On the Record with: McHenry art teacher Tina Wagner talks public art project

McHENRY – Tina Wagner didn’t know what she was getting into when she decided to take on her first public art project.

“It was awesome,” she said. “When we were painting this, people would come by clapping and driving the car. They brought us food. They brought us water. They were so elated. That was the reward.”

The McHenry art teacher is responsible for three public art projects, including an art garden at Valley View Elementary School completed in 2005; murals on the underpass near the intersection of Bay, Pleasant Hill and Terra Cotta roads completed back in 1998; and on the Nunda Township Road District barn, finished earlier this year.

It was this most recent project that got her picked as Artist of the Month by the “I Like Illinois” website, a project thought up by Senate President John Cullerton as a way to promote the state.

Wagner has been an art teacher with McHenry Elementary School District 15 since 1998. Before that, she taught at Stevenson High School and West Oak Middle School in Mundelein.

“They leave here with more than just technique,” she said. “They leave here with imagination.”

Wagner sat down reporter Emily K. Coleman to discuss her art and teaching.

Coleman: Did you always want to teach art?

Wagner: When I was little, I always drew. We had a utility room, and I made a classroom. I would pretend, I would imagine that I was teaching people because it was like natural to me. I would have people ask me, “How did you do that?” And I would show them how step by step.

I didn’t enjoy TV and movies. I liked to imagine all the time. I lived on a farm, too, so I could go up in the hayloft. I could go out by the creek. I would collect things and build things. I have to laugh because my mother, my parents did not appreciate some of the things I built.

Coleman: What were some of the things you built?

Wagner: We were next to a gravel pit that they used as a dump. I collected like a broken clock, a bicycle wheel. I made a junk sculpture, and I thought it was really cool. I was very fortunate that my parents were very accommodating.

Coleman: Do you have a favorite assignment you do with your elementary school kids?

Wagner: Not really. Drawing stimulates the creative process, so if I was to answer that, you need to draw to develop ideas. A medium would be drawing to start branching out into other avenues.

I teach them how to draw from kindergarten all the way going up. Now the fifth-graders, they’re having a hard time doing Picasso because I’ve taught them all along – [She breaks off and walks up to the board where she has a face with the features all in the wrong spots]. With the kindergartners, I go, “Do you look like this?” and they’ll all just start laughing.

Coleman: Tell me about your public art projects.

Wagner: The art garden – I have a large amount of students in my class because they’ll feed in. At one juncture, we couldn’t fit, so we started to sit outside. Then I started contacting people in the community, and I got somebody to donate the pavers and somebody to donate their time to put them in. Then I had my fifth-graders, we did a mural on the exterior. We call that the art garden.

The mural of the train – I was driving my sons to high school, and we went underneath the viaduct. It was graffiti-ized. That was in 1998. It was a large undertaking because I had all sorts of people involved with that.

I had to call Union Pacific Railroads, the road commissioner, the police, all the different municipalities, get their permission, and then we had the Boy Scouts of America sitting out there, babysitting it overnight to make sure nobody was going to do anything to it.

The other mural was done with high school students and senior citizens. It ended up being 13 of us coming and going for like three days, and then it took me a month to finish it. Even though it’s very simplistic, it’s so darn huge. It’s 12 foot high and 32 feet long.

The Tina Wagner lowdown

Hometown: Near Lincolnshire.

Lives in: Prairie Grove

Family: She and her husband, Ken, of 38 years, have two sons, Ken of Port Barrington and Ben of Sarasota, Florida. They also have a granddaughter, Vironica, who attends Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake.

What was the most challenging thing you’ve ever drawn? What would you never take on again? I don’t know. I like challenges. I like change. I find change a creative way to expand myself.

What’s your favorite thing to do in the area? Raue Center for the Arts, specifically their concerts.