If you’re a Har-Ber student, it’s likely you’ve walked through B-hall during a passing period and seen one of our school’s own art teachers with his guitar. Dr. Milan Jilka. Last month, Jilka was one of the many local artists featured in the annual Downtown Springdale Art Walk. Being a practicing artist himself, he offered a few of his own works to be displayed at Social Project Brewery, “I was asked to submit some work and I had a bunch of paintings available,” Jilka said, “any chance that I get in Springdale, where I live and work, is a great opportunity for me so I try to take advantage of it as much as possible.” Jilka works in traditional art with canvas drawings and paintings, creating works of vibrant, intricate, and abstract patterning. These creative works come from two primary sources of inspiration,
“Any kind of mathematical patterning is really interesting to me,” Jilka comments. “The second thing is nature or natural forms like flowers and plants. The idea for me, at least the last few years, has been to have those in combination through abstract forms and think of different ways of exploring these two things that are kind of disparate and combine them in kind of abstract ways.”
Jilka has pursued the arts for most of his life, obtaining a BFA in Painting/Drawing from the University of Windsor, Ontario, an MFA in Painting/Drawing from the University of Arkansas, and a PHD in Art Education from the University of North Texas. While originally an artist by trade, Jilka’s passion for teaching brought him in a new direction as an educator for art classes, “I first started teaching as a grad student when I moved down to Arkansas and I kind of fell in love with the students,” Jilka said, “it was a good feeling of imparting some sort of knowledge or experience to people who didn’t previously have this type of knowledge or experience, and so my goal is to get them to open up to things of this world.”