Inside the Head, and the Heart, of Art Teacher Sarah Daughn

The first thing you notice when entering Sarah Daughn’s studio classroom is all the heads. They’re drawn in charcoal on paper and affixed to the walls, as the faces and expressions of students look out at you from years past. They’re on the counter too, sculptured in clay and less familiar, because rather than showing students’ faces, those heads reveal the students’ interests. “I’ll tell you about this one,” Ms. Daughn says, picking up one of the bodies that has sprouted a head in the shape of a house. “He has a laser measure, and he went to his home and measured everything out and built this to scale. It took him so much time, and I said, ‘You’re not going to be able to finish this!’ But he wanted to, and he did. It was very personal, and that, to me, is what you do as an artist. You really explore through your interests and your loves and find ways to express them.”

There are many interests and loves expressed in the clay sculptures, and Ms. Daughn, a Wheeler Middle School teacher of art, knows the story – and the student – behind each of them. She also knows that knowing students, like making art, takes both time and trust. “Each year when we make these sculptures, I want the kids to see that no matter what they put as a head, if they have the right scale, it will work. They don’t believe me when I first tell them that, but I encourage them to go forward, and when they build it, they see – it works. That’s the surprise.

“This is a girl who loves shopping,” she says, pointing to another piece. Another figure features a head in the shape of a large emerald, which is that student’s birthstone, Ms. Daughn explains. “And look at this wonderful guitar,” she says, gesturing towards a bright red guitar atop a torso wearing a pale blue shirt. “She is one of my advisees, and when I showed this to her parents, I asked them if she has this guitar at home. They looked at me and said, ‘No, she played the violin, and she hated it!’ And I said, ‘Well, she loves this guitar.’ It turned out that [Middle School Music Teacher] Nick Toscano [P’34, P’36] has her playing the guitar in class.” [Yet another surprise.] Each one of these sculptures really does have a lot of meaning.”

After helping her students express meaning through their art at Wheeler for 48 years, Ms. Daughn will retire this June. “In the true spirit of Mary C. Wheeler, Sarah has taught many generations of students what it means to be an artist, specifically, and more generally, how a woman in this culture develops a strong voice and is heard,” reflects Visual Arts Department Head Bob Martin P’05, P’10. “This latter lesson hit home to me after being at Wheeler for about five years, when my daughter, Hannah [’05], came home after her first day with Sarah in Middle School Art. She sat at the dinner table and extolled my family with all things Sarah: from her passion for art and teaching, to the confident manner with which she expressed herself, and down to the fancy cut of Courrèges-style boots she wore. I thank Sarah for providing such a powerful role model for my two daughters and the legions of young women who have passed through her classroom doors these many years.”

As her students over the decades have walked through her classroom doors, Ms. Daughn says she has been careful to follow their lead.  “I learned that you can tell from a kid’s vibe when they want you to leave them alone, and I do. I don’t interfere with that. I always feel that the only way I can teach is if they come to me.”

And how does that happen? “The kids watch what you do with everybody, and being fair is really important,” Ms. Daughn says. “You uphold their ideals, and you praise them when they deserve it. But the most important thing is to be there, and to listen.”

Sometimes, that listening happens when her students don’t even know it. During class, Ms. Daughn will keep an eye on their work, and an ear on their conversations, while she’s seated at her desk and facing away from them, but every so often she’ll look at the class in a mirror that’s just off to the side. She is always looking around, and she encourages her students to do the same.

“I like to surprise them in their own ability and how they see the world around them,” she says. “One of my favorite reactions from them is in the dark room, when the chemicals start bringing up the pictures – it’s like magic. Or when they’re working in clay, that, to me, is totally expressive. These sculptures,” she says pointing to the anthropomorphic heads, “are their own imagination, but there’s so much skill involved in making them with their hands.

“Learning should be a surprise, and a joy,” she continues, “but it’s not always. Skills are hard.”

When Ms. Daughn, a RISD-trained painter, arrived at Wheeler in the 1970s, she was teaching students in Lower School who were just beginning to develop their artistic skills. She enjoyed it, but as she told then Head of School Bill Prescott when he asked her if she wanted to remain in Lower School, “It was really hard when the kids were just reaching the ability of abstraction to not get the feedback that I wanted about how they were being taught, and he totally understood. So he asked me to continue that curriculum extension and work in the Middle School.”

She’s been in the Wheeler Middle School art studio for the last four decades, and “I love it,” she says. “It’s such an interesting age. I get to help kids really start to think for themselves, and to know themselves.”

That’s what the charcoal drawings and clay sculptures are all about. But when it comes to knowing herself, what head would Ms. Daughn put on hers? “I’ve done it!” she quickly responds. “I have cats, and I love cats and I love birds, so they were on my first sculpture. I had a bird’s nest with Carolina wrens in it, and I had my cat reaching out to them. My second figure, again, were my cats, but this time they were chasing mice that were running all over in a pile in the head. It was as much experiential as it was cerebral.”

As she imagines this fall, which will be her first in nearly 50 years that won’t be at Wheeler, Ms. Daughn is looking forward to spending time with her cats and her husband, and creating mixed media pieces and painting in her home studio. There will be plenty to do, but “It’s going to be hard,” she recognizes. “You would think over the time I’ve been at Wheeler, that things would have changed, and they have, especially the idea that pushing a button would help you learn. But you can’t compartmentalize my experience here into sort of different generations, because everything seems to repeat itself. I was working with old ‘LIFE’ magazines for my collage work, and as you look through the pictures, many more than 40 years old, you can see that we’re going through all the same things we did before, but with new technology. I can’t help but feel like that shouldn’t be the case.” That’s why curiosity, she adds, is so important. It helps you look more closely at the world, and yourself. A bit of clay is helpful to have, too.