Sydney Samele said the highest compliment she can receive as an artist is “someone stopping to look at my work for five minutes.” 

“They don’t need to say a thing,” she said. “If something is visually interesting enough for them to stop and look for a period of time, I don’t think any amount of words speaks volumes more than that.” 

Ms. Samele is a Connecticut-based printmaker and illustrator who is spending a week in the Richmond Art Center as part of the Adolph and Virginia Dehn Visiting Artist program. She is here through February 21. On Tuesday, February 18, she shared some of her work with the College-Level Art class and talked with the students about her process and journey. 

Ms. Samele graduated from the University of Hartford with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 2021. Her work is inspired by Japanese printmaking and explores mythology and transformation through water. She said she gravitated toward art as a child. 

“At a young age I liked to draw,” she said. “Nothing I made was all that visually exciting, but I liked it, and that was all that really mattered to me and still matters to me.” 

Yet her work does matter to others. She has exhibited in many galleries in the area and some of her work is held in private collections across New England. Sydney also is the education director for the Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, a nonprofit in Torrington, Conn. If she isn’t making art, you might find her skiing. She is an instructor at Ski Sundown. 

“My first teaching job was at Ski Sundown, which led me to take on various teaching positions within the arts,” Sydney said. 

Whether it is in the classroom or on the slopes, Sydney said the reward is on the faces of the students. “The smile,” she said. “The smiles that follow the classes or the end of the program, when people come up to me and give me a smile and say that was fun and they want to do it again. That is across all forms of teaching I do. That is the reward, that is what drives me.”  

Like many kids, she said she had various pastimes when she was a child, but kept coming back to art. “I found I really do like repetitive action. I find it very soothing,” she said. “And at the end, when I’ve made a finished product that I’m pleased with, it gives me such joy and makes me feel I’ve accomplished something for myself as opposed to someone else.” 

Ms. Samele said art school gave her more than technical skills; it also taught her not to take things only at face value but to ask questions “and to really think as a person, using that big brain of ours.” 

When she looks back at her life, all the experiences she has had and all the people she has known, she finds inspiration for what her next projects might be. 

“I think a reflection of [my life] will strengthen my work and strengthen my identity. ... The journey is far from over,” she said.