Finding a new career path through art
After more than two decades as a school teacher, Jason Lord began taking classes at Carolina to hone his visual art skills to teach his middle school students. That experience led the Tar Heel to put his teaching career on hold and pursue a degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.
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Jason Lord has spent his career in arts education, teaching music and theater. When he began to expand his teaching into the visual arts a few years ago, Lord enrolled in part-time classes at Carolina to hone his skills.
“I didn’t know a lot about it and felt a little bit intimidated by it, but I became really impassioned about learning about art and art history and learning how to do certain processes in order to stay one step ahead of my middle school students,” he said.
Those few classes led Lord to ultimately put his teaching career on hold to attend Carolina full time and study art in the College of Arts & Sciences. This semester, the senior is exploring screenprinting with Beth Grabowski, the Kappa Kappa Gamma Distinguished Professor of Art and undergraduate advisor for studio art, to continue developing his artistic abilities.
“I love teaching and I’ll always be a teacher in some way, but I’m also thinking about my art practice,” Lord said. “I’ve applied to some MFA programs, and having a greater level of mastery with screenprinting, I think, is going to just give me more options for how I present my ideas to the world.”
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