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Lysa Harris
Lysa Harris
Born and raised in Columbus Ohio, is a fourth generation artist, earning both her Undergrad and Masters from The Ohio State University. She was Heavily influenced during her early years as an artist by her mentors Roman Johnson and Aminah Lynne Robinson, and as result has been awarded several artistic awards and grant opportunities around the Greater Columbus Area. During her early years teaching elementary visual art Ms. Harris was commissioned by Columbus Children’s Hospital, Fort Hayes and ... read moreThe Strategic Opportunities Group to paint “The various store themed murals in the out-patient dining area. After these murals was unveiled she was commissioned by several Columbus City school administrators to paint Murals in several buildings which are still visible today: Maybury literacy mural, North Linden store fronts, and several murals in the old Columbus Africentric Early College cafeteria. In 1999, she along with 5 other artist’s won the honor to paint “The Millennium Murals”, and she was a finalist in the Connections art show which featured all Columbus City Visual Art Educators. In 1996, along with the 15 founding members of the Columbus Africentric school won a $250,000 Annenberg grant ssioned to
Ms. Harris has been a Columbus City Schools/Community Visual Art Educator for over 35 years. During her teaching tenure Ms. Harris has taught students from Pre-K to 12th grades, and has had the privilege to participate in many firsts: In 1983, first African American female recreation leader to teach visual art at Clintonville’s Park of Roses, and Holton Recreation center, In 1987 she was the first African American Elementary Visual art Teacher for Columbus City Schools, and finally in 1996 was one of 15 founding staff members that started the Columbus Africentric School, currently known as Columbus Africentric Early College, where she still teaches to this day.
Ms. Harris’ fundamental belief is that all children are born with the innate, creative, intrinsic artistic abilities, although each child develops these skills at different paces due to different learning styles, they all need one thing which is someone to foster their creative channel, and that’s where she comes in. She teaches her students to take artistic chances, think out of the box, and become versatile thinkers. By doing this her students become individual facilitators in their own learning. Ms. Harris, fosters the belief that a sound arts education program should start with multiple problem solving opportunities infused with a strong application of critical thinking art activities engages students no matter what the age or skill level. She feels by doing so her students demonstrate a higher understanding of the importance of the arts in everyday life, that we are all connected, and fosters the importance of the arts in the evolution of multi-level creative thinking and self-expression.
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