Nestled on the Starkville High School campus, the White House Studio where Andrew Lark teaches visual arts feels like it is in a different world.

From the rows of paintings alongside the staircase in the front hallway to the galleries of first-time sketches from freshman students and the signatures of alumni lining its white walls, the house is a space for students to find their artistic voice.

For Lark, the house is where he fulfills his mission of empowering young artists by helping them develop professional skills across multiple mediums, ranging from film photography to fashion design to sketching and even building instruments.

“Being here 28 years, I’ve poured myself into this community,” he said. “I wanted to see our kids be the best in the country, to compete and get scholarships anywhere in the world, and God has blessed that to happen.”

Raised in Clarksdale, Lark graduated from Mississippi Valley State University and began teaching at SHS in 1997. He remembers easily picking up different art media as a child, though sometimes it was difficult for others to see the value in his passion.

“Even in kindergarten, I was doing these huge coloring crayon drawings, and people knew something was different about me then,” he said. “In a Black environment, people didn’t understand the value of what I was doing.”

He sees teaching as a calling and art as an opportunity for students to discover their potential and use it to build a future.

“That’s my whole thing, trying to give our kids … a feeling that, ‘We are Mississippians, and we can compete against anybody in the world,’” he said. “I want them to see that you can make it anywhere in the world. Starkville is a place that God is allowing us to create a foundation where they can get what they need here and go anywhere.”

Part of that mission is creating opportunities for students to showcase their work. Lark routinely enters his students in statewide and national competitions.

“We expected to lose (at first). We expected to come in and to finish not always on the top,” he said. “I grew up in that, and I want to make sure that my kids never experience that. I want them to experience positive things – that we are somebody and God has made us special and we’re winners.”

To date, Lark said the White House Studio has amassed more than 70 national awards and even several international awards. Many of his former students continued studying visual arts at Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Columbia and even Harvard University.

Teaching art requires a lot of materials, and for Lark, support is accepted wherever it is offered, even if he doesn’t know the person, company or organization offering it. He just calls someone who can help and follows the line from there.

Need $10,000 worth of photography film? Lark knows a guy. Looking for $3,500 of sculpting clay? He knows someone who knows someone else.

“Some of these people I’ve never met,” he said. “They saw what I was doing and said, ‘We are going to invest in this thing because it’s bigger than you.’ … I called whoever I could to help my kids. I live that way because I know there’s resources out there.”

Students have earned 12 Overall Best of Show awards at the national Congressional Art Competition during Lark’s tenure, allowing them to exhibit their work in the U.S. Capitol for the last 12 years.

Lark has received his fair share of awards as well, including teacher of the year on the school district, region and state level. He received Rotary International’s Excellence in Education Award and is a member of the Starkville Area Education Hall of Fame.

Lark hopes to expand his teaching to offer students, from seventh-graders to seniors, from other schools a chance to find their voice in visual arts. He is in the process of planning a free after-school program to teach students across the region before and after school.

“I’m trying to reach out and find every kid,” he said. “If they come from Columbus, great. If they come from West Point, great. I just want to give kids that opportunity because what they’re going to face out there in the world talking about being an artist in Mississippi.”

McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.