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2009 YAM Governor's Gallery

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Railroad Tracks

Railroad Tracks


Kianna Fairley

Grade 12
China Spring High School
China Springs ISD
Teacher Rhonda Heckel

Before I moved here in Texas, I struggled in many things. I had trouble getting along with people, getting good grades, and even communicating to people about my problems. Drawing was the only thing I could do to escape from the reality that people pushed on me. I've always loved art since I could first color in a coloring book, but as I got older and started going to school that changed. I started to worry about just making friends and fitting in with the rest of the kids, but that didn't work out so much either. There weren't many other kids who had as strange of an imagination as me, so I got made fun of and harassed everyday.

Around the fifth grade I didn't really have friends, so I would just draw on my free time. I began loving art again and saw it as the only thing I was good at anymore, but whenever it came to school art projects, my teachers didn't seem to think so. My mom would see how fantastic my art was, but my teachers would just tell me it was sloppy and average. My seventh grade art teacher at one point told me that I didn't have any artistic talent and that I drew like a second grader. I thought about that everyday since she told me.

Freshman year, starting school at China Spring, I was nervous about it being just like my life in Reno. I was offered to take art two my freshman year, and even though my mom told me to take the offer for the future, I didn't, because I was afraid of my art teacher being just like my seventh grade art teacher. I didn't really have much self confidence left in me, and I didn't want it to get worse. As I went through the year, the southern hospitality really made me comfortable, and I'd always hear about the fun stuff people did in art classes. So I decided to take art sophomore year. I'm so glad that I made that decision, because my art teacher had so much confidence in me that it made me want to try harder.

This railroad drawing is my statement to everyone that said I wasn't good enough to be an artist, and is for all the people who had confidence in me. I mostly want to thank Mrs. Heckel for my success, because if it wasn't for her, I don't think I would have had the confidence in myself to be an artist.



New Beginnings

New Beginnings


Skylar Bennett

Grade 4
Boone Elementary
Alief ISD
Teacher Victoria Kuhn

I drew my picture using a wet chalk drawing method, by dipping a colored chalk into white tempera paint. To me, New Beginnings represents starting over and new possibilities. In my picture, a duck rises in the morning to take its first swim, and I rise each day to start over and do better.



A Glimpse of Lake Travis

A Glimpse of Lake Travis


Marianna Liz

Grade 6
Collins Intermediate
Conroe ISD
Teacher Janet Melton

The purpose of my art was to create a realistic Texas landscape from a personal photo. I used acrylic paint and a canvas using various size brushes and a toothbrush for texturing. Various values of color were used to represent the true color of the landscape and contrast of lights and darks creating dramatic shadows and light reflection. Proportion was important in my composition to show distance between the far away rocky shoreline in the background compared to the heavily wooded foreground.

I removed several existing elements from my photo to make my composition have more open spaces in the mid-ground. Texture was used to help create interest by representing the various details of the rocky shore, winding dirt road, trees, grass, and Lake Travis.

I would like to thank my teacher, family, and friends for supporting me throughout this incredible experience. I also thank TAEA for giving me this amazing opportunity.