Rachel Funk teaching while in BAC director role

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From beginner pencil drawing classes, to stained glass making, to the annual Festival of Trees, the Brookings Arts Council has provided many local creatives an outlet for decades. This includes Rachel Funk, the executive director at the BAC.

Last June, the position was taken on for the interim by Funk, who had been active with the arts council since her college student days. Funk’s leadership role became official on Dec. 1. With that role has come a lot of appreciation for the active art community in Brookings.

Outlet for creativity

Funk grew up in Kansas and attended college there for two years, pursuing a degree in photography before switching to an art education degree. Funk ended up transferring to South Dakota State University to finish her degree in Brookings.

“I was in the art education program for a few years, and I was about halfway through that when I realized I really love teaching… but the public school system really wasn’t meshing with the way I wanted to teach,” said Funk.

She eventually fell in love with the ceramic art, and switched her major and graduated with a ceramics degree from SDSU in May 2020. Although art education wasn’t her final degree choice in college, Funk does find a lot of joy in teaching small art classes at the BAC.

“Having the background in art education I think has been really helpful.” She has continued teaching ceramic art classes alongside handling the other tasks of the executive director. “It’s probably more than I should be doing, but I really like the teaching part. So, I make it work!”

“While I was in college at SDSU, I got a job as a gallery assistant at the arts council. And before that, I was involved in their life drawing group.” She served as a gallery assistant for about a year, and then began teaching classes there in March 2020. She taught for two years at the BAC before former BAC director, Ashley Ragsdale, passed the torch to Funk.

“(Ragsdale) and I were good friends,” said Funk. “I’d been seeing what she’d been doing for years.” Serving in the role as the interim director was helpful in preparing Funk for the full position. “It’s not much different than what I’d already been doing. I really enjoy it though,” said Funk. She said Ragsdale is a hard act to follow, saying that Ragsdale was very involved during her time directing the BAC.

“I knew she served on boards, but she served on a lot of boards,” emphasized Funk, noting that she uses the role in different ways than her predecessor. “I don’t do nearly as much of that, but she wasn’t also teaching… instead of focusing so much on that, I’m doing more teaching.”

Funk is currently the only one teaching ceramic classes at the BAC. She said, “If I’m not doing them, then they’re not happening.”

Funk also credits Ragsdale with starting the amount of diverse classes that the BAC offers. “When I was a gallery assistant there, there was really only one class… and it was kind of expensive and in the middle of the day. So it really wasn’t accessible for a lot of people,” said Funk, adding that when Ragsdale became director she quickly decided that the BAC should make the most out of their classroom space.

“That’s been fun to see the very quick ramp up in the last three or four years, from one class to two or three a week.” Funk said coming up with new classes is a fun part of the job, and has allowed the BAC to collaborate with other local businesses, such as breweries for Paint and Sip events. 

Accessible art

Recently, one may have noticed that the BAC has been providing classes involving mediums and projects that are a little more diverse than your average painting or drawing course.
“We’ve been doing a bunch of different classes,” said Funk. “We had a stained glass class that was super popular!” If you missed out on that class, the BAC is hosting a stained glass sun catcher class on Feb. 27-28.

The BAC ordered new pottery wheels in May 2020 to use for Funk’s classes when she began teaching there. Unfortunately, the delivery of the wheels was impacted by shortages that were experienced nationwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The wheels didn’t arrive until December 2021. But once they did, Funk’s pottery classes became more accessible than ever.

“It was worth it! And we can only have four people at a time take a class, so they’re pretty popular,” said Funk. She added that the small class size allows for her to focus on helping young or more inexperienced artists, as well as get to know her student better than she would in a large class.

Planning classes has been one of the most fun parts of the job outside of teaching for Funk, as it gives plenty of chances to meet new artists and get inspired for the next lesson. For example, offering a class on henna tattooing may be a future class. Henna is a plant-based dye that may contain essential oils, sugar, lemon juice, or other additives based on allergies. It can come in different colors and is traditionally used for celebrations, such as Hindu weddings, and is applied to the hands and feet. But many people use it as a non-permanent tattoo, since the design only lasts up to two weeks with proper care.

The BAC’s gallery space provides access in another way, offering a public place for area artists to showcase their work in a professional manner.

“Our call for photography just closed and the show is up now until February 19. We had people from the Sioux Falls area, I think we had some college students submit work to that one,” said Funk. She added that during their fine art exhibition last August brought in budding artists and college students.

Her connections to SDSU have helped keep new artists informed about their gallery shows as well.

“Having graduated from SDSU and still having friends that are instructors there, it’s great to be able to email or text them and say, ‘You should tell your students about this opportunity,’ get them to submit some stuff, or offer a class that they might like, and having them talk to their students about it,” said Funk.

Along with providing access to art supplies and classes for all ages with professional artists at reasonable prices, Funk hopes the BAC will be able to better aid those who might benefit from art therapy.

“Going forward, I’m trying to do a lot of outreach with accessibility in mind. We get funding from a couple different sources to give scholarships to anybody,” said Funk. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be children - anybody, adult or child, that could benefit from a mental health art break.”

Funk reaches out to local mental health clinics to provide artistic opportunities to those who may benefit from art therapy in an effort to make those treatments more accessible to patients. “I’ll be talking to more mental health professionals about it. I want to bring that more into the sphere of what we can offer.”

Fulfilled and busy

Like many people who enjoy participating in activities offered by the BAC, Funk has always felt like she belonged at there.

“The Arts Council in general is a very welcoming, open sort of place. It seems like everybody who comes in feels very excited and comfortable for a lot of different reasons,” said Funk, referencing encounters with people who remember when the building was their childhood library. The Brookings Area Arts Council formed in 1969 and took over the former Carnegie Library in 1975 and, according to Funk, many patrons of the BAC remember their favorite section of the library or their favorite spot to read there.

“There are also a lot of people who have told me they were on the very first board, or that one of their very first shows was here.” In fact, many of the people who teach classes at the BAC once had gallery shows there or used to be gallery assistants, like Funk once was. “It’s a very integrated part of the community.”

Funk formed her own ceramics small business prior to taking on the role of BAC director, although that has taken a backseat lately in the name of teaching.

“I don’t have a ton of time to make my own work anymore, but I try to make time. And part of it is doing these classes, making the project beforehand,” said Funk. Creating demo pieces for the classes she teaches have helped serve as a personal creative outlet for her, and she gets to share her project ideas with the people that take her class as well.

 “It was a lot of production, and I was getting burnt out,” she admitted. “I was making a lot of South Dakota mugs!” When she’s not making projects for her classes, Funk puts time into other artistic mediums, like embroidery.

Alongside being a fulfilling and creative job, being bored hasn’t been part of it for Funk. “It’s very fulfilling, more fulfilling than I expected from an administrative job. I didn’t really realize how important not being bored at work was until I took this job. I’ve had a few jobs before that, even when you’re really busy, you can get bored really easy.”

She feels she is making the most out of the role, saying, “I’m always doing something different, and that’s really fun. I’ll be doing grant applications, and then social media, and then I’m building a cardboard fireplace for the Festival of Trees, and then I’m teaching a pottery wheel class that night. It’s just all different kinds of stuff. It’s a lot to juggle, but I really love it. And I have the energy for it all currently!”