Longtime teacher receives arts award

A 35-year veteran art teacher in Northwest Suburban High School District 214 is this year's Friend of the Arts.

Gary Drake, a Hersey educator, was honored this week at the end of District 214's Spring Arts Festival.

Drake is credited with inspiring a generation of art students. In being named this year's Friend, he joins a list of winners, ranging from artist Tom Lynch in 1987 to sculptor Joseph Burlini in 1998.

Drake graduated from Arlington High School in 1969 before returning to teach there in 1973. For the last 29 years, he has been at Hersey.

He encourages his students to apply their arts training to problem solving.

"When a teacher presents an assignment, the student is faced with a blank canvas and he has to convey some sort of plan, make adjustments and then when he's done, go back and evaluate," Drake said. "It's the same formula for creative problem solving, no matter what the medium."

Drake added that the lessons learned with a paint brush or color pencil can be lifelong.

"The high stakes tests these young people face after their school years," Drake said, "won't require the ability to answer multiple choice questions, but to creatively solve problems."

When Drake retires at the end of the school year, his first order of business is to build a playhouse for his granddaughters, he said, but after that, he is facing his own blank canvas.

He was introduced at the arts festival by his former art teacher and mentor at Arlington High School, Fritz Michaels and a Friend of the Arts winner himself in 1997.

District officials chose Drake, they said, as much for his philosophy of teaching as for fanning the creative flame in the community.

"Gary's philosophy serves as a beacon for the arts in an age that is dominated by the pressures of standardized testing," said Liz Shrenk, Drake's colleague, who teaches art at Elk Grove High School.