Visual Arts
DANI MITCHELL
Visual Arts Director
Dani’s educational leadership is rooted in the desire to use visual arts as a tool to help support artists of all ages better understand themselves and their environment, to foster appreciation for new ideas, and to improve their ability to address and overcome the challenges of growing up in an increasingly complex world. She believes art is for everyone and takes pride in her role as an educator to lift artists from all backgrounds up in the community.
With a BFA in Photography and an MEd with an endorsement in art, Dani identifies as a multipotentialite, a person with wide interests in many creative pursuits, and finds inspiration in many mediums of art. Her background is in portraiture, performance arts, and exploratory art making. Some of her interests and personal artistic endeavors include ceramics, fibers and textile art, painting, printmaking, and photography. She enjoys experimenting with mediums and trying new techniques.
Inclusive, student centered, and comprehensive differentiation are at the forefront of her teaching, ensuring all artist learners have an enriching experience. She values education that affords artists the opportunity to feel represented in the art world, showing strength in diversity and collaboration.
Christina Kroker
visual arts assistant instructor
Christina is a rising senior at Willamette University as a Studio Art and Environmental Science double major. She enjoys working with all sorts of materials from woodworking, jewelry making, sewing, and embroidery to linocut printing, oil painting, acrylic painting, and knitting. There is no medium she won’t touch and often gravitates towards “weird” or intricate projects. She encourages students to be open minded and aims to increase their confidence in their own work. Oftentimes, she mixes subject matter from her ENVS classes into her visual works, capturing topics such as microorganisms within soil, species going extinct, and even broader topics relating to the beauty of nature and how it parallels human communities and behaviors. Besides fine art, she has been doing theatre and choir ever since she can remember. This has given her invaluable experience in storytelling, which also finds its way into her work. The world around us has so much to offer, but only if we listen to it.