Mr. Hensel is the graphic design teacher at Freedom High School. His classes include two of beginning 3D art and four classes of Digital Imaging 1. The classes are for all grade levels. He got his degree at UF where he took classes in digital art.

“I took digital art classes when I was in college, I took Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and a little bit of Dreamweaver and I started using that to edit my own art, as well as I do quite a bit of graphic design work here and there,” said Hensel.

He loves his work and believes that it represents his beliefs, which is why he creates the many pieces of art that he does.

Although he thinks that all of his work is great he took it all into great consideration to say what his best piece was, which he thinks would be his portraits of himself and his friends.

“I’m very proud of those [he points to the portraits he has on his wall in his classroom for display], I spent over 100 hours of cutting, and they’re handmade stencils, I also built the canvas’ myself, it’s hard to pinpoint it all in one piece though.”

He also has done quite a bit of spray paint art, although due to teaching over the summer he wasn’t able to do as much as he would have like to, but it is still an art form he loves and wishes he could do more of.

He also stated that out of the two classes he teaches that his better out of the two would be 3D art because he thinks that he is better at it and has taught it before. On the other hand, his favorite would be digital imaging because it’s more “up my alley” than 3D art.

“I teach Digital Design because it’s awesome, I taught traditional photography last year at Wharton and really didn’t like it as much as I like Digital Design, this is the way the world is going and I just think that there is so much untapped art that can be created on the computer using their programs that we have at the school, which is really awesome that we have them, and we have such a nice slab which is an opportunity that no one else has in the county.”

Mr. Hensel hopes that his students can become someone who can problem solve creatively and be passionate about art and be successful in their lives, maybe to light a fire in his students so that they can do what they’re passionate about.