Artist in Residence Programs bring professional teaching artists into public school classrooms for 6-12 weeks. Providing quality, standards-based arts education, teaching artists guide students in process driven exploration and skill development in the visual and performing arts. Throughout the residency, students increase their skills, creative thinking, and problem solving techniques while connecting art-making with themes in core curriculum including science, history, and language arts.
Juvenile Justice Arts Education Program serves youth incarcerated, and on probation. Taught by professional teaching artists, students learn different art-making techniques that enable them to constructively and creatively express their personal voice. Youth receive instruction in visual, performing, and literary arts.
The 2023-24 Youth Arts Studio (YAS) Program seeks to promote arts education extracurricular opportunities geared toward all skill levels, and visual, performing, and literary arts forms. Students enrolled in high school may apply.
Enrollment is now open! You may enroll until the day before your first session. Check out the YAS online catalog or complete the application.
Lesson Plans and Video Resources
About POL with Oke Jr: Video +
Meet Lead TA Oke Jr: Lesson Plan | Video +
Recitation Tips with Oke Jr: Video +
Haiku: Lesson Plan +
Outside Looking In: Lesson Plan + | Video +
Ode Poetry: Lesson Plan + | Video +
Limerick: Lesson Plan + | Video +
What's Free?: Lesson Plan + | Video +
Poetry Out Loud is a statewide poet project that culminates in a national recitation contest for high school students. Student participants interpret, memorize, and recite three poems within a competition framework that starts in the classroom. Activities in Yolo County are administered by YoloArts. Each year students compete to represent their county at the state competition in Sacramento.
Contact Education Director, Jenna Harris, to learn more or get involved!
Mark Abildgaard
My experience as a teaching artist began in 1997 with a California Arts Council grant to work in the Esparto Unified School District. I have worked with students in grades K – 12 and I have developed ceramic art projects that are appropriate for each grade level. I have also been able to provide staff development and teacher training for teachers who need assistance in implementing their own ceramic art programs.
Contact:
Email +
(530) 304-7939
Waylon Horner
I'm Waylon Horner, I'm a painter born and raised in Sacramento, CA. I try to create artwork every single day. My hope is to inspire/motivate others to use visual arts to make the world a slightly better place to live.
Contact:
Email +
Instagram @waylonnnn
Melissa Uroff
Melissa Uroff is a California based artist and photographer. She has a long love affair with mixing mediums in both 2-D and 3-D work. Her 2-D work includes alternative, historical and experimental photography processes including cyanotypes, gum printing, polaroid transfers, hand coloring and traditional darkroom techniques. Her 3-D work consists of neon lights, artist created sculpture(s), and found objects which are often built into installations.
Contact:
Email +
916-213-9968
Website +
Instagram @Melissa Uroff
Tiktok @Melissa Uroff
![roxheadshot[97]](https://yoloarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/roxheadshot97-400x400.jpg "roxheadshot[97]")
Katie DelaVaughn
Since 1999, Katie DelaVaughn has worked as a Documentary Photographer and Teaching Artist specializing in creative collaborative community art education promoting student voice and agency through the mediums of photography and poetry. Her and her participants’ collaborative images, installations and multimedia presentations have been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally but most important to Katie is for the works of art to be exhibited directly in the communities in which they were created. She looks forward to continuing to facilitate more accessible art experiences across Yolo County.
Giana Galati
Giana Galati has a background in many art forms but has primarily worked with metal for the past seven years. An apprenticeship under a fellow metalworker led to a continued education at American River and Sacramento City Colleges and evolved into a jewelry line, Vivid Venus as well as constructing metalwork sculptures. An innate passion for tactful forming has led her to share her craft and knowledge.
Contact:
Email +
Instagram @vividvenus
Roxanne Brodeur Young
In the classroom, my goal is to create a fun and safe environment for exploration so students will feel excited and comfortable to tap into and share their creative work. My hope is they become more emotionally connected to art and to their intuition in a deeper way. By the end of our time together, art will become more meaningful and feel more accessible to the students.
