Alumni | Art and Design | Lion VoicesMarch 30, 2026

Home is Where the Art Is

Written By: Ian Silvester

When Peter Cullum first arrived at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, then Westark Community College, it changed his life. 

“When I first walked onto campus, I knew this was where I was going to be,” he said, smiling as he remembered that day in 1992. “This place meant opportunity for me, and it’s never stopped. 

For the next three years, the university served as the foundation for his art education before he left for the East Coast, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Cullum said the opportunity to head east and experience more of the world and art was all due the great education at UAFS. 

By 2003, he was called back to Arkansas and UAFS, where he worked as a part-time adjunct professor and graphic designer for the marketing department. Cullum did this for the next 12 years, during which time he witnessed the university rebrand and was responsible for the current athletics logo. 

“All the designers got a chance to make a pitch for it,” he recalled. “I wanted a very aggressive logo. I was looking at saw blades, and I wanted the silhouette of it to look like a saw blade. … Ultimately, mine was the one that was chosen. