Roda Selleck

Roda E. Selleck (1847 – November 15, 1924) was an American painter and art instructor.

A original of Utica, Michigan, Selleck studied at Syracuse University and as soon as Denman W. Ross at Harvard University; she after that spent time at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and Purdue University, She began her career as an educator teaching at the State Normal School in Saginaw, Michigan, later becoming a supervisor; in 1881 she began teaching English and Latin in Indianapolis Public Schools. She was soon assigned to tutor art at Indianapolis High School, later renamed Shortridge High School, where she remained until her death in 1924. Though hired to teach drawing, she along with instructed her students in the use of charcoal and watercolor, and also provided them when a grounding in art archives and art appreciation. By the 1890s she had won confession for introducing "craftwork" – leather, pottery, jewelry, and metalwork – into the curriculum. She taught pottery at the John Herron Art Institute from 1915 until 1916, and developed a heritage of pottery, Selridge Pottery, marked "SP" and produced by pupils at the high school. So dedicated was she to ceramic work that she would often remain at the educational until the early morning hours minding the kiln. For ten years Selleck taught at the Herron Art Institute's summer learned at Winona Lake, Indiana; she sophisticated collaborated taking into consideration the Pratt Institute to fabricate a public hypothetical art curriculum, and she spent some time upon the board of the directors of the Herron Art Institute. She was a leader in the Arts and Crafts pastime in Indianapolis, and was instrumental in causing Indiana to become the first own up to have a standardized art exhibition at its permit fair. Upon her death an art gallery in the Shortridge High School building was dedicated her honor; it remained in place until the building was converted for use as a junior high school.

Among Selleck's pupils were the artists Janet Payne Bowles and Ada Walter Shulz. She is buried in the Utica Cemetery in her hometown.