By Jade Myers/campus editor
Instructor’s works to be in a gallery
Students sit at computers with 3D models displayed on their screens with sketchbooks beside them with designs of action figures and logos. This is TR art associate professor Janae Corrado’s digital art class.
Being a teacher was not always what Corrado had pictured herself doing, she said.
“It’s funny I kind of fell into, and I’ve always really enjoyed the academic environment, she said. “Like, as a high schooler, I refused to skip class.”
It was not until grad school that she got her first taste of what being a teacher was like.
“While in grad school, I started teaching college classes as the instructor of record and I enjoyed it,” Corrado said.
“Prior to moving out this way, I had been teaching in the central Florida area for about eight or nine years.” Corrado said.
Corrado has taught a variety of art classes for drawing, Photoshop, web design, graphic design and painting.
“I bridge those genres together whenever I can,” Corrado said.
Corrado also does art work outside of her teaching job, which includes personal art and freelance design work.
“I still paint regularly,” she said. “I actually have just recently like, within the last couple weeks, found out that I am going to be one of four women showing in a gallery in Dallas in May.”
Corrado likes to stay busy with different projects at her teaching job as well.
TR dean of humanities Scott Robinson has worked with Corrado on some projects, most recently the FabNow event at TR.
“Immediately upon arriving on campus, Janae reached out to our computer science faculty to begin collaborating,” Robinson said. “She and Dr. McMillan, chair of computer science and information technology at TR, are working to establish a Mac-based classroom where coding students can learn alongside digital art students.”
Corrado initially got her bachelor’s in computer animation at the University of Central Florida because of an interest in working in the film and game industry.
“Upon completing my degree and doing more research, as much as I love those industries, I don’t necessarily think that I would have enjoyed the bureaucracy and being a cog in the wheel versus making something of my own,” she said.
In graduate school, Corrado switched gears to traditional art mediums.
“I’d spent all this time working on, you know, computers, which is great. And I loved it as a medium,” she said. “But it lacked this tangible tactile quality, you know. You couldn’t physically, like, move things with your hands.”
Working with art through a computer could also be frustrating if the file was corrupt or anything else went wrong on the technology side of things, she said.
“During grad school, I witnessed her grow into a gifted painter, and she has been so successful in her gallery work,” said long-time friend Shaun Wightman. “I’m constantly seeing that she’s showing her work around the country. It’s really inspiring.”
Whitman was a fellow classmate at UCF and has known Corrado for 19 years.
“Janae was always amazing at drawing,” he said. “Her drawings are so detailed. Her use of line is unparalleled.”
Corrado’s fun personality is something that gets students engaged in her classes, Wightman said.
“She demands a high caliber of work from her students, but it’s always for the betterment of their craft,” he said.
TR student Jose Ortiz is designing a 3D toy product in Corrado’s class and said he enjoys the feedback she gives.
“There are some teachers where you, like, do the work and they just tell you, you know, they just give you the grade. That’s it,” Ortiz said. “She gives you a rubric, and then on the side of it, her own comments.”
Between being a teacher and being an artist, Corrado said she stays busy.
“I am definitely still making art,” she said. “Maybe not as regularly as I would have preferred but regularly enough for me to feel fulfilled.”
