OTIS: Carole Caroompas

 

Caroompas was also a long-time educator, who taught at Otis College of Art & Design for over 30 years, where she created an Experimental Drawing class. “We weren’t expected to set ourselves in stone. We could let our hair down, make mistakes” artist Vincent Ramos, who studied with Caroompas before becoming her studio assistant, told Hyperallergic. With her jet-black hair, piercing blue eyes, and tattoo-covered arms, “Carole could be really intimidating, but when it came to that dynamic of teacher and student, she was very nurturing,” Ramos said.

She also impressed upon her students the discipline that an artist’s life required. “She worked every day that she wasn’t teaching, and taught that to her students,” artist Meg Cranston, the chair of the Fine Arts Department at Otis, told Hyperallergic in a conversation.

Carole Caroompas was born in Oregon City, Oregon, in 1946 but grew up in Newport Beach.

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