A Hillhouse Art Teacher Opens Up New Worlds

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Top: Teacher Stefania Munzi (center) with students Yasmin Nazari and Jessica James. Bottom: Alex Rosenstein. Lucy Gellman Photos.

The rock needed to be purple.

Already, sophomore Alex Rosenstein had sketched out the story of two siblings, Riley and Leo, and their journey to another universe. In one vignette, their dog Dash had spotted the rock in question, and begun barking frantically. In another, a dragon made his way into the frame, wings pulled back and chest puffed out just so.

Somewhere in between, the rock began to glow, sending up rays of light into the backyard. And Rosenstein had a decision to make. “It’s giving purple,” she said, and that was that.

Rosenstein is a student at James Hillhouse High School, where artist and teacher Stefania Munzi has brought new ideas into the classroom, brightened the walls, and gotten student art into the community since her arrival in August. Last week, the early hours of the school day found her in her element, guiding her students through the first steps in writing a graphic novel.

"You want a beginning that introduces the characters, a middle where there's like some kind of conflict, an end where there's some kind of resolution,” she said, opening up a hanging folder where half a dozen pencil-on-paper storyboards peeked back. “We should know this now, right?"

“Art Saved My Whole Life”

Raised in a proudly Italian-American household in Wallingford (Italian is her first language, and joyful references to the country’s art and culture are rarely absent from her work), Munzi has long seen art as life-saving, a constant and trusty companion in the face of “a lot of bad stuff” that the past few years have thrown her way.

“It’s gotten me through so many things,” she said. As a kid growing up with ADHD, Munzi found that artmaking helped her focus, “even in math class,” she said with a wry smile. The older she got, the more important the practice became in helping her concentrate. So when a professor at Albertus Magnus College suggested she become an art teacher during her undergraduate studies, the advice stuck.

After a year apprenticing with David Hubbard, a fixture in the art department at Hamden Middle School, she decided to pursue education at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). As she embarked on her teaching career in Hartford, her practice got her through the birth of two children, a divorce, and a bout with thyroid cancer last year. It has always been a force for good, she added, helping her steady her mind when the world seems upside down. 

After her eldest son, Joseph, was born with a congenital condition called microtia five years ago, she turned to painting as a way to help normalize his hearing aids. In the images, watercolor portraits of her beaming, red-haired little boy, he wears a thin band around his forehead, with a hearing device that gives off vibrations to show the sound. 

When the Branford-based press Alphabet Publishing found it in 2021, it led to her first book, Jojo’s Tiny Ear, and opened up a whole sub-genre of making art for and about kids with disabilities. Last year, she followed it up with C'era una Volta in Wooster Square (Once Upon A Time In Wooster Square), a fairytale-esque, blossom-filled homage to Wooster Square done in vibrant color.

After snagging book blurbs from Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and actors Paul Giamatti and Steve Schrippa, she’s used her literary connections to create new art opportunities for her students, including in New Haven City Hall, the restaurant Tre Scalini, and DeLauro’s New Haven office on Elm Street. More on that below. 

“If I didn’t have art, I think I would have gone crazy a long time ago,” she said. “Art saved my whole life.”

Now, she’s sharing that spark with her students, one storyboard at a time.

“Benvenuti Amici”

Beneath glowing strings of white lights, Munzi walked her first-period cartooning students through the next step in their graphic novels, meant to weave pen and ink into story. Around her, at least half a dozen murals covered the walls, with homages to New Haven history that soared from its blooming cherry trees and bustling streets to its char-kissed pies in Wooster Square.

After an initial rush to the front of the room, students mostly fell quiet, pencils gliding across paper. A few cracked open their Chromebooks, and looked to stories like Dog Man (one that Munzi also references), Steven Universe and Jojo’s Tiny Ear for inspiration.

At one table, seniors Jessica James, Yasmin Nazari and Davaine Graham planned out a mural for the wall outside Scott Raffone’s geometry classroom on the second floor of the school. On the page in front of them, a right triangle rose in space, its point crisp and sharp. Beside it, a quickly sketched rectangle floated over the words “Mr. Raffone,” and it was possible to slowly see the piece taking shape.

In the bottom corner of the page, a smiling Spongebob Squarepants extended his arms, as if winding up for a hug. He didn’t make the final cut, James said—he’s just a beloved figure who is fun to draw. Munzi brings that out in the trio, which often works together on art projects.

Top: James, Nazari and Graham plan their next murals. Bottom: "This is just me, basically," said senior Azir Wilfong. 

“We’re aiming for shapes and symbols because he’s [Raffone] a geometry teacher,” Graham said. Since Munzi’s arrival at the school, it’s one of multiple pieces he’s worked on, including a mural of Hillhouse's exterior that greets students when they walk in the main Sherman Avenue entrance to the school. Nazari proposed another shape, and the three got back to work.

In a painting behind them, a grandfather held two children by the shoulders against a flat pink background, as if the creators of Dragonball Z had held a conversation with the painter Amy Sherald. Beside it, a cherry tree leaned to the right, beside a signpost with all of New Haven’s main corridors.

One table over, senior Azir Wilfong sketched out the story of a protagonist named Zir (“this is just me, basically”) who encounters an H.E.A., or hyper-extended-alien who has crash landed into the earth.

For Wilfong, who has seen technology shift wildly during his time in high school, it’s a way of contending with a present that seems increasingly precarious and too focused on technology. As a student, “I don’t really feel that we need AI,” he said. “We already rely on the internet for so much.”

On the sheet of paper in front of him, the H.E.A. came to life, a towering and long-armed figure that immediately aroused Zir’s suspicions. Wilfong explained that he was in the process of rendering a second alien, to create “basically good cop versus bad cop with aliens.” He lauded Munzi for giving students space to stretch their imaginations, adding that it helps him think outside the box well after art class has ended. 

“This alien represents the future of humanity,” he said. “You know how people say that AI is taking over? This is like, if that happens in the future. This is how humanity would evolve to look.”

Tuesday, he was not the only one traveling to another world with the scratch and whisper of his pencil. Inspired by Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books and shows like the CW’s Supernatural, Rosenstein built a fantastical world in which two siblings traveled through time and space, transported to an alternate universe. On the page, a simple suburban backyard was replaced with a lush new planet, as the siblings soaked in their surroundings.

“Are the dragons friendly or are they mean?” Munzi asked, stopping at Rosenstein's drawing as she walked around the room. On the page, protagonists Riley and Leo were face to face with a dragon who towered above them. Rosenstein explained that he was friendly—and one of two dragons that would ultimately make an appearance. ”This world is in danger and they’re the only ones who can save it,” she said matter-of-factly.

Across the table, senior Emilio Strand worked on a draft of a children’s book in which a friendly bee plays the starring role, educating readers as he makes clear how kind and gentle he actually is. Initially, Strand said, he was interested in “the idea of plant consciousness,” but worried that plants weren’t compelling enough for his reader.

Top: Senior Emilio Strand. Bottom: Students in Munzi's Art II class.  

A bee felt easier to animate, drawing on a long history of books about biodiversity and the breadth of the animal and insect kingdoms. As the first sketches took shape, it became a story about humans’ need to safeguard the planet, rather than to treat it as a disposable resource. In addition to the bee, it features a young boy named Joseph and a friend of his.

“It’s just a boy playing in the park, and a bee comes up to him and starts telling the story of how bees pollinate,” said Strand, who splits his day between Hillhouse and the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA). “I think we’re in this era where we think of ‘us versus nature,’ and for a long time we’ve been encroaching on it.” Especially at a time when technology like AI “widens the disconnect,” he’s flipping the script.

“It feels like a release—like meditation,” he added.

That’s part of the magic Munzi seeks to create: there is art everywhere, from nods to Italian history and New Haven apizza to celebrations of artists past and present. Outside the classroom, Frida Kahlo, Malala Yousafzai and Maya Angelou share wall space with each other, their faces rendered in rich, vivid color against a technicolor swirl of oranges, yellows, reds and blues.

Beside Munzi’s desk, a painted lemon tree pops against a violet background, its branches heavy and bright with fruit. The words “Benvenuti Amici” (“Hello Friends”) make their way across the bottom third of the wall, with a tiny Italian flag nestled inside a heart.

Scenes from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. Literary selections for students include Of Mice and Men, Catcher In The Rye, Dear Evan Hansen and The Absolute True Diary of A Part-Time Indian for freshmen and sophomores, and The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, Alice In Wonderland, and Cinderellas Around The World for juniors and seniors. 

In a drawing nearby, William Shakespeare sits down for a meal with Kahlo, Yousafzai, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einstein. Across the room, a huge canvas from Nazari teems with marine life, the water pristine and gem-like as an orca whale makes his way towards a luminescent pink jellyfish.

Like Strand's work, it has become a moving call to be in right relationship with nature, as ocean life faces the increasing threats of warming seas and plastic pollution. Munzi said she’s still finding a home for it inside the school.

She’s brought that enthusiasm into the wider New Haven community too. When students returned to school in August, Munzi kicked off classes with a self-portrait exercise, having students place their cartoon selves within a New Haven institution. As those works materialized, she reached out to potential collaborators, from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs to restaurants and bakeries in Wooster Square. She was especially excited, she said, when DeLauro’s office asked to display some of the artwork (see it below, photo by Stefania Munzi).     

“I think it’s so important!” she said. “A big part of being an artist is promoting your work. I love watching the students light up when I tell them, ‘Your work is up at Town Hall,’” or a restaurant that they can visit and eat at with their families.

In addition to the cartooning classes, which she inherited from Hillhouse teacher Reggie Augustine (“It’s been the funnest class I’ve ever taught,” she said), she also teaches sections of Art II, in which students are working on specific scenes from literature that they are reading in their English classes. The project marks a new collaboration with Hillhouse teacher Kevin Barbero, which is meant to create stronger connections between and amongst disciplines.

Izaiha Velasquez.

Last week, it was in full swing. At a table toward the back of the room, senior Izaiha Velasquez sketched out a scene from Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, in which Alice stared through a mirror, and another world materialized before her. On the page, a tree sprang up, thick and knotted around a clock that sat in its trunk. A chess board filled the space in between, as if it was a bridge.

Velasquez pointed out space in the corners where he planned to add scenery and extra characters. As an avid bibliophile—outside of class, he’s reading  Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 The Kite Runner—he was excited to begin adding color, starting with green and purple that would soon fill the page.

“It’s [artmaking] really relaxing,” he said. “It’s just a lot of like, creative thinking, seeing what my imagination can create. If I’m coming home from a long day, I just sit down and draw.”

Work from Stefania Munzi's students will be up in City Hall through January 9. Above is a photo from Munzi of the work in U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro's office.