Artist Spotlight: Breanna Bierod
April 20, 2018
Every artist has a start somewhere, and for art teacher Breanna Bierod, that was drawing Sonic the Hedgehog when she was young. Although she didn’t plan on becoming an art teacher, she says she’s grateful she had the chance to.
“The way that I went through the school system, I didn’t think art was going to be for me at all,” Bierod said. “All they did was put me in advanced classes… I literally took maybe two art classes between the beginning of middle school and the end of high school, so I didn’t feel like that was where my education was headed but I wanted to educate myself anyway.”
If Bierod would have stuck with her original plan for college, she would have been a studio art major who painted large paintings that depicted people performing actions, but missing the objects, such as brushing hair without a hairbrush. Developing her own style of art took dedication, since Bierod has been drawing every day since she was 9 years old. She says she got better because she kept thinking “If a person sticks with something, it’s bound to get better eventually.”
Making paintings for commission isn’t a thing she often does, but over break, she had another friend approach her asking for a chicken wearing a ninja mask, putting a pie into an oven while making the “shh” face, which cost $40 for her to compensate for time and materials.
“I wish I could go back and hit myself because in school, I would draw stuff just for fun for people…They didn’t know it, but I’d go home and draw for 3 hours and be like ‘you can have it for free,’” Bierod said. “I should’ve been like ‘five bucks.’”
One of the students she had first semester in fiber arts was senior Spencer Graner. He still comes to Bierod’s class to help clean and just chat with her. He says that he enjoyed her class because of how open she was with them, how she played different music than other teachers and how she taught his class because it was a subject he never had before.
“She’s very forgiving, she’s very fun loving, she’s an awesome teacher,” Graner said.
Graner didn’t know it was her first year of teaching, saying Bierod has an “itch” for art, as she puts it, and says she’s unique compared to other teachers he’s had.
According to Bierod, it wasn’t always easy sticking to art. It was a struggle at times, Bierod even destroyed all her previous works one time, but that was only because she realized she had gotten better. Making art isn’t a competition with herself though. If a piece turned out bad, she just looked up ways to do it better next time. Doing that, she never gave up and says that she just needs to practice more.
Finding her passion, though, wasn’t as easy as practice. She figured if she was going to go to a university, then she should make it worth the thousands of dollars. Since English, Math, or Science wasn’t what she really had a passion for, she picked art to expand her knowledge on the subject.
“You’ll figure it out, but you have to do what you want or you’re not going to figure it out,” Bierod said. “You’re just going to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do for money.”
She found art was something enjoyable to do, something that could guide her through college and eventually place her at SHS.
