Lund Scholar Jasmine Parker (2019-20) talks about how London helped her choose life as an artist and teacher.

Jasmine at Stonehenge, 2020

It’s not unusual for Lund Scholars to describe their London study abroad as a crossroads, a turning point where taking the literal path overseas led their lives in unexpected new directions.

For Jasmine Parker, it was more than metaphor. While walking the actual streets of London, she wrestled a stubborn dilemma: “Do I want to just teach art? Or do I want to pursue it full time?”

Art education had been Parker’s career path from high school in Sanger to first year at Fresno City College to senior year at Fresno State. Then, she suddenly had doubts.

“I had my reservations and was feeling a bit burnt out by the requirements necessary to be accepted into the [teaching] credential program,” she says. “Somewhere along the way, I kind of fell in love with art a little too much.”

Just before her London trip, she sat for a selection interview with the Fresno State teaching credential program, hoping to take the next step toward becoming a K-12 art teacher. The interviewers posed essential questions she hadn’t really thought about: Why teaching? Why don’t you want to be a full-time artist?

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” she says. “Having to come up with those answers, as I was talking, in a roundabout way I was saying, ‘I do. But at the same time, I’m conflicted.’”

Her interviewers assured her that her doubts were natural and gave her time to think. London gave her a pivotal way to do so.

Walking through London with her art-school peers, her dilemma at the back of her mind, she found herself seeing it all “through the lens of a teacher.”

“While I was strolling the streets of London, oftentimes at great haste, I made sure to take in everything and appreciate where I was, how I got there and who helped me get there,” she says. “I knew I wanted others to be able to experience something like that as well.”

Over the three-week program, she gradually felt her old desire to help others learn spark back to life.

“We’d go into all of these museums, which were free… and I was blown away,” she says. “I couldn’t even imagine if I had this kind of access, or if students in the Central Valley had this sort of access. What their worlds would be like.’”

Such insights bolstered her confidence to make her choice, she says.  

“The passion to teach began to burn a little brighter.”

Jasmine with student work featured in a Valley PBS ArtHop show earlier this month.

Developing flexibility to adapt to student-engagement ups and downs while steering toward learning objectives has also taught Parker a few things, she says. Among them are patience, empathy and an ability to stay calm as young people test boundaries and develop a sense of trust.

It all goes toward one goal: showing students that art is much more than “doodling.”

“Some students expect to just have a lot of fun––and it is fun––but sometimes they don’t take it seriously, so you have to inspire them to take it seriously, show them, ‘This is the part where you actually will learn something,” she says.

Many students question Parker when she asks them to revisit math concepts during a linear perspective lesson or use practices from English class to write an artist’s statement.

“It’s hard for them to wrap their minds around,” she says. “They’re like, ‘this is way more than I was expecting out of an art class. I just thought it would be fun.’ And I’m, ‘It is fun!’”

Like her students, Parker can be surprised by lessons in the classroom, particularly how they affect work in the studio.

“I tell my students, ‘Just go for it, don’t think about it too much,’” she says. “Now, I don’t overthink as much. I just go for it a little bit more.”

Despite a demanding workload, Parker aims to complete at least one major art project each year. Last year, she made show submissions another goal and entered the 2024 “Arts Alive in Agriculture” competition. Her original painting “The Dinner Conversation” won an honorable mention. She submitted again this year and hopes to be part of the show in April.

“The Dinner Conversation,” oil on canvas, 16×20 in. (2024)

Parker says that she still thinks about grad school but plans to teach for some time. She also hopes to take a return trip to London with fellow Lund Scholars such as Xena Senn, now a ceramics teacher at Sanger West High School who often collaborates with her on how to prepare middle school students for high school art.

“There are other art teachers [at professional development training] as well but she’s done London, and I love talking with her about all of that,” she says.

Meeting the newest Lund Scholars each year is always a pleasure, she says, but this year is special. Her younger brother Steven, an undergraduate in Fresno State’s studio art program, will be among them.

Shirin Guthier, Sarah Theller, Jasmine and Xena Senn, 2020

The “sightseeing” may pay off in more ways than you’d think. For example, Parker was struck by the anachronistic shock of Roman ruins next to a postmodern structure.

“Surrounded by the old architecture versus contemporary architecture, it was coming into my mind that there’s this dichotomy in so many things here that I can pass on in teaching,” she says.

Now, she draws on the visit to develop prompts for linear perspective lessons and to prod students to think about how culture may influence personal preferences for, say, their dream car–– why the Maserati over the Toyota?

“We get kind of deep sometimes,” she says.

That wouldn’t be happening if she hadn’t received the Lund Scholarship, she says.

“I believe that if it wasn’t for that trip, the events of the pandemic that happened only two months later would have made me feel more confused and reluctant to get into the teaching profession,” she says.

“I would not be where I am today without the Lund Scholarship. I look back on the experience extremely often and am reminded of how grateful I am to have experienced something many people never have.”

>>>View more of Jasmine’s art on her website.