By Dana Wokes 

Like many 17 and 18-year-olds, Adam Cantalupo didn’t graduate high school knowing exactly what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. So, he took a little time to test the waters of young adulthood. While friends went off to college, Adam decided, instead, to push the pause button on school, get a job, and try to find a bit more clarity on what his future path should be.

While art was never a major focus in Adam’s early education, the interest was always there. From an early age, he gravitated toward all things creative. He was passionate about music and visual arts, and knew he had some talent, particularly for drawing – a personal favorite. He was also an avid skateboarder – his sport of choice, which is largely rooted in individual expression and arguably an artistic subculture in its own right.

After about a year of self-reflection and working as a cook in a major restaurant chain in the Chicago suburbs where he grew up, Adam decided to give the art thing a go. He enrolled in Waubonsee Community College where he earned an associate degree in digital art.

Still, even with the first half of his undergraduate program under his belt, his vision of an eventual career wasn’t quite as clear as he’d hoped. Something in the art world was still of interest, but he knew working in the graphic design field wasn’t for him.

After taking another break from academics, Adam finally found the direction he was looking for. It came from an unexpected source – his little sister, several years his junior. Growing up with Adam as her artistic older brother, she could see Adam’s future pretty easily – he would make a great art teacher.

Adam was accepted at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC) just six days before the start of the new semester. With little time to spare, he quickly made the over 300-mile move.

It wasn’t always easy. A self-described introvert, far from home, and living off-campus, Adam struggled a bit with feelings of isolation. The untimely death of a close friend made it all the more difficult to keep pushing forward, but Adam refused to fold under the emotional weight, choosing instead to keep his friend top of mind as a source of inspiration.

Adam graduated SIUC with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the fall of 2018. He became a welcomed addition to the Meridian School District faculty the following fall, teaching all grade levels from K-12. Prior to Adam’s arrival, Meridian schools had been without an arts program for over a decade.

The re-introduction of an arts curriculum at Meridian is an invaluable asset to all students, regardless of age, inclination, or skill level. Unlike other more rigid areas of academics like math, science, or history, in which students are taught defined rights and wrongs, the arts allow for more flexibility. Through studying art, students explore creative thinking and problem solving, deepen cultural understanding, discover new tools and means of communication, and become better in tune with themselves.

Adam – “Mr. Cantalupo” as he’s now commonly known – knows that art education is about much more than learning to draw or paint. It’s about seeing the world, and ultimately seeing yourself in new ways. His approach is to teach his students that they don’t have to be “good” at any one thing to be a successful artist; art is more a way of thinking than it is about a polished technique.

“There have been a lot of instances where students just don’t believe in themselves. Maybe they’re trying something new and they just don’t know how to approach something… [they’ll say] ‘I can’t draw’ or ‘I can’t do this’…”

That’s where he draws on his own experiences from his time as a student and his years of skateboarding. He teaches his kids that struggling is part of the process and sometimes you have to be okay with failure. In skating, when you’re working on learning a new trick, inevitably, you’re going to fall. But you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep working at it until you get to where you want to be.

In Mr. Cantalupo’s classroom, the lessons are as much about growth and gaining confidence as they are about the art. He sees his students as the individuals they are, all from unique backgrounds, each with his or her own strengths, yet all ultimately working on the same ongoing project – discovering who they are and sketching the picture of who they will become.

In art, as in life, sometimes what we try doesn’t work out the way we initially hope, or even expect… but sometimes our “failures” turn into something unexpectedly great.