Throughout the school year, students may find themselves walking through a collection of colorful and creative student artwork in Central’ front entrance.

Behind each of these art pieces, however, is a teacher who motivates that student to learn and inspires him or her to create beautiful things.

Rather than remain on the sidelines, art teachers’ artwork will now be displayed in the lobby for all to see.

Every year, there is an off-campus faculty art show that usually includes all of District 203’s art staff. Searching for more opportunities to share the products of their well-invested time and effort, the art staff at Naperville Central decided to create its own gallery.

Rebecca Mancuso is the fine arts department instructional coordinator and teaches art at Central as well.

“We love what we do,” Mancuso said. “We are all working artists [and] it’s a good opportunity to show off our skills to the rest of our staff as well. […] As an artist, this is part of what you do, you display and exhibit your work.”

This gallery will be broken down into two to three week segments and will run from October to February.  It will allow each teacher individual representation to put their own art on display.

While the staff may teach multiple classes for different forms of art, they are allowed to choose their medium of art to put on display.

“We all have our own different medium of art that we work in,” art teacher Danielle Figueroa said. “I feel like we’re all really driven by making [art]. Not just appreciating art or knowing about it, but actually making it and living it.”

Being the first time the art staff is displaying their own work in school, there are many emotions underlying this project.

“This is the first time we were doing something like this,” Mancuso said. “We were concerned about if it should just be student artwork up there, but I think it truly is a good lesson for our kids to see that we are making art ourselves.”

Junior Alex Guerra thinks that the teacher display is a good idea and opportunity as well. Guerra is an art student at Central and is currently taking AP Studio Art.

“It’s nice to see the final artwork of teachers and students,” Guerra said. “Everyone has their own style of art, and it’s interesting to see things from the teachers’ perspective in comparison to the perspective of the students.”