Hickory art teacher inspired by kindness and social justice

“I really love Mr. Rogers,” Isenhour-Stewart said. “And I think that’s because he created for me as a child, an introverted child in a loud world, a safe quiet space that was filled with kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself. That’s what I try really hard, as a teacher, to embody for my students.”

Robbin Isenhour-Stewart, also known as Mrs. IS to her students, has been teaching art at the high school level for roughly 17 years. She graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne University in 2006. She began her career teaching in Rowan County, before taking a job at Alexander Central High School in 2008.

In 2020, Isenhour-Stewart began teaching at St. Stephens High School.

Isenhour-Stewart is originally from Fort Mill, South Carolina. She came to the Hickory area to attend Lenoir-Rhyne University where she met her husband Isaac Stewart, she said. The Stewarts settled in Catawba County in 2008 when Isenhour-Stewart took the job at Alexander Central and her husband was teaching at Hickory Day School.

Isenhour-Stewart, 39, spoke of her artistic inspirations and classroom goals. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I went to Lenoir-Rhyne specifically because I got the Lineberger Fellows scholarship. They also had an art therapy program with Dr. Robert Winter. I thought I wanted to be an art therapist. I thought that would be a really nice job. I got into the psychology classes and was bored out of my mind, but I was 18 and I didn’t know that I just needed a different professor. I was too young to realize that it wasn’t the content. It was the way the content was presented. However, I think I was cognizant enough to realize the difference a good teacher makes.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a teacher. My mom was a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher. I thought maybe I should look at different career routes but then I ended up back at teaching. When I was young, I would set up my stuffed animals and make attendance rosters and take roll. Do all the things that a teacher would do as a little kid because that’s what I saw with my mom.

I was always that kid in class that would be easily overlooked. I never caused problems. I was an A/B student. I was quiet. I was a good kid, but I wasn’t extroverted. I wasn’t the star of the high school musicals. I wasn’t outgoing. I loved playing trombone, but performative art gave me such anxiety, especially solos with concerts. I did dance for years, and I preferred ensemble dance to solo work.

Art was a quiet expression. I found peace in it. That’s what always drew me to it and why I’ve always made art. It’s always been as easy as breathing. I am such an overthinker, but I never overthink my art. I just slap paint on there, and I’m like “It’s going to be fine.” If I have a problem with the composition, then I restart it and rework it.

I love nature. And hiking is something that I find peace and inspiration in. I find inspiration in kindness. If I’m doing a portrait of somebody famous, I usually look for people that are kind. I think my greatest inspiration is Mr. Rogers. He created for me as a child, an introverted child in a loud world, a safe quiet space that was filled with kindness towards others but also kindness towards yourself. I think that’s what I try really hard, as a teacher, to embody for my students. A space and a place where they are kind to one another, but they also learn how to be kind to themselves. That’s hard when you’re 14 through 17 because you see every flaw and not every beautiful facet.

For the “Strong Women” portrait series, I was looking for women that I was inspired by. I love to laugh, and Issa Rae is one of my favorite comedians. I painted her back in 2018, so it was before she really took off. I chose to paint women that inspired me by laughing or by what they saw, what they have to say. As a female artist, Georgia O’Keeffe is one of those for me. Amna Al Haddad, she’s a weightlifter (and a former journalist from the United Arab Emirates). I just thought how cool she is to break some gender stereotypes, especially for her faith.

And then, of course, women who fight for the rights of other women, which Harriet Tubman is huge on that list. Women like Artemisia Gentileschi, she was an artist in the Baroque period. When I was taking my first art history class at LR, we were studying art in the 1500s and I’m like, “Where are all the girls? I haven’t seen a single girl. Everybody we’ve talked about is an old dead white dude.” The class didn’t really get into African or Asian art. It was very European male centric.

And then Artemisia Gentileschi comes across and she is awesome. I found out that after she passed a lot of her works are attributed to her father. It was feminist art historians who went back and did the X-rays and all the technical restoration to see her signature on the paintings. Artemisia Gentileschi is the one that really helped me see the bias in the art world, skewed towards men. I really get hung up on women who help promote other girls. That’s always the girl I want to be. I want to be somebody who helps promote other artists, somebody who helps promote other women, too.

Of course, as you’re researching strong women you come across how this woman isn’t perfect and here’s all the cancel culture with that and I’m like, “Well, no one is perfect.” But what were their strengths and how can we emphasize those? Susan B. Anthony is one where we were looking at, “What did she do for the rights of other women?” Madame Marie Curie and looking into what she did for science. It was a really fun series that I got to do with my daughter Searcy looking at women that inspired her and me at the same time.

Searcy was, I think, 4 and she was in her dinosaur phase. She wanted to be a paleontologist. She was told, “Well, girls don’t do that.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s not true. Girls can literally do anything.” You imagine it, we can do it. We started looking up girls who are brave and we talked about how nobody does anything brave when they’re not afraid, especially if you’re the first. Whether you’re the first woman to be handcuffed and put in jail because you want the right to vote for other women or you’re the first woman to lead other humans to safety and freedom. We started researching that. Their words of wisdom were really important for me, for her and others to hear. Each portrait features a quote from that woman. Words are important, what we call ourselves and what we call our friends matters.

When I see former students using their art. I had a recent student, who I didn’t even think would remember me, message me out of the blue and was like, “I’m a graphic designer now. And here’s some of the work I’m working on.” Like, how cool is that? That’s when I feel like I’m doing my job. I also feel like I’m doing my job well, when a child is able to say something in their art that they need to get off their chest. At the beginning of each class, I have students sketch a quick prompt. I call this exercise “Picture of the Day.” In the front of our sketchbooks, we dedicate 10 pages to the pictures of the day, and we set up charts. They’re all together in the front of the sketchbook so at this time of the year, I can say, “Hey, just for fun, let’s go back and look at what you drew in August.” And then I’m like, “Turn the pages slowly. I want you to look at what you did in September and turn the page slowly and look at what you did in October.” To watch their faces when they realize their own growth artistically is really cool. It’s really powerful to see them recognize that their insecurities on day one weren’t necessary. I honestly feel like if a kid can be successful in an art classroom, they can be successful anywhere, in a job interview, in a high stakes business transaction when they’re older. It’s like 90% of my job is teaching confidence. Confidence to make a mark on a piece of paper and confidence that they can do hard things.