With high-end presentations and the dynamic teaching duo of Mary Drastel and Stacey McAdams, Heartland’s pre-AP Art and Design course for area high school students returns for its second year.

By Kara Dicker

It’s a Tuesday morning in August. Inside the Heartland Art Club, Gino Santa Maria, an esteemed landscape painter and HAC Signature Member, is speaking with high school students about art. His presentation is both biographical and instructional, as well as a bit philosophical. Above all, it’s inspiring.

“It’s not what you do but who you are,” he tells the six members of this summer’s pre-AP Art & Design course. Santa Maria’s presentation, “Art & Identity,” comes at the beginning of the six-week workshop, intended to compel students to perceive themselves as serious artists. He’s divided his slides into three parts: 1. Take care of yourself. 2. Discover your passion. 3. Work for it.

The presentation is crisp, clear, and richly detailed. However, it’s his account of delayed entry into the world of art that punctuates his message. His story recalls being a young man who promised to fulfill his father’s wish to obtain an engineering degree. He earns the degree, all while longing to pursue his true passion. To the students, Santa Maria imparts the advice his father gives him upon finally acknowledging his son was meant to be an artist: “Be the best artist that you can possibly be.”

Pre-AP Art & Design, funded by a grant from the Missouri Arts Council, was created in 2024 by Heartland’s Mary Drastal and Stacey McAdams, both accomplished artists and teachers. They wanted area high school students to have an opportunity to become better prepared for the rigors of the Advanced Placement high school course. Now in their second year, the two continue to teach the workshop as a team, introducing students to new media, offering individualized instruction, and focusing on the many parts of portfolio building. As a culminating project, students create and present a self-portrait that incorporates techniques they learned throughout the course.

“It’s been really fun,” says Asher, a junior at Pattonville High School. “It was really helpful learning different processes to brainstorm and get my ideas together.” She added that the structured format of the course was something she felt she benefited from. Her self-portrait, rendered in red acrylic, depicts multiple images from childhood. “It’s still a work in progress,” she says.

Emma Coen, a junior at St. Louis University majoring in painting and printmaking, visited the final class to share her work in sustained investigation, an in-depth exploration of a theme or idea over time. Her examples depict navigating change from childhood to adulthood, emphasizing the symbolism of a color palette that progresses from gentle, soft tones to stronger ones. As she projects her work onto the screen, the students’ approval is audible. They get it, and they like it. Coen responds by crediting her former high school art teacher for introducing her to the thought mapping process that allowed her to create her work. That teacher was none other than Stacey McAdams.

The pre-AP Art & Design course is part of Heartland Art Club’s commitment to education. The outreach to area high school students includes scholarship opportunities.

“In art, knowledge without practice is a daydream. Practice without knowledge is a nightmare. Practice with knowledge is the key to learning.”

-Gino Santa Maria