Art is a creative process to achieve a goal. Students can show their creativity no matter what skill level they are. To that end, a teacher named Louie Tucci has shown many students how to show their hidden talent of art. 

Have you heard of him before? 

Tucci is a Canadian-born artist/sculptor who currently teaches at Hoover. For several years, he has been dedicated to the pursuit of teaching others how to make art. As a graduate of USC with a Masters in art, he teaches art to students in his class. 

For a while, Tucci didn’t know what he wanted to pursue in life. 

He had “spent a lot of time navigating different realities and different lifestyles.”  Nothing ever seemed to suit him.

Tucci always had a love for art, even when he was young. In his past, while working in a major bank, he would draw during his off hours. A doodle here, a sketch there, until a point came where he decided to take a chance. 

He tried applying to the Daniels School of Architecture at the university of Toronto, building up his portfolio for the day that he got accepted into the school. 

“I spent half a year in my mother’s attic preparing a design portfolio without formal design education,” he said.

Only, that he couldn’t. 

Unbeknownst to Tucci, he had tried to enter into one of the most exclusive programs in all of North America. Only 16 students were accepted into the program, and Tucci, in all of his efforts to bear fruit, walked out empty handed, reaching number 17 on the list, only one away from getting accepted into the program.

He felt heartbroken, he felt defeated, and he felt shock. 

He had always been accepted into teams before. 

“It was the first time in my life that I didn’t make a team. I’ve been a varsity athlete in high school, I play varsity soccer, hockey and baseball . . .”

Hope came to him in the form of a friend, Jerry Figurski. It was a coincidence, they just so happened to pass by each other. The conversation between Figurski and Tucci had changed his plans immensely. 

Figurski recommended the Gnomon school of Visual effects. But the problem appeared when the school was all the way in California. He would have to leave everything behind to risk it all. 

After that, he took a risk. He left his job, his friends, his family, and flew to California.

He studied night and day in art and design, he put in the work, he put in the hours. His hard work paid off and he got hired as a salesman in pixologic, not the job that he knew how to do the best. 

Within a short period of time Tucci went up to marketing and brand management director. Ultimately, he left the position since Pixologic won an Oscar award for technical achievement and decided it was time to step away from it too. 

The teaching came as a byproduct of creating learning tools within his time at pixologic, he taught schools in the the Glendale Unified School District as a teacher on special assignment and it led him down a path that eventually ended up at Hoover. 

“I was introduced to Mr. (Jason) Pinsker quite early on, and I just found him to be a very nice guy, and the opportunity presented itself recently to come back and I just thought It was the greatest thing that could possibly happen,” Tucci said.

“He brings a sense of relevance to the art classes here,” Jason Pinsker, one of the art teachers of Hoover, said.  “Any teacher could teach a subject but it’s really their life experience, professional experience, and style, and he brings a lot to the table.”