Son of a writer and a dancer, with brothers in music and photography, artist, arts advocate, and art mentor James M. Rees (BFA ’89) found his own art and got a degree in drawing at BYU. He followed that up with an MFA in printmaking from the University of Arizona. His mentorship by BYU art faculty inspired him to provide the same for others, teaching high school art for 30 years and becoming a commissioner of the National Art Education Association. Rees sees art as a way of communicating and connecting as well as a path of inquiry—“a conversation with myself that I share with others,” he says. “Good teaching and good art-making, I think, are just being true to yourself and then trying to be honest with others.”
As a teacher Rees has witnessed how students are struggling. “The echo chamber of social media doesn’t help them define who they are,” he says. “Art helps them make meaning; it reflects what they’re experiencing. They learn what they think and feel, internally and in what’s going on around them. Art helps them learn who they are.”
