rita komara

Art Teacher Sculpts Students into Children of God

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 3/29/07)

Wearing an artist’s palette pin and an infectious smile, Rita Komara, art teacher at St. Michael School in Annandale, ushers a group of fifth-graders Monday into her “world” — a spacious room with large windows, flat drawing surfaces and every kind of art imaginable adorning the walls. They sit, eager to begin their lesson.
Komara’s enthusiasm for all things art has caught the attention of her students, and over the past 17 years the subject has found its distinctive niche in the Catholic school’s curriculum.
“Our faith is so entirely connected” to art, Komara said, and her sentiment is affirmed by the quote on the wall from art enthusiast and Sister of Notre Dame Wendy Beckett: “Looking at art is one way of listening to God.”
The students make this connection at the beginning of every class. Before they open their portfolios and begin their work, they first address a prayer to Jesus, the “divine artist,” affirming that He is constantly creating with the materials of their lives.
For her part, Komara also is constantly creating — weaving art into the lives of each student at St. Michael. Because she teaches kindergarten through eighth grade, the energetic teacher finds herself “shifting gears all day.” She engages the kindergarteners through storytelling and imagery; she challenges the older students to study proportions and to create art with plaster.
Komara “uses a variety of techniques with her students,” said Sister, Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Therese Bauer, principal. “The quality of the work produced by the students is amazing.”
Born in her grandmother’s house in Bradys Bend, Pa., and growing up in a steel town, Komara developed her artist’s eye at an early age.
“I think just growing up in this dirty little noisy mill town maybe had something to do with me looking for beautiful things,” Komara said. “I think from my earliest memories I just always looked for beautiful art.”
Although her formal art training wouldn’t begin until she went to high school, Komara decorated paper napkins and continuously copied her mother’s religious prints, which hung on the walls of her childhood home.
When she finally got to Mount Alvernia High School in Pittsburgh, she had “an explosion” of artistic talent, Komara said. Her art teacher, Sister Patrice, became her mentor.
“She worked us incredibly, but I experienced so many things,” Komara said. “She forced us to use so many materials. She forced us into projects that we could never have conceived of doing. We worked so hard, but I learned so much.”
That Komara shares the same teaching philosophy as her former mentor is evident by looking around her classroom and watching her interact with the students. Her fifth-grade class pulls out individual looms and works on a weaving project after Komara demonstrates different design possibilities on a woven Mexican wall hanging. She moves efficiently from one raised hand to the next, showing students how to adjust yarn when needed or simply affirming their good work.
Komara said it was her experiences in high school that “formed my beginning” and propelled her into the art department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she earned degrees in art and art education.
After graduation, Komara married her husband, Thomas, and the couple moved to Long Island, N.Y., and started having their four children. Five years later, in 1982, the family moved to Northern Virginia, where Komara’s oldest child was enrolled in first grade at St. Michael. The school and the parish have been home ever since.
When the school began looking for an art teacher, some friends of Komara’s recommended her to the principal and she began teaching in 1990.
“I was so thrilled to be offered this position because it got me back to art,” she said. “It got me back to my first love.”
Seventeen years later the love affair continues. Once a week, Komara offers an after-school advanced art class, and she has had a hand in rewriting the art curriculum guidelines for the diocese.
Whether they are 6 or 14, Komara works to expose her students to all types of art — to instill in them the same passion for the subject that she has. They continuously develop skills and build on experiences.
“They’re constantly observing, they’re constantly learning,” she said. “It’s invigorating and I think the students feel that.”
Komara stressed the importance of finding art in science, social studies, religion, math — virtually any other subject.
“I really firmly believe that when we’re in a school and we’re studying art, there needs to be integration,” Komara said. “We have art for art’s sake, certainly, but we can use what we learn in the elements of art and associate it with other studies.”
Most importantly, Komara said, the students are first and foremost children of God.
As such “we’re asked to look and experience this world around us through the eyes of our faith and what God calls us to be,” she said. “I think the arts allow us that window.”

Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.