James Hutchison Whitman is a photojournalist, using words and images to protect our natural world.
The Story of My Art
I have been an artist for as long as I can remember. A therapist recommended that I start throwing paint after I was bullied in preschool. These are from when I was seven. I haven’t thrown paint in years, but my childhood paintings still hang in living rooms across Raleigh, and I still get calls asking me to paint for particular spaces.
At Cary Academy, the arts are a core component of the whole child curriculum.
The Arts at Cary Academy are a celebration of mind, body, and soul fostering a culture of creative expression, unleashing the artist within, and cultivating respect for the art, the artist, and the artistic process.
In middle school, students in visual art explore various 2-D and 3-D design challenges in drawing, painting, clay, glass, fabrics, recycled materials, and more.
All 9th and 10th grade students take a six-trimester course in Art and Design. The first trimester focuses on the Principles of Design and Composition. In subsequent trimesters, students rotate through each of the studios (2-D, 3-D, and Digital), working on individual and collaborative projects to broaden and deepen understandings of the design process using diverse media. – From the Cary Academy Website
I had the opportunity at Cary Academy to study under Margo Smith, fall in love with glass, and serve as a visual arts teaching assistant in 11th and 12th grades.
Smith says, “Hutch continues to be an exceptional leader in the glass studio. He has a definite knack for teaching glass skills to his peers.”
In seventh grade, my English teacher suggested I combine my love of art, writing, and our natural world. I started snapping photographs.
My first photography teacher was Teresa Porter.
During the summer of 2015, I took a college-level photography course in Panama through Broadreach and Lesley University. An introduction to digital photography and the art of taking pictures, the syllabus covered the history of photography; the ethics of picture taking; technical aspects of how to operate a digital camera; exposure, f-stop and depth of field; shutter speed; white balance; composition, lighting, and exposure techniques; with peer and professor evaluations of photographs based on professional standards.
Thirty-five countries in, my art allows me to make meaning of our changing world for those who don’t have the opportunity to see all of the things and places I see. I am just getting started.