Contact:
Email +
Instagram @invisiblepratices_art
Mikaela Watson
Mikaela Watson is an illustrator, cartoonist, and animator, primarily for children’s media, currently creating and residing in Sacramento, California. She has exhibited paintings in both group and solo shows in the Central Valley, and contributed background art for the Emmy-nominated AppleTV+ series Slumberkins, for the Jim Henson Company. She has teaching experience in art and cartooning for K-12, higher ED and community outreach in Woodland Elementary schools, the Crocker Art Museum, and UC Davis. Mikaela is always seeking new ways to share her expertise with cartoons and illustration with the next generations, and to help children and young adults alike discover their own creative voices in a dynamic and ever-changing world.
Instagram @mindofmikaela
Angelo Esquivel
Angelo Esquivel is a dynamic artist hailing from Sacramento. Angelo's creative journey spans captivating realms of illustration, painting, screen printing, mixed media, and awe-inspiring murals. In his artistic infancy, Angelo's lens captured the world through the medium of photography, sowing the seeds of his boundless imagination. Today, he serves as a graphic artist at the Davis Food Co-op, seamlessly weaving his artistic prowess into the fabric of community communication and education. He's one of the driving forces behind the "I See You" program where he joins forces with at-risk populations, creating a haven of positivity and support, where essential resources and assistance flourish. For Angelo, art isn't merely a means of expression; it's a powerful bridge that connects hearts, minds, and communities. He loves art not because it is a tool to express but because it is a tool to connect.
Instagram @_angeloesquivel
Rae Gouirand
Over the past two decades, Rae Gouirand has taught more than 200 creative writing workshops to students of all ages and levels of experience locally, online, and at the college/university level, and has emerged as a leader in community-based education for writers. The author of eight titles of poetry and nonfiction, she currently teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction in the undergraduate creative writing program at UC-Davis and runs the cross-genre online workshop Scribe Lab from her home base in Woodland.
High school students will be exhibiting their art work in downtown Woodland during the First Friday ArtWalk at the Woodland Public Library Leake Community Room, 250 First St. in Woodland, on Friday, May 3, 5:30 – 8 p.m. The student pop-up art show and sale will feature paintings, ceramics, photography and digital media art works made … Continued
At the End of the Day is a group exhibition featuring the artwork of professional artists who also teach in YoloArts’ education programs. The show opens April 5 at YoloArts’ Gallery 625 in Woodland. This group exhibition features the artwork of professional teaching artists who bring their expertise into public school classrooms for the YoloArts … Continued
Woodland, CA— Vanessa Anaya, a 9th grader at Esparto High School in Yolo County took first place in the 2019 countywide Poetry Out Loud competition on February 13 at the Gibson House in Woodland. Anaya will represent Yolo County at the upcoming state finals. The California Poetry Out Loud State Finals will be held March … Continued
High school students will be exhibiting their art work in downtown Woodland during the First Friday ArtWalk at Farmers Insurance, 705 Main St. The Friday, May 4, show will be open to the public 5:30 – 8 p.m. The student pop-up art show and sale will feature paintings, ceramics, photography and digital media art works … Continued
Esparto High School student named county champion, continues to statewide competition March 18 and 19 in Sacramento Woodland, CA— Kendra Luney, a 10th grader at Esparto High School in Yolo County took first place in the 2018 countywide Poetry Out Loud competition on February 13 at the Yolo County Erwin Meier Administration building atrium. Luney … Continued
By Jeff Hudson, Davis Enterprise Pioneer Elementary School student Emily Cotter, look at the new ceramic totems in the school garden Monday afternoon. Students at Pioneer and friends of the late Dorothy Peterson, a veteran teacher who was a great supporter of school gardens, gathered for the dedication of the three ceramic totems in the … Continued
By Jeff Hudson, Davis Enterprise Family and friends gathered on Thursday afternoon for the dedication of the Dorothy Peterson Memorial Garden at Pioneer Elementary. Peterson — a retired teacher and passionate booster of school gardens, school recycling and farm-to-school programs — passed away in April 2016. Sheryl Yamamoto, garden coordinator at Pioneer for the past … Continued
Teaching art to kids in juvenile hall can be bittersweet at times. “I don’t want them to be there,” said Tomas Montoya while sipping a cup of coffee recently, noting his class — coordinated by YoloArts and funded by a California Arts Council grant — is back in session. Montoya, a Sacramento native, was chosen … Continued
YoloArts is calling all Yolo County high school artists for the 31st session of the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA). CSSSA offers a rigorous pre-professional training program in the visual and performing arts of dance,music and theater, creative writing, animation, and film for talented artists of high school age. Each summer only … Continued