About Me
I am professor emerita of learning-disability education at the College of Charleston, residing now in Raleigh, my hometown. I have drawn and painted since childhood, guided by my mother, painter and potter Naomi Perry, who encouraged forays into different media and styles. Over the years I delved into pastels at Charleston's Gibbes Museum, charcoal live-model portraiture at the College of Charleston, oil self-portraiture at the North Carolina Museum of Art, plein air painting at the John C Campbell Folk School and Florence Thomas Gallery.
RECOGNITIONS
Black-and-white drawings of local buildings came from the Girl Scouts of America and Upward, a national church magazine for teens.
In college an acrylic still-life of my dormitory window plant in winter light was featured in Cadenza, the campus literary and arts journal (Below).
More recently I won the 2012 national competition for design of the Evergreen Angel, featured in Southwest Art Magazine, a figurine in silver sold to support hospice care in Colorado, available for purchase at https://www.evergreenangel.com/online-store/Michelle-2012-c11171064 .
(Below)
CAREER
As a child I determined to be either a teacher or an artist. Eventually I chose teaching as a profession but art remained a passion. My career began upon graduation from Mars Hill College in 1975, with a succession of elementary and secondary positions in the Wake County Public Schools. In the 1981-82 academic year I taught at the US Department of Defense Dependents School in Munich, a posting that afforded visits to prominent art museums in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. From 1984 to 1989 I served as statewide consultant for the Division for Exceptional Children at the NC Department of Public Instruction. Having taken a doctorate at North Carolina State University, I taught as adjunct faculty at Charleston Southern University, The Citadel, and the College of Charleston before accepting tenure-track appointment at the latter in 1991. As there was no suitable textbook in my field then, I wrote and illustrated Mathematics Instruction for Students with Learning Difficulties, which was adopted worldwide as the authoritative text, now in its third edition.
In retirement I was engaged as an adjunct at Meredith College and as a member of the NCMA education committee. In January 2026 I was appointed trustee at Mars Hill, for which I produced a folk-style campus poster in 2016.
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