A Modern-Day Renaissance Artist
From singing with the chamber choir to volunteering as a web editor with The Corsair student newspaper, sculptor Teresa Raschilla has embraced the many facets of SMC life as only a Renaissance woman can. She’s practiced pliés at the barre and been active in the Phi Theta Kappa honors society. A self-described “dreamer and doer,” the 37-year old mother and Culver City native graduates with dual Associate degrees in Studio Art and Entertainment Marketing. Teresa plans to transfer to UC Irvine, where she’ll complete her artist’s training and pursue a teaching credential en route to her goal of becoming a middle school fine-arts educator. Teresa first came to SMC in 2010 for the yearlong Promo Pathway certificate program. At the time, she was a union-dues-paying set painter working to break into the creative side of the motion picture business. Seven years later, she returned to SMC, convinced she needed a Bachelor’s degree to move up the industry ladder. But then she was swept off her feet in a drawing class. “It really revived me, re-inspired me — made me think about my whole career trajectory differently,” said the scholarship student and award-winning artist, who is also a published poet and social activist.
For the past three years, Teresa has poured her heart into stone carving, ceramics, and largescale kinetic sculpture — like the found-object assemblage she built from her own plastic waste collected over two months. As a future educator, Teresa is intrigued by the therapeutic potential of art. “Middle school was an age when I really struggled,” she said. “The only thing I clung to at the time was arts programs. I would love to provide that to young people who feel they have nothing else.”
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