Shoreline artist Amy Pleasant's new exhibition draws on decades of classroom experience

For most, it is easy to recall the universal experience of being a student. In the upcoming exhibition at Shoreline City Hall, Lessons Learned, artist Amy Pleasant incorporates another perspective by reflecting on her past as a teacher and by extension the ongoing issue of education in America. Her new artwork documents the rise of a younger generation more engaged in social activism as evinced by the recent emergence of the “March for Our Lives” movement.

Lessons Learned opens on Tuesday, May 8th at the City of Shoreline Gallery (2nd floor), 17500 Midvale Ave. N. Shoreline, 98133, with a public reception from 6:30 - 8:30pm. The exhibition runs through July with regular gallery hours 9:00 am -5:00 pm Monday – Friday.

Pleasant’s artwork draws on two decades spent in classrooms in Los Angeles, Denver, Honolulu, and Shoreline. Observing that “an important generational shift seems to have taken place in this country,” Pleasant offers a series of portraits of this awakening in progress. The bright colors and sherbet palette and the integration of abstracted shapes within the figures of the students reflects the innocence of the age and hopefulness for the future.

Future Unfolding: Flak Jackets Required

 
Pleasant was a bilingual teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District and Denver Public Schools. She taught in the gifted and talented program at Assets School in Honolulu and taught elementary and middle school for the Shoreline School District in Shoreline, WA. She attended the Art Institute of Seattle and the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, studying under Mark Kang O'Higgins in the Drawing and Painting Atelier. She has exhibited in Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Amsterdam and was one of 12 artists featured in 2014 by the Woman's Caucus of Art.

More images may be viewed HERE.