Art teacher Nathan Barnes expands opportunities at GHC

In Nathan Barnes’ drawing class at Grays Harbor College, 15 students are circled around a complex tower of cardboard boxes, about 10-feet-tall, with glass bottles and other small items such as pencil sharpeners tucked in the crevices.

Seated on wooden stools with drawing sheets, the students and Barnes, the college’s new art instructor, sketch away in the warmly-lit studio, mostly in silence aside from the soft rock music in the background.

The message near the end of class is to not worry first about the specific shapes and dimensions of the boxes and smaller objects, but instead place them as one larger mass and then work on the details after.

“You might catch yourself digging into the detail too quickly, and then just say, ‘No, step back,’” Barnes tells the students while demonstrating on his drawing of the box tower.

In his classes, Barnes said he tries to emphasize how art skills are portable and useful in other areas of life, such as drawing the pile of boxes and focusing on the big picture first instead of the individual pieces.

“They see boxes, but the first marks should correspond to a grouping of boxes, not an individual,” Barnes said in an interview after class. “Then you divide them into progressively smaller groups.”

Barnes is the lone instructor in the art department and was offered the job after teacher Erik Sandgren retired in the school’s winter quarter of 2018. Having to teach every art class has some pros and cons, but Barnes said he enjoys the freedom of getting to explore other styles of art as he continues to add classes to the college’s options.

“The opportunity for me is I kind of have to experiment wildly, and that’s pretty cool,” said Barnes, who will begin teaching a painting class as well this spring.

He added it would be nice to get a colleague in the department eventually so his isn’t the only opinion about students’ work.

“One voice, especially in a discipline as subjective as art, can be problematic,” said Barnes. “I teach and conduct myself knowing that. I’m careful, and tell my students every course, ‘Hey, I’m the only person in this art department, I wish there was someone else you could ask for a contrary opinion, but there isn’t.’”

Wyatt Clark, a second-year student planning to transfer to a four-year college for art, said Barnes has been varied in his approach, starting the class out with more freeform work such as blind contour drawings before getting into more strict object-based form drawings like the boxes.

“I think the program has been really good, and I’m happy we’ll be getting a painting class this spring, that was my one criticism, so I think the program has definitely improved,” said Clark.

When asked about how his teaching style differs from Sandgren’s, Barnes said he thinks his way is a more technical approach, whereas Sandgren was more about getting work down and then revising after.

Prior to his work at Grays Harbor College, Barnes studied art and has worked in a few different places before moving with his wife to Olympia in 2013.

Barnes’ previous experience is mostly in two dimensional work, studying at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., before getting an undergraduate degree in painting and drawing from the University of Utah. After selling still life paintings in galleries, Barnes said he got tired of it, and went back to get a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in 2D studio art from Idaho State University, where he delved into more experimental work.

In Washington, Barnes has been an instructor at Pierce College in Puyallup, and managed the gallery and was a curator at South Puget Sound Community College. In terms of art facilities, Barnes said he hasn’t really worked in a better school than Grays Harbor when considering its size.

“For the size of the school, on a proportional level per student, it has the best facilities I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Two dedicated studios, well-equipped, we’ve got two large closets to keep our materials, we’re set up. If you’re living in this area and interested in art, Grays Harbor is not a bad option. I’ve seen a lot of schools, and you could make a go of it here if you want to spend time making art.”

The art studios are housed in the first floor of the college’s Schermer Building. The current art classes Barnes teaches are beginner through advanced drawing, printmaking, 2D design, art appreciation and the painting class, which starts in the spring and has a drawing prerequisite. The students range from hardcore art majors planning to pursue it as a career, to others who just want to try out art for fun, and Barnes said he welcomes both.

In the future, Barnes wants to expand the course offerings and said he’d like to teach a Japanese or native Northwest art history class. There’s currently no sculpture or ceramics classes at the college, which is something he’d also like to add.

Now a year into the job, Barnes has connected with some of the local art community, including the Aberdeen Art Center’s Doug Orr, and has put up some exhibitions of his own work in the college’s library to get students familiar with his style.

A big thing for Barnes is his hope to collaborate between art and other departments like science in the college. Already one biology professor has had Barnes help out students with drawing microscopic creatures, and Barnes said he hopes as the art department grows that it can partner with the college and the community.

“I recently learned about a scientist and artist ‘speed dating’ program happening at the Tacoma Art Museum,” Barnes wrote in an email. “My colleagues in the sciences at GHC seem so willing to collaborate. Perhaps we can organize a similar program with the community. Any scientists and artists wanting to work together on a project might share ideas at a ‘speed dating’ night.”

Other ideas are to offer a plein air competition — an outdoor painting event where participants go around the campus finding something they’d like to draw.

To check out Barnes’ work, his website is at nathanbarnesart.com, which currently showcases his “Strangely Familial” portraits, which emphasize his interest in the uncanny and consist of a mix of 2D and 3D objects on the wall.

Even though many colleges around the country are starting to focus more on the sciences and not emphasize the arts as much, Barnes said he feels the college and his colleagues have been supportive of him, and said he would advocate for the arts if there were ever questions about its place.

“What the college has in me is a really strong advocate for the arts. If there’s an art-based question, I will advocate for it all day long. If anyone has a question about art, I can help justify it, justify the necessity of art.”