A longtime Gilroy resident and former art teacher at Gilroy High School has turned her creative energies to a local cable show, which recently brought home two first place awards at a multi-state cable television award program.
At the Western Access Video Excellence competition in Sacramento last fall, Carol Peters won first place for the categories of Professional Informative Programs and Professional Instructional programs for her show “Carol on Creativity,” which features how-to art projects and includes various guests from the South County area.
“It really blew me away because there were people there who have been trying for years to win an award,” Peters said.
The award-winning episode featured two first-grade girls from St. Mary School and Luigi Aprea Elementary School. The students learned to dye eggs with natural cooking ingredients such as beets, tea and spices in Peters’ home kitchen.
“My show is all about anything that is art. Art is everywhere, and we take it out of the box,” Peters said.
The WAVE awards honor the best local cable programs for six western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico and Nevada.
Peters’ show is bi-monthly and airs on Charter Cable TV on channel 18 in Gilroy, as well as a few stations in Monterey.
Peters never thought she would be the host of a television show. After a 30-year career teaching art at GHS, Peters (who declined to give her age) was looking for a way to continue to feed her passion for teaching. She took an acting class at Gavilan College about five years ago, and was there approached by Marilyn Abad-Cardinalli (who is now Peters’ producer) about putting together a program.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’m not painting that much at home,’ because I missed the energy of the classroom. I thought this way I could have that energy again, from teaching on a TV show,” Peters said.
“Carol on Creativity” has featured many local art projects including an artistic window dressing of a vacant business in downtown on Monterey Street, airbrushing with boxing champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero, painting the cougar logo at Christopher High School and various other painting, drawing and craft projects.
“I try to make it so everyone can do it. There’s nothing on my show where it’s like you have to be Leonardo da Vinci,” Peters said. “Never thought I’d be doing this, but it’s been a lot of fun.”
