3 minute read
Kelly Clarkson Gets Schooled
TV appearance spotlights collaborative art project
BY CASEY McDERMOTT
When an email from a daytime TV producer arrived in Sarah Mundy’s inbox earlier this spring, she was busy in her home ceramics studio. The Portsmouth High School art teacher doesn’t have a lot of spare time for her own pottery projects, outside of school breaks.
But this request, she soon realized, was worth making time for. “The Kelly Clarkson Show” wanted to have her on for a segment. She caught their eye with a TikTok about a collaborative art project, where she and her high school art students teamed up with an elementary school art class to bring the younger kids’ drawings of monsters to life.
The show was eager to feature not just Mundy, but also her teaching partner, Dondero Elementary art teacher Adam Bastille, and a student from each class. But there was one catch. It was the middle of April vacation week, and that meant it would be hard to track everyone down. Somehow, Mundy said, they made it work — and the Portsmouth art project got its moment in the spotlight the first week of May.
“It was a miracle that it all worked out and we all got to New York City,” Mundy said.
For Mundy, though, it’s hardly the only instance in which her willingness to document her work — as an artist and an educator — has paid off. The Portsmouth High School and University of New Hampshire alumna has used Instagram to sell her own creative wares since about 2016, but like many teachers, she turned to TikTok during the pandemic to connect with others about how they were navigating the new COVIDera learning environment.
“I was trying to connect with other art teachers and kind of like using it as another avenue to see how to survive and how to keep my kids making art,” she said.
Since then, she’s leveraged her audience — more than 163,000 followers and counting — to raise money for a school custodian, landed a partnership with a kiln company and more.
Despite her vast digital footprint, Mundy said she’s careful to maintain boundaries between her personal and professional social media personas. She says she doesn’t let students follow her personal Instagram account. But she does let them follow her professional accounts on TikTok (@sajonesceramic) and Instagram (@sajceramic), because it’s a way to model how working artists use their platforms.
“Before I post something, I always think: Would it be OK if my student saw this? Would it be OK if their parents saw it? Would it be OK if my superintendent saw it?” she said. “I have to go through all these checks and balances in my brain to make sure that the content is appropriate and affirming and positive.”
Those platforms, like her recent TV appearance, are also another avenue for her to preach about the importance of arts education — particularly at a time when many arts programs are at risk due to funding cuts or other factors.
“There are a lot of students who really struggle in the more academic settings, and they just need a space to be creative and to express themselves,” she said. “Some of them learn what they want to do with their lives through taking art classes and just figuring out what they like.”
