{"id":62971,"date":"2024-12-12T13:09:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T18:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/?p=62971"},"modified":"2024-12-12T13:09:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T18:09:33","slug":"brian-hester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cws.charlotte.edu\/backup-coaa\/2024\/12\/12\/brian-hester\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Hester"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Brian<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Visual Arts Teacher at Myers Park High School<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education:<\/strong> BCA Degree, UNC Charlotte (1991)
Masters of Art Education, Winthrop University (2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hometown: <\/strong>Boone, NC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Hester realized by the time he was seven that he had an interest in and talent for the visual arts. He says he quickly picked up concepts such as spatial relations, proportion and depth of field. This natural affinity for art prompted him to doodle a lot, capturing other kids in class, teachers, insects, landscapes around Boone, and the fish he wanted to catch. He even found himself drawing on his math tests, English papers, and science labs, which he says would end up more like a \u201cDeKooning replica\u201d than anything “academic.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school, Brian gravitated toward experimentation. \u201cI fumbled my way through observational drawings and worked at new ways to build interesting compositions,\u201d he says. \u201cThough some things were beyond my scope of translation, I felt as though my foundation was fairly solid. I do remember being wildly open to taking chances when working with different mediums, this alone aided in my discovery and interest in manipulating certain areas of color theory. Those applications that were so conceptually foreign would sit in the back of the brain and percolate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving at UNC Charlotte, Brian thought he would be \u201ca decent sized fish in a BIG pond,\u201d but in his first studio drawing class he quickly realized he did not know as much as he thought he did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was in the ocean \u2013 not a pond \u2013 and I was going to be shark bait. My freshman year was humbling to say the least, trying to balance being a competitive swimmer athlete and aspiring art student. Eventually, I found my footing and bonded with some fantastic professors who lifted me up and helped me navigate some turbulent waters over my four years. They paid it forward, and I am grateful for their interest in me. Now after 30 years as a public high school visual arts teacher, I hope I have done the same.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty in the art department demanded a superior work ethic, he says.  \u201cThere was a lot of tough love, and most of my professors didn’t bend when it came to attendance but most let you know when they noticed your game was elevated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian was also a celebrated member of the swim team and was named \u201cSwimmer of the Year\u201d and awarded a swim team letter jacket his senior year. \u201cWe were truly a tight knit group and very talented in the classroom and in the pool,\u201d he says of his teammates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty helped him balance the demands of swimming and art, Brian says, and he found a particular soul mate in Professor Eric Anderson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter the fifth time of running into his Intermediate Painting class late with wet hair, he asked \u2018why are you late and why is your hair always wet?\u2019 I responded with, \u2018I’m coming straight from swim practice, sir.\u2019 He looked at me and laughed, \u2018Huh, you’re following in my footsteps. I don’t know many competitive swimmers with a passion for painting.\u2019 He explained that he swam at the University of Miami Ohio, and was a four year Letterman.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian says that he and Anderson immediately bonded. \u201cI still emulate some of his techniques in my own work and when I’m delivering demos and the visual arts gospel to my students.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian launched his teaching career in 1993 at Independence High School, where he taught a young artist who would become a fellow UNC Charlotte alumnus, John Hairston<\/a> \u201903. In 2019, the two of them collaborated on a  52′ x 20′ mural. \u201cHe is a brilliant mind with an unapologetic fever for pushing and recreating the wheel,\u201d Brian says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more than three decades in the classroom, he will retire soon from Myers Park High School, but his career as a painter is in full swing, as is a newfound career as a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 2015 I wrote a story inspired from a fly fishing club I started at Myers Park High School. That turned into a movie script and was shopped around until 2017. I solicited my cousin, Barbara Beam to help me put the story into a screenplay format. In 2019 I begged Barbara to hop back in and help me co-author the novel to the movie script, and she said yes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"She<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The book, \u201cShe Talks to Fish,\u201d was released through Amazon in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HIs advice for current students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPut your phone down and walk away. Grab a backpack, a granola bar and thermos of water and start walking into some woods. Go climb a mountain. Take a hike. Go sketch in your sketchbook outside. Write a letter to a friend and tell them everything. Go lift weights, train for some type of sporting event. Take up fly fishing. Read a book. Hell for that matter, read my novel. Do something you don’t ever normally do. Sing a song you don’t know all the words to, out loud in a public place and see what happens. Get out of your routine. Go be uncomfortable. Learn to laugh at yourself. Get back to finding humor in life and how we as humans exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See Brian\u2019s work at www.hookedflyco.com.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"rainbow<\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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