Grace Gumina’s love of teaching paired with her love of art is a combination that brings her incredible joy. Webster born and raised, she is a dedicated and passionate entrepreneur, teacher, and artist with a profound love of working with kids and building strong relationships in the classroom. She has loved creating since before she can remember, and pursued it more passionately throughout high school and into college at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Painting, illustration, clay, and writing continue to be her favorites, with inspiration coming mostly from creative portraits, nature, narratives, and messy art.
When Grace left Cleveland, she created her own after-school art program alongside the budding daycare program WonderCare. There, her ideas were embraced by team members and allowed to flourish amongst many amazing elementary students, incorporating a wide variety of disciplines including drawing, painting, clay, writing, acting, filmmaking, history, STEM, and more. Grace is all about infusing lessons with kindness, soft skills, and play. The most important thing to her in a classroom is the sense of safety, support, and compassion needed for an artist to create. With that as the foundation comes everything else – passion, inspiration, courage, enthusiasm, failures and triumphs, challenges and breakthroughs, and that light in a student’s eyes when something just clicks. It doesn’t matter what you love to make or how you make it – it matters that you’re making anything at all. Creating is one of the greatest sources of magic in this world to Grace, and to harness that magic, and to help others harness theirs, is her greatest passion.