Chelsea School’s Art Teacher Loves Working With All Ages
By Cornelia Cesari

New art teacher Damariscotta Miller is enjoying her new job working with students at the Chelsea School. (Herald / Cornelia Cesari)

Damariscotta Miller couldn’t choose just one age level to work with—she loves them all. The K-12 aspect of teaching art at Chelsea School is just one reason she is so thrilled with her new job.

"There is nothing like being able to work with so much youthfulness and vibrancy," Miller says enthusiastically. She considers herself an advocate of "creative problem solving in the art room on a daily basis."

Another factor in her job satisfaction is the strength she feels in the close Chelsea community. She says the students support each other and she finds the faculty to be "a wonderful group of individuals to work and laugh with."

Miller lives in Montpelier, where she grew up. Her husband, Karl, is a musician and owner of Miller Sports, and they have two teenaged children. Previously, she taught art at St. Monica’s and St. Michael’s schools, as well as Fayston Elementary. An oil painter herself, Miller has displayed work in Burlington, in the style of 1930s Mexican surrealism; but her interests span all media.

Miller says she loves claymation, animation and moviemaking and looks forward to sharing these experiences with her students. She is planning to offer a course in illustration, in response to student interest, and to strengthen the digital technology program. Next fall, Miller hopes to bring the school’s dark room "out of mothballs" and back into use.

One of the projects her students have undertaken is the creation of altered books, in which old books are brought to life with three-dimensional models and figures bursting up out of the pages. They have also done body casting in a fiber arts unit, scenes of polymer clay skeletons relating to Dia Del Muerte in Mexico, pottery, pop art sandwiches, creation of games (e.g., board games, bowling alley, ping pong), silkscreen, and stained glass.

Miller is a professed "collector of all things" (from marker caps to wire) but rather than hoarding them, she likes to see them used. She enjoys making a range of materials available to young artists and watching to see how their inspiration manifests itself.

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