Ryan Loiselle, whose bright and groovy work graces the Weekly Volcano’s “Best of Tacoma” special section, is kind of a solitary guy, though he considers an impressive list of people his friends. And though he’s been involved creatively with institutions like Art Chantry and the Rocket, Nirvana and Tacoma punk band Broken Oars, it’s his current work as a mild-mannered high school teacher that seems to bring him the most pride as he and I talk at Firehouse Coffee on Sixth Avenue.

The blurb about him put out at Lincoln High School says, “In addition to Mr. Loiselle’s professional experience, he is an accomplished painter, musician, and a founding member of the Tacoma Film Club.”

It’s a somewhat dry biography that he delights in. He adds to the Loiselle schoolteacher mystique with a wardrobe of leather shoes, trousers and sweaters, not alluding to his hipster cool background until he shows a slide of work he’s done; at one point he invited students and their parents to come and have a listen to his musical work with the not-exactly-chamber-group Broken Oars.

While he no longer drums for the band, he does still produce local bands’ show posters as well as movies (such as “Vinnie Vegas” at the last 72 Hour Film Festival) and music videos.
His own background in art began in his genetic make-up as the grandson of a portrait artist. Despite his father’s “Toughest Greaser in Salt Lake City” status, he cultivated Loiselle’s interests in the art rooms of his high schools — including Stadium and Lincoln — and took him to the Art Institute in Seattle, after which Loiselle did freelance projects including posters for Nirvana. One of these showed up in an article on Nirvana in Playboy magazine as part of a collage, while others have shown up in books about the band.

Work for companies like Post Industrial Press and Lucks after art school were all well and good for Loiselle, but he felt like he wanted more. “I wanted to teach,” he recalls.

He applied for a job as a graphic design teacher at Lincoln High School and didn’t hear back until a week before school opened.

“I’m, like, terrified of talking in front of people. I have issues taking credit for stuff … I guess I’m strangely modest,” he says, but working as a teacher, he can put the creative ideas out there for others to take credit for, even as he continues on in his own creative pursuits, which will include more film, painting, orchestrating live drawing groups, web design, drumming tempered with some habanero pickle making, beer brewing, wine tasting, bike riding, karaoke singing, YouTube wrestling and jogging.