WAUKESHA — Otto’s Fine Art Academy, 312 W. Broadway, is celebrating a big milestone, 20 years. The business is celebrating from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Aug. 3 during the Waukesha Art Crawl. There will be kid’s crafts, live music, birthday treats and other fun activities.
Melissa Hillmer, owner of Otto’s Fine Art Academy, took classes at the academy when it first opened. Her mother signed her up for classes when she was 8 years old.
“According to Moncia (Otto) Bodway, the original owner, I was the second child enrolled when we first opened in 2004,” Hillmer said.
Hillmer is a graduate of Waukesha South High School and received her BFA from UW-Milwaukee. In college her main focus was drawing and painting. She also studied art education and took a handful of business classes due to her plan to own the business.
“It is a big part of my life and always has been,” Hillmer said of the academy.
In 2018 Hillmer purchased the business and became the owner, which was fun for her. She had the familiarity with the program and how it has been operated for years.
“I worked for Monica for many years,” she said. “I purchased it eight months after graduating from college.”
Hillmer appreciates the class sizes are very small.
“We keep 15 students tops, and having gone through the public schooling system it is just a different vibe,” Hillmer said.
There is a more in-depth curriculum in terms of fine arts such as learning more in depth about drawing and painting. The academy offers summer camps which teach different media. Hillmer said it is a nice deep dive into those things.
Otto’s Art Academy is a supplementary education art school for children in grades K-12 as well as adults. They offer curriculumbased, semi-private instruction in fine art mediums such as drawing and painting, as well as extensive summer camp programming for children with offerings such as ceramics, textiles, sculpture, illustration and more. Otto’s Art Academy opened a second location in Mukwonago in 2022.
During the school year, there are home-school classes offered during the day, as well as after-school classes in the afternoon.
“Those are curriculum-based classes where we are teaching the principals of drawing and painting. Like how to hold your brush the right way and how to draw and paint. During the summer camps each week is themed differently,” Hillmer said.
Over the past 20 years the academy has expanded a lot of the options offered. They added adult classes. For years people requested that the academy accept adults.
The summer camps have been opened up to include different types of mediums and offers students the chance to explore them. Hillmer said, for example, digital arts has become very popular with younger students. There will be an occasional class where the students bring in a phone or iPad and they learn about drawing apps.
During the pandemic the homeschool option was a good option for those staying home or branching into the online schooling systems.
Hillmer brought in a kiln to do ceramics with students.
Teaching
Teaching, for Hillmer, opens the eyes of all the students to realize art can be something more than just a fun thing to do once a week at school.
“I’ve seen a lot of kids come up through the program and graduate from high school and pursue the arts further. Which is really fun because that is what I did, too,” she said.
It is very important to her for students to know there are viable career in the arts. She pointed out art is everywhere such as billboards, graphic design in social media and ads. The academy had a student years prior who went into the film industry after graduating from high school.
“There are all these career paths,” she said.
The academy now funds a scholarship to help pay for the education of a student who is going into the arts after high school.
Hillmer is concerned arts are disappearing from public schools.
“I think a lot of schools have a larger focus on STEM learning like math and science, which I think is great. You have to make sure there is a balance between the creative side as well,” she said.
When students are young that is when their creativity is the highest, Hillmer said.
“When I was kid, we for sure had an art classroom that we would go to a couple of times a week. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for parents to say they only have art once or twice a month,” she said.
Hillmer added if a child is artistic, they need the time to express that side of themselves.
For more information visit https://ottosartacademy.com/.
