Planting Seeds

Rachael Pongetti doesn’t just teach art. She lives it …

In the hallways of Escambia High School, where her funky black patent-leather Mary Janes and white socks are a low-key nod to the importance of self-expression.

In the East Hill home that she shares with fiance Jamey Jones and fills with colorful collages and tiny sculptures reflecting everything from nature and history to feminism and pop culture.

Rachael Pongetti values originality and finds it liberating. “If following trends is what makes you happy, that’s great,” she says, “but I can’t keep up with trends and find ways to make things work for me.” Purchasing second-hand clothing, she adds, “gives me the freedom to purchase items I’m a little nervous about wearing.” Photography by Will Hepburn Photography

And at Blue Morning Gallery, the popular Palafox Street co-op, where she volunteers 10 hours a month to keep the fine arts alive, accessible and fun.

For Pongetti, art is a living thing to be nurtured and supported.

“It’s about having a passion and continuing to do it, and you find friends who are continuing to do it,” she said. “I’m here in Pensacola. This is my community. … If we want art to thrive here, we, as the artists, need to appreciate where we are and not want to be somewhere else.”

Pongetti certainly walks the walk. She once spent an entire year photographing Pensacola’s ever-changing 17th Avenue train trestle. With the help of friends, strangers and colleagues, she turned the experience into a book, Uncovering the Layers: The Pensacola Graffiti Bridge Project (Ballinger Publishing).

A big part of her passion is being an art teacher who stands in front of dozens of high schoolers every day, sharing not only her enthusiasm, but also years of knowledge and technique.

If Pongetti had the power, she’d require art in all grades, K–12, so that kids would never lose touch with their creativity.

“It is so important,” she said. “They should take it every year, so that by the time they get into high school, they’re just not stunted.”

Pongetti, who’s taught every age from preschool to college during her career, believes art benefits all students, particularly those who don’t learn in the more traditional ways.   

“Art helps you to problem-solve,” she added. “With photography, maybe your battery’s dead. Or maybe there’s a tree in the wrong place. In drawing, maybe your pen made a mark that it wasn’t supposed to. There are constantly visual problems to deal with.”

This school year, Pongetti taught a Drawing I class for the first time and has been delighted by the experience.

“It has been really rewarding to see students draw when they thought that they couldn’t,” she said. “We do this assignment on creativity, which is blind contour. It’s basically where you look at something, and you draw it without looking at your paper. It’s funny. It almost looks like something Picasso would draw, but it also gets them to feel more relaxed and open.”

Art also introduces students to the concept of taking risks.

Rachael Pongetti has taught at levels from preschool to college and believes art benefits all students, particularly those who don’t learn well in traditional ways. “Art helps you to problem- solve,” she says. “Maybe your pen made a mark that it wasn’t supposed to. There are constantly visual problems to deal with.” Photography by Will Hepburn Photography

“Maybe you’ve got everything where you want it, but are you going to go one step further and get out of your comfort zone?” she questioned. “A lot of students can draw, but they don’t want to move into a place beyond their understanding. They don’t go to that higher level of thinking and investigating.”

Pongetti encourages her students to take chances, especially if they have a natural talent in a specific area.

“I’ve been saying to students, ‘You drawing what I tell you to draw or you drawing a copyrighted image, that is low-level thinking,’” she said. “Higher-level thinking involves original thinking all the time.”

Pongetti pushes herself, as well.

Like many people, she made changes during the pandemic. She tried new things and found herself stepping away from photography and into collage work, assemblages and painting found objects. She’s currently completing a body of work that’s rooted in exploring what was happening culturally when her parents were young.

“If you’re not really looking at your own lineage, you’re missing something,” said Pongetti, who delved into vintage magazines and photographs for material. “You’re missing a huge part of what contributed to you being where you are.”

She’s not sure where the pieces will ultimately take her, but she’s enjoying the journey — and she feels much the same way about her art students.

“The way I don’t get discouraged is I just know I’m planting seeds,” Pongetti said. “I know I am contributing to that person’s overall composite. I’m a piece of that, but what becomes of that isn’t up to me.”

Photography by Will Hepburn Photography

Uncovering the Layers: The Pensacola Graffiti Bridge Project

Layer by layer, photographer Rachael Pongetti captures the ever-changing surface of the Pensacola Graffiti Bridge as well as the subculture surrounding the local icon with her new book, Uncovering the Layers. The book highlights how Rachael becomes more intimate with the bridge and its changing facade over time; what started as getting shots of the bridge from far away turned into focusing on the most minute details of the bridge down to its weathered cracks and crevices. — Ballinger Publishing