Ginger Huebner’s dream of teaching art in Asheville has certainly taken flight. Roots + Wings School of Art, now about three years old, is based primarily at All Souls Episcopal Cathedral in Biltmore Village but also has roots at Ginger’s studio located in the Pink Dog Creative building at 344 Depot Street in Asheville’s River Arts District.

As Roots + Wings School of Art continues to grow, more or bigger locations may become necessary, which is a nice problem for Ginger to face.

“I love what I do,” says Ginger as she sits in one of the classrooms at All Souls. “And I love this space. But we can only have one preschool class due to space issues so we can only serve 12 kids a day. I would love to be able to serve more kids.”

Overall, though, Ginger says she feels good about how far her entrepreneurial endeavor has come and where she is professionally. The journey began down a much different path. Ginger graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in architecture. She says her years at Virginia Tech taught her how to think creatively. She also gained confidence in her creative talents.

After moving to Seattle to start her career, though, Ginger realized she wanted to go in a different direction. Not only did she want to turn her attention more toward art, she also realized she wanted to teach art. Through a series of twists and turns that included moves from Seattle to Philadelphia (to get a master’s degree in teaching visual art) back to Seattle and finally to Asheville, Ginger says she feels blessed to be with her architect husband Scott and their two kids in a community they love.

“I live just up the road,” Ginger says. “It’s within walking distance. I feel very grateful to this community.” She adds that she and her family began attending All Souls a few years ago and realized the church had facilities they weren’t using during the week. She presented a proposal to the church about updating the spaces and soon Roots + Wings School of Art was born.

The preschool program fosters creativity and promotes early development in problem solving, critical thinking, cognitive concepts, social interaction, and increased physical health through the making of art and an exploration of the world’s many forms of visual art. The program offers enrollment for two, three, or four days weekly and is open Monday-Thursday each week.

While the preschool program is the heart of Roots + Wings, the school offers other programs, too, including monthly art programs, summer camps, art retreats, and others. Ginger works with teens through the Asheville Community Design Lab (ACDL), which is devoted to programming focused on art and design for community change. Ginger partners with Brent Skidmore of UNC Asheville to work with more than students as a collaborative team. This past fall semester the ACDL established the design lab at the Randolph School and created a new mural in the cafeteria as well as an outdoor landscape project.

In the future Ginger hopes that the Roots + Wings School of Art will become more involved in after-school art programs in the area. She has been working with Asheville City Schools and more specifically with Vance Elementary about creating an after-school art program that can begin at Vance Elementary and then be replicated at other schools.

Ginger has hopes the Roots + Wings School of Art will continue to grow. She says she’d like to find a way to provide more low-cost or free programming and perhaps find another space so that the number of people served can increase. With that growth, Ginger has continued to build her team of part-time instructors.

“Some of the instructors have found me, and for some I asked them to get involved,” Ginger says. “We have lots of qualified instructors. These are people that I trust, both as people and in their ability to teach art.”

As the founding director of Roots + Wings School of Art and a working artist, you might think that the administrative and creative hats Ginger wears may prove challenging, but Ginger says she likes it all. “I like to create art, I like to teach art, and I like the administrative stuff,” Ginger says. “To me, it’s all important and necessary. The potential with all of this is so great. It just gets me excited.”

To find out more about Roots + Wings School of Art contact rootsandwingsarts.com.