Faculty Highlight: Erin Hall '98, Art Faculty

For almost 240 years, Friends School’s educational journey has equally emphasized the mastery of content with the mastery of essential skills required to succeed in the world - skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and empathy - to name a few. Meet some of our outstanding faculty who guide our students through this journey each and every day.

Erin Hall ’98
Art Faculty
At Friends School since 2007

Q. Why did you choose Friends and/or what do you love about teaching at Friends?
A. I chose Friends because as an alumna I felt very inspired while I was here. I loved all of my classes in Upper School - I was a music major and an art major. I wrote a research paper on a book titled “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”  and read Maus and Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege.” I was in an animal rights club and acoustic club. I felt like I was living my full life as a student and I thought it would be a nice place to work where I could be my full authentic self, attempt to live what I believe in, and also fill my life up with art. I felt like Quakers, historically, were good role models and had a lot to teach me.                                                                                                                                                     
Q. What do you love about teaching your subject in particular?
A. I love thinking about the ways that we engage with our social and political worlds through visual images. I love talking about the visual worlds of students and tying that into a history of image-making. I want to help students realize the power they have to make images and tell stories that matter, that humanize us to each other. I also think art making, getting lost in a process, can relieve stress and give an outlet for some of the things that happen in the other parts of their days. Art making, and making in general, can help balance out our daily lives. The mind is activated in different ways when you are concentrating on the thing right in front of you.

Q. How do the Upper School art curriculum and teaching at Friends School prepare students to be successful?
A. The Upper School art curriculum builds visual literacy, allowing students to be critical of the things they see and encounter in the world. Art-making is often jumping into the unknown. It is giving form to things that are formless. It can be scary or intimidating. Coping with that, developing strategies, and being open to the continuing revelation of a piece of art or an artistic practice, is humbling. It also gives them an outlet, a way to bring joy or balance to their lives. The joy of making things, of sharing things with others, or working through an issue, feels pretty good. 

Q. Something fun about you - a motto or hobby, perhaps?
A. I have a secret affinity for reality television. Sometimes I surprise myself with what I’m willing to watch. I think I have watched every season (24?) of "Keeping Up With The Kardashians."