What's Happening in Cougar Country

This is the first in a series introducing new members of the Lake Catholic community.

Carolina Kane has always wanted to be an art teacher, just like her mom, except for those rebellious teenage years, when no teenager wants anything to do with his/her parents.

“I rebelled when I was a teenager, but other than that, this is what I’ve always wanted to do,” said Lake Catholic’s first-year art teacher.

Although this is Ms. Kane’s first year in a full-time high school classroom setting, she’s been around the art world for almost her entire life.

“I’ve been going to the Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition and the Lake/Geauga Art Show since I was five years old,” she said. “I would go with my mom all over to different shows. So I’ve been around the art world for a long time.”

Her mom, Mrs. Michelle Kane, has been teaching art classes at Mentor High School for more than 30 years and has numerous awards, most recently the 2023 Cleveland Institute of Art Excellence in Teaching Award.

Lake Catholic’s Ms. Kane has her own impressive resume.

She’s been a photographer for Cleveland Magazine since the summer of 2017 and John Carroll University since the summer of 2018. She also started her own photography business – Carolina Kane Photography - in 2017.

Once she got her degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2019, Ms. Kane was hired for a full-time marketing position at John Carroll in the Center for Service-Learning and Social Action. 

In November of 2020, she left John Carroll to work as an assistant director at District Gallery, an art gallery in Shaker Heights. Soon after, the director left to pursue her own art career, and Ms. Kane stepped into the director role, where she learned the business side of the art world.

“I had to learn Quickbooks pretty quickly,” she said. “I knew almost nothing about that side of things, but I’ve learned a lot since then.”

While serving as the director of the gallery, she doubled the square footage and wall space of it.

But still she wanted more.

“I’ve lived off my artwork. I’ve been the gallery director of a studio. But the passion to share with others is what I was really missing,” she said.

So in February of this year, Ms. Kane took her Art content exam and began Ohio's Intensive Pedagogical Training Institute (IPTI) through Ohio State University – an intense 16-week program that’s essentially an expediated path for working and experienced professionals to become a certified teacher. She did her field work from mid-March through May in the Mentor Schools.

“I love the challenge high school art education and students present” she said. “I want to connect with them through their artwork – whether it’s incorporating food, shoes, sports. Whatever works. I want them to play to their passions. I want them to be vulnerable and eventually make them passionate about art.”

In her first year at Lake Catholic, Ms. Kane is teaching Art Foundations, Drawing, and Digital Photography and Design.

“I’ve learned in a really short time that the students really do care about what they’re doing,” she said. “They’re coming in whenever they have study hall or even lunch and working on their projects. In just a few short weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of kids evolving already.”

It’s not even been a month since the school year started, and since Ms. Kane’s high school teaching career began, but she’s ready to challenge her classes and move them quickly forward.

"Mrs. Wolf and I make a great team as Lake Catholic's art department,” she said. “I know that I can't do everything yet in my first year, as I have much to learn about Lake Catholic and our students still. But these students, this department, and this school has a ton of potential for incredible collabs, projects, and greatness. I am so excited for what lies ahead."

Quick Hits

Family: Mom, Dad and brother, Camden. Mom is an art teacher. Dad is an accountant. Camden is a senior at Hiram majoring in business and accounting.
Pets: Two cats – Ronald and Mouse
Hobbies: Softball – plays in Mentor Coed Rec League. “I played in six games over Labor Day weekend!”

Music – “I love all types of music.” She likes Taylor Swift, The Bleachers, Lord Huron, just to name a few. “I like what (German philosopher Arthur) Schopenhauer said about music … ‘Music is different from all other artforms because it alone is an expression of itself rather than something else. Notes and melodies, unlike phrases and colors, do not try to represent anything but can instead be appreciated simply for what they are.’”

Movies – “Movies are another form of art I really appreciate. I love to examine set design and pick-a-part complex storylines in movies, but the last movie I saw was Barbie at the drive-in. Ha ha.”

Airplane Restoration - Wait. What? Airplane restoration? Yep. In her free time, Ms. Kane is part of the team at Vintage Wings Inc. (out of Franklin, PA) that restores World War II aircrafts.