Amirra Malak

Amirra Malak is an Egyptian-American artist and art teacher who spent childhood in the Middle East and Spain and has spent much of adulthood in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her bachelors in painting with a metals minor at Central Washington University, and earned her Masters in Education with a prek-12 art endorsement at Portland State University. She has been an art teacher in the Gorge for twenty years. She taught K-12 art in Cascade Locks for six years and is currently teaching half-time at Hood River Valley High School where she has taught since 2008. Amirra has a passion for designing curriculum to meet the needs of the community, having created the first AP Art, Ceramics, Collaborative Art, and Digital Media programs at Cascade Locks School and Hood River Valley High School and having served on The College Board AP Art & Design Development Committee which redesigned the Ap Art & Design curriculum to be more inquiry based.

She was awarded the College Board Regional Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts for her equity work within the AP Art & Design program. Amirra also taught at Columbia Gorge Peace Village for several years with a focus on peace, sense of place, community, and ecology. Amirra’s own work includes drawing, painting, textiles, natural materials, meditative video, interactive and immersive video installations, and curated online spaces. Her work was recently purchased by the Regional Arts and Culture Council for their small public works collections and by Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital in Vancouver, Washington. As an artist exploring a sense of place, the natural world, and identity in her work, Amirra is excited to create space for students to find their own voices through visual art and truly believes all students have an artist within. She and her son will be joining Wildwood this fall, and they are both beyond thrilled to be part of this experiential program.