15 November 2006

Longwood alumna named Virginia Art Educator of the Year

Longwood alumna Kathy Barclay (’72) of Mechanicsville was recently selected the Virginia Art Educator of the Year by the Virginia Art Education Association (VAEA).

Barclay, in her 32nd year teaching, mostly in Henrico County, received the award Nov. 4 during the annual VAEA conference in Roanoke. She has been an active VAEA member since 1985.

She won the VAEA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2005, was the VAEA’s Secondary Art Teacher of the Year for 1996-7, and has been the Middle School Art Teacher of the Year for the VAEA’s Central Region and the Henrico County schools. The VAEA newsletter, which she has edited since 1999, has been selected the best in the nation for similar publications among the largest of three categories, based on membership, four times (2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004) by the National Art Education Association. In 1996 she received Henrico County’s highest honor for educators, the Gilman Award, and also was named Henrico’s High School Art Educator of the Year, and she was Highland Springs High School’s Teacher of the Year in 1997.

Barclay retired in 2002 after teaching for 24 years in the Henrico County schools, the last 12 years at Highland Springs High School, and before that in Suffolk and York County for six years. Last year she began teaching part-time at J.R. Tucker High School in Henrico County and working part-time at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) supervising art student-teachers.

She coordinates the annual Art Educator as Artist exhibition sponsored by the VAEA’s Central Region and held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond from late February through early April. She does many types of art, including acrylic paintings and paintings on silk, creating masks from plaster and also burlap, and batik, a form of painting on fabric, and has exhibited at numerous shows. Barclay earned a B.S. in art education at Longwood and a master’s in art education from VCU.