30 Jul 2024 Artist of the Month: Crystal Moore

By KD Reep

The best thing about teaching art to children is when Crystal Moore demonstrates a new medium and their faces light up.

“Oh, students think I am magical,” Moore said. “They think what they just learned is all rainbows and glitter and magic. They think it’s the coolest thing ever.”

An art teacher at Eastside Elementary School in Greenbrier, she instructs students from kindergarten through fifth grade in everything from cutting with scissors and coloring with crayons to sketching and watercolor painting. As an artist herself, she enjoys seeing how children develop their talents.

Originally from Nebraska, Moore moved to Arkansas in the early 1980s, then earned her bachelor’s degree in teaching at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and her master’s degree in education at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. She said her father was a crafty and artistic man, and she loved to watch him “create something out of nothing.”

“He never had an art lesson in his life, but he would draw and paint and carve and sculpt and work leather,” Moore explained. “He was a pretty talented man, and watching him create was something just really cool and magical. I think that’s where I got the inclination to create art, which, historically, most kids get from their fathers. My family members all have creative abilities, but we were more of an athletic family than an artistic one. If you had asked me what I wanted to be, it would have been a coach.

Moore played basketball at Arkansas State University, later coaching her daughter’s peewee basketball team. After graduating from college, she said she had the best of both worlds: coaching during the summers while teaching art during the rest of the year. “I’ve always wanted to help children, and initially, that was through athletics. Now, I focus on helping children through art.” 

One of the ways Moore accomplishes this is by entering her students’ art in the Daffodil Daze Art Contest sponsored by First Security Bank, Conway Regional Health System, The Daffodil Daze Committee and 501 LIFE Magazine. 

The contest is open to all Faulkner County kindergarten through 12th-grade students, and entries must be on 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper in any art medium, including photos. The subject can be any variety of daffodil flowers, and can be still life, landscape or narrative in nature.

“I think we began entering this contest after I received an email from my principal about it,” Moore said. “Flowers are remarkably simple subject matter for kids because they’re all different. They all have the basic shapes and elements to them, and I love teaching flowers and colors. It was a contest my students could enter, so I decided we would do so and see what happened. We placed maybe second and third place the first year, but we had a first-place winner this year.” Moore’s student, Madeleine Hancock, won first place in the K-fourth-grade category. 

As a teacher with a 20-year tenure in the Greenbrier School District, Moore’s goals for her students include providing positive experiences so they can express themselves effectively.

“I want them to have a positive experience when they come into my classroom, and I want them to try to experience new media,” she said. “Whether it is watercolors or pastels, charcoal, paper—it depends on grade level. For instance, a lot of the smaller students need more fine motor skills, so we might do more paper cutting and gluing. I try to meet them where they are and develop their skills from there. I’ll do one lesson with everyone just to kind of gauge where we all are, and how we can go from there.”

She said another way her students know what they create in art matters is by attention from the school’s administrators, staff and parents.

“Anytime other adults see our kids’ art and comment on it or brag about it, it makes a difference,” Moore said. “There is so much time and effort that goes into coordinating their art, hanging it, and when the students hear, ‘Oh, I can’t wait for art day!’ or how much the other people at school enjoy their work, they understand the importance of art.”

Moore’s dedication to art education earned her Art Teacher of the Year in the Greenbrier School District this year. “I was shocked, but I do put a lot of heart into my work. Whether that’s in the classroom or working on parade floats or displays or whatever the school needs, I do what I can.”