Eno Mkpong-Madu
What was your favorite movie as a child?
“As a teenager ‘Karate Kid’ … the actor was so cute. I was sure I was going to marry him. He was so cute. The good thing was actually seeing how somebody who was being raised in a single mother’s house, the impact of a mentor. The impact of an adult who takes an interest in a person, how that can change a teenager’s whole trajectory, and that really, Mr. Miyagi made an impact on me more than anything … sometimes it takes an outside adult, not always a parent, to be able to help somebody see their potential.”
What is your favorite piece of artwork?
“Music.”
“If I’m working out, if I’m dancing it’s gonna be Beyonce, it’s gonna be something pop, something like that. If I’m being intuitive, it’s gonna be something spiritual, I’m gonna go to my K-LOVE and put me in a spiritual mindset. If I’m sad, it’s gonna be good ole country … if I’m thinking romantic .. It’s gonna Luther Vandross. Luther Vandross takes me to a beautiful place, I love his voice.”
What does music mean to you?
“Music is a mood enhancer. Music helps quiet my brain, and helps the emotional part of me settle in. It just helps enhance the mood and sometimes it actually helps change my mood.”
If you were a color, what would you be and why?
“I would be blue. Because blue is beautiful, it has so many different shades and depending on what shade of blue it is… emotions are beautiful to me. The sky can be blue and it can be absolutely beautiful. But blue can also be a sadness and a calmness.”
What is your favorite thing about teaching?
“When the lightbulb comes on. Getting my kids to see something different that they’ve always seen … I love my students being able to understand their body and their mind and their purpose. When they get it, you can’t pay me enough for that. There’s no greater feeling than opening up the mind of my students to possibilities that they could have never imagined.”
Wayne Mullins (AP Physics C Mechanics, AB Calculus, AP Physics II w/ Calculus, Physics)
What was your favorite movie as a child?
“The ‘Wizard of Oz.’ I love the three values emphasized there. Courage, intelligence and the heart.”
What does it remind you of?
“When I was in the navy, and I was away from Memphis, ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.’ And I don’t think I appreciated that until I left home … I still like the movie to begin with because it was a journey of people seeking some great things to improve their own lives and I think it’s funny in the end they had them all looking outside for something that they already had inside.”
What is your favorite piece of artwork?
“I like Van Gogh. All Van Gogh stuff. ‘Starry Night’ was a big song when I was in high school by Don McLean. Most people know him by ‘American Pie.’ Vincent was the name of the song and ‘Starry Night’ was a picture in there. When I first started teaching here in the ‘80s my wife got me a picture of ‘[The] Persistence of Memory’ … I said I want that because I want to put that in my classroom … Salvador Dali actually created that painting after he learned about relativity and time dilation. It’s actually based on a physics principle, Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
If you were a color, what would you be?
“I really like green and I like green because there’s a lot of living things, healthy plants are green and I’m part gardener at heart.”
Traci Peterson (AP Art History, Pre-AP Visual Art, Visual Art II)
What was your favorite movie as a child?
“I was a huge fan of Audrey Hepburn, so it would have been anything with Audrey Hepburn. Maybe ‘Roman Holiday’ or ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’.”
What do these movies remind you of?
“Youth, and ideal imagery of what your life looks like in the future. You know happiness, those kinds of things … it’s just that she’s beautiful and you admire her.”
What is your favorite piece of artwork?
“I can give you an artist whose work I’ve been into lately… Leonore Harrington … She was English. She was involved in a relationship with Max Ernst who was another surrealist painter — she was much younger, they got separated in World War II when she thought that he had been sent to a prison and she ended up immigrating to Mexico and becoming a Mexican citizen and remaining a painter for her entire life. I think one of the reasons I’m super interested in her right now is that she’s not really that well known, and she should be well known. And she’s not well known because she’s a woman.”
Name some of her art that you like.
“Attributes of art that I like, let’s say by her, I like surrealism because I like the dreamy aspect of it. I like the juxtapositions of real vs. unreal, natural vs. supernatural put together … I also like most modern movements because I like how they were … breaking the rules and changing things up.”
If you were a color, what would you be and why?
“I would be aquamarine because I love that color, and if you look around my classroom you’ll see that there are tons of things sort of in that color palette. That color just gives me visual sense of peace.”
What is your favorite thing about teaching?
“I get to talk about art and art history all day, everyday.”
