Instructors
Art Farm Founder and Director
Perrin Weston Coman founded Carlsbad Art Farm following a career in journalism and a number of years teaching art to children at public and private schools across San Diego County.
A third-generation Californian, Perrin grew up on a 250-acre pear farm in what is known today as Silicon Valley. She received her fine arts training at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco (now the Academy of Art Institute) and later a B.A. in journalism from Humboldt State University. She worked for a wide variety of daily newspapers and publishing houses, ranging from the Santa Barbara News Press to the New York Times Co., the Los Angeles Times and Random House Publishers.
In 1996, Perrin moved to San Diego County after saying “I do” to her longtime sweetheart, Carlsbad native Chase Coman, a former wildlife biologist. This brought a return to her rural roots. The couple settled on a woodsy, 10-acre parcel long owned by the Coman family, minutes away from everything but seemingly a world away, down a bumpy dirt road and across a wooden bridge.
After the arrival of her daughter Emerson in 1999, Perrin retired from journalism and gradually returned to art and teaching art to children. She has worked variously in local schools, after-school art programs, for private art studios and as an individual instructor. These experiences gave her great exposure to what works – and what doesn’t work – when it comes to teaching art to children and what it takes to help all children enjoy the creative arts.
The result is Carlsbad Art Farm.
The concept is simple: teach children authentic art techniques in outdoor studios in a country setting where they learn to draw and paint from live animal models and from the surrounding natural landscape. Perrin holds that young artists need to start at the same place as adults: with foundation skills, taught at an age-appropriate level. Art Farm classes are small and students work from live models –animals – or from the surrounding landscape. Instructors begin with the building blocks of art instruction, just as students learn to read and write. This approach – rendering and modeling objects from life – is time honored for the simple reason that it works. Also key is learning to use authentic art materials (no washable markers here!) in the correct way. This incorporates everything from proper hand, arm and body posture to how to get a line down on paper just so - it’s harder than you think!
Art Farm isn’t stodgy. Instruction under the guidance of teaching artists is lively and campers areencouraged to take chances and try new ideas and techniques. In this spirit, we also introduce students to less traditional art forms and media: found object sculpture, monoprint, billboard painting, and other forays into grand art adventures.
Art Farm Camp Instructors
Lori Mitchell graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a BA in Illustration. She has illustrated nine children’s books, including the highly acclaimed Different Just Like Me, a featured book on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which she wrote and illustrated.
A native Californian, Lori grew up in Redondo Beach where she was encouraged to be creative by her mom, a fashion designer. When she was a girl, Lori’s mom often set up an art school in the family garage that became a popular gathering ground. “The whole neighborhood would come over. We would have art shows in the backyard.”
Lori brings a wealth of teaching experience to Art Farm. She has taught classes at Miramar Ranch Elementary School, Curie Elementary School, Canyon Crest Academy’s High School Conservatory program and at LINK, a monthly art program for at risk teens. She teaches adult classes in drawing and composition at Palomar College, San Marcos, and in Pen & Ink and mixed media at the Anthaeum in La Jolla. She has also led public mural projects with children and adults. “Most of the murals are to bring people together in a unified effort to create something beautiful for the community,” Lori says.
Lori has a long list of illustration clients, including the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Entrepreneur Magazine, the San Diego Padres, Taylor Made, and Harcourt Publishers. Additionally, since 1990 she has worked as a mosaic artist. Her mosaic work was featured on HGTV’s Crafters Coast-to-Coast. In one particularly ambitious project (and one showcasing her love of teaching) Lori worked with 350 students at Mann Middle School to create a 7-foot by 4-foot mosaic of the world. “The students spoke 25 different languages and it was a nice way to bring them all together,” Lori says.
When Lori isn’t teaching or working, she says she loves to travel and sketch the world.
To learn more about Different Just Like Me, CLICK HERE • To see Lori’s illustrations, CLICK HERE • To see Lori’s mosaics CLICK HERE
Kris Finch is a native of El Cajon, California. While he has always loved to draw, his formal art education began with a few classes at Cuyamaca Community College in 2001. However his passion for drawing and painting – and a clear natural ability – soon led him to immersion studies at The Watts Atelier of the Arts and Studio 2nd Street, both in Encinitas. Both schools stress foundation skills, which is evident in Kris’s accomplished work in oils.
Kris’ work in portraiture shows an acute eye for the small details that make for a sure likeness, a sense of the soul, and the spirit of the sitter. To view his work, CLICK HERE
Art Farm Camp Teaching Assistant
Seren Moran is currently a studio art major with an emphasis in painting at San Diego State University. She grew up in Berkeley.
Seren has experience teaching a variety of art mediums to students in a wide range of ages. Her patience and sincerity compliments her outgoing personality perfectly when working with children. Last summer, she worked with the City of Cerrito as a Mosaic Art Camp counselor with students ages 7 to 15. As a counselor, she helped research and develop weekly projects and directed the camp’s first place performance in the citywide camp competition.
In addition to her art training, Seren has worked in theatre with her older brother, an acting conservatory student at Boston University. Seren's desire to discover and understand the world around her helps her relate with others as well as understand the importance of art and nature and their interconnection. “I use art as an expression of emotion; to understand the importance of creativity and its many varieties of inspiration,” she says.
Seren's family has hosted exchange students since she was fifteen which has given her a genuine appreciation for the differences and similarities between cultures. She plans to study abroad as an art student in Florence next year. She is currently studying Italian.
In addition to her passion for art, Seren has found interest in logic as part of the chess club at San Diego State.
Art Farm Camp Aides
April Mitchell is currently a senior at Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego where the focus is on visual and performing arts. In her sophomore year, the first time she was eligible, she was accepted into the school’s Conservatory program– where they stay after school for 2 hours, 3 days a week – to get instruction from working professional artists. Only a handful of students make it into the visual arts program each term.
For one of the projects, students created a mural that will travel around the world for three years before reaching its ultimate destination in [name of city] Egypt in 2010. There it will be included with 12 continuous miles of murals surrounding the pyramids. The Conservatory mural project was displayed at Art Walk in 2007 at the Little Italy Art Walk.
April has been a Girl Scout since she was a Daisy in kindergarten. She earned her Silver award in Girl Scouts by organizing 72 Daisies and seven volunteer cadets for Daisy day. She planned crafts and snacks for a 5-hour day at the Girl Scout headquarters. She also learned CPR in Girl Scouts.
For the last three summers April has worked with kids and art. The first summer she assisted with the painting of murals at Mann Middle School. The next summer she worked at Gateways summer camp with the clay class and paper sculpture, and last summer she worked at summer art camp at the San Diego Zoo.
She plans to go to the Academy of Art in San Francisco to get her Bachelor’s degree.
“I really enjoy working with kids because of their new and fun perspectives on everything,” April says. “They always notice things that you never even stopped to think about. I think art is one of the best things you could do with kids. “They are always thinking up new ways to create things that we would never think of doing. Also they usually don’t really care what other people think of their art, they are doing it because they love it so they’re artwork turns out more sincere than a lot of art done by adults.”
