myself began to give up in those classrooms. But when I lost the position at Delaware, something changed: I no longer had anything to lose.
That's why today I'm rescuing this dream: to found my own online art academy.
Years ago I wanted to create an online art academy. A place where teaching was not bureaucratic choreography, but practice, research, and real connection between instructor and student. Where educational standards - like those of the National Association of Art Educators of America (NAEA) - were not a dead requirement, but a living guide to measure progress.
The technical plan (what I have already designed)
The online art academy will be 100% online, at least at first. I have defined seven class formats:
- Individual asynchronous without assistance
- Individual asynchronous with instructor assistance
- Group asynchronous with assistance from other students
- Group asynchronous with assistance from instructor and other students
- Group synchronous with fixed schedule, instructor and other students
- Virtual face-to-face between student and instructor
- (Future) Individual attendance
Supported hardware: iPad, Android tablets, Microsoft Surface. I will also explain how to use an iPad as a graphics tablet connected to a MacBook, and a Surface connected to a PC with open source programs like Krita.
Software: Open source (Krita, Blender) and proprietary (Procreate, Clip Studio Paint). In the intermediate and advanced courses we will go deeper into 3D tools.
Curriculum: I will begin with intermediate and advanced art courses, because students who already have a foundation deserve to continue to grow. Next will come foundation courses for beginners and homeschoolers, aligned with NAEA standards. All intended as an online art school for those looking for something different from traditional classrooms.
The emotion that does not fit in a curriculum
But all this wouldn't be true if I didn't tell you how I feel today, May 28, 2023, as I write this in a small apartment that I still don't know if I'll be able to keep for the next month.
I'm scared. And I'm also alive like I haven't been in years.
Losing my marriage and my job in the same quarter could have destroyed me. Instead, I have been drained of everything I don't need: the excuses, the waiting, the false security of a fixed salary in a system that does not respect art. Now all that's left is the dream. And me.
I put the online art academy at the top of my list. There is no plan B. There is no "if it goes wrong, I look for another school." There is this, or this.
Someone, in the future, may read this post and smile. Maybe he or she will see a table in front of the sea, a cup of coffee, and understand that all this -the chaos, the falls, the divorce papers, the dismissal- was the floor from which something worthwhile was built. But I'm not writing that today. Today I am only writing this: I am rescuing a dream.
May 12, 2026 - Three years later, this online art academy went from a rescued dream to a reality. [You can read the continuation here].
Thank you for reading. If you too are in the middle of a storm and decide to build something, let me know in the comments. You are not alone.
- Gerardo Vargas
DacaDaguao 4D Academy - under construction