BAY RIDGE — Retired teacher and Bay Ridge native Monique Stanton made the move from the classroom to the art studio as she became an emerging wood artist.
Before transitioning to artist, she was an art teacher at P.S. 102 for over 30 years.
“I’ve always been involved in the arts, and since I retired, I decided to put my energies towards creating art of my own and I’ve been really loving it,” she said. “I officially retired in 2019. I continued to work part-time as an F-status art teacher until 2024. I’m also a volunteer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had a staff art show, and I participated in that.”
Stanton’s artwork caught the eye of another artist who was also exhibiting there who encouraged her to put herself out there and create more art and to apply to open call for artists.
The piece displayed at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Photo: John Quaglione
“I’m really enjoying meeting other artists and putting myself out there in a whole new creative circle,” she said. “Not as an educator but now as a creator.”
Stanton created a large-scale work, around 48 inches at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.“It was quite an extraordinary start for me,” she said.
Since then, Stanton has shown her work in Colorado, upstate New York and Long Island.
“The great thing about it is meeting people, speaking to other artists and hearing how they approach their artwork and just establishing myself in a new skin,” she said. “It has really been a pleasure for me.”
Stanton taught kindergarten through fifth grade at P.S. 102 in Bay Ridge. She was also an adjunct teacher at St. John’s University.
Stanton uses wood in its rawest form or re-salvaged wood that has been modified for some sort of functionality.“It really brings together the full scope of the functionality of wood and also its beauty,” she said.
“I love working with the medium that I work with,” she said of wooden artwork. “The medium actually is what I find the most inspiring because I work with pieces of wood that are raw from nature. I also work with pieces of wood that have been modified, that are pieces of furniture, or it could be like a piece of a guitar. I get a lot of my materials from construction and demolition sites.”
The piece displayed at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. Photo: John Quaglione
Stanton’s latest wood artwork, titled “Tapestry,” is on display in “Unmoored/Unbound,” an exhibition presented by the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition at Powerhouse Arts, 322 Third Ave.
“I’ve known about BWAC, so when I submitted into the jury show and I found out that my piece was selected, I was really over the moon, because this has been a long-term organization that I have looked at and been inspired by,” Stanton said. “I’ve been visiting their art exhibits for years, and now here I am, in one.”
“It’s their first in-person show since they had that terrible fire last year,” she added. “Their shows have been virtual since then and this is their first in-person show. To have my piece selected was really quite an honor.”
The piece speaks to the theme and the title of the show.
“What’s in the piece is a lot of different pieces of wood put together in this upward motion, just kind of really connecting to the theme of the exhibit and also in BWAC’s current process that they are to piece themselves together,” Stanton said. “To be onward and upward. It’s quite an unbelievable experience for me.”
The change from being a teacher to an artist has been challenging but gratifying.
“It’s interesting because I’m very well-versed in promoting my students’ art, so there’s a learning curve, because now, I have to learn to promote mine,” she said. “It feels unusual, but it feels good. It’s very exciting that I’m able to take part in a career that I loved so much. I absolutely adored being an art teacher. It’s really exciting that I’m able to keep that creative energy in myself, and I’ve just rechanneled it to something new.”
Over the years, she took a variety of fine arts classes, dabbled in painting, photography, sculpture and printmaking, but Stanton always landed on working with wood.
“I’ve always loved trees,” Stanton said. “From when I was younger, I collected pieces of driftwood and dabbled around with them a little bit. I’ve always been drawn to trees and woodworking of that nature, and I have a lot of pieces.”
Stanton has a studio in the North Fork on Long Island where she does her work and collects the pieces that she’s going to use. The pieces of wood themselves drive the finished products.
“I’ll look at them and I’ll say, ‘Oh, this might look nice together,’ or ‘This might work,’ and I’ll try it,” she explained. “Sometimes the pieces just don’t fit the way I expect them to do, and I say, ‘Okay, this piece was not meant to be.’ So, I need to start my process over, and the shape, the colors, the texture and the directionality of the wood really determines what my process is.”
The exhibition is on view through Aug. 9 at Powerhouse Arts. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
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