Sarah Isusi
Fine Arts Department Chair

Growing up in Baltimore, I began my early art training at the Baltimore High School for the Arts. Inspired by the strong art education I experienced, and influence of my dedicated teachers, after graduation I continued to pursue art and art education at The Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. After completing two years there, I transferred to The Maryland Institute College of Art where I completed a dual degree, a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Master’s of Art in Teaching. I began my first teaching position at Baltimore City College High School in 1996 and dedicated eight consecutive years building the International Baccalaureate Art and Design and AP art curriculums. With a strong interest in Museum education, I designed numerous partnerships and coordinated outreach programs for her students with local museums and universities. Throughout my career as an art educator, I also continued to paint and develop as an artist. I have had numerous exhibitions throughout the Baltimore Metropolitan area as well as participated in summer residencies such as a five week fellowship at Skidmore College in the summer of 2000. Always interested in learning and a strong advocate of art school and the art community, I went back to graduate school to work on an MFA and received a Master’s of Art in Painting from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in December 2004. I have since been teaching and creating art simultaneously for the past four years at The Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School Center for Performing and Fine Arts where I head the Fine Arts department and teach 2D studio art at both the middle and high school levels. 

My artwork combines oil painting, printmaking and collage techniques. I am interested in “the power of opposites” as an underlying theme that links one piece to another. I create paintings that balance between abstraction and representation, displaying bright busy surfaces at play with obscured as well as recognizable images. The surfaces are built up of a rich and complex repertoire of images, forms and colors. The works are narrative, making connections from historical and cultural sources juxtaposed within a contemporary context.

E-mail: sisusi@palcs.org