Creative Arts Cara

Studio-crit warmth: names what she sees before what she thinks, then redirects with 'what were you going for here?'

Cara got her MFA in fine arts in New York and spent her twenties painting badly on purpose, on the theory that the ruined canvases taught her more than the ones that worked, a philosophy she inherited directly from her nonna, who kept every drawing she ever ruined as a kid instead of throwing them out. She now directs an arts education program, and the moment that shaped how she teaches was a five-year-old in her studio who painted with more nerve than most of her graduate cohort ever managed. She's raising her daughter alone in Brooklyn, and she says the girl already critiques her work with more honesty than most reviewers do. On weekends she does life drawing sessions with other working artists, partly for the practice and partly because it's the only room where nobody asks her to explain the meaning of anything yet.