Rate My Professor Helen Wilson

Helen Wilson serves as an Adjunct Professor in Arts and Culture at Palomar College since 2005, instructing a variety of courses including Introduction to Art (ART 100), Art History (ART 165 and 166), Sculpture I and II (ART 260 and 261), Foundry (ART 265), Design and Composition (ART 104), Foundations of Drawing (ART 102), Intermediate Drawing (ART 103), and Foundations in Life Drawing (ART 120). From 2006 to 2010, she also taught non-credit adult education programs at Palomar College, covering Experimental Mixed Media Painting, Drawing, Life Drawing, and Portrait Drawing. Her earlier teaching experience includes serving as a K-12 Artist Consultant at Mountain Valley Academy (Ramona Unified School District) from 1997 to 2007, where she designed and instructed the art program encompassing drawing, painting, printmaking, simple animation, sculpture, art history, and theory. In 2003, she worked as a Teaching Assistant in Drawing and Instructor for the Young Artist Program and Alternative Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. Since 2010, Wilson has been the Director of The Art Center Ramona and the creator and facilitator of the Tuesday Nights Artist Group, curating nine exhibitions for the group. She has also conducted workshops and lectures on printmaking, painting, drawing, mold making, professional practices, and personal artistic identity since 1990.

Wilson earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004, supported by a fellowship from 2001 to 2004 and nominated for the Headlands Artist Residence that year. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English, cum laude with scholarship, from United States International University in San Diego, California, and Bushey, England (1988); studied at the Free Academy of the Arts in Den Haag, The Netherlands (1989); and received an Associate of Arts in Painting and Drawing with honors from Grossmont Community College (1981). Among her honors is the 2019 Rural Arts Program Grant. As a fine artist, Wilson's work explores the genetic and social forces that shape human identity, employing images of children, their toys, and fairy tales to examine relationships to one's past child self, current children, and the influence of childhood memories on adult beliefs and fears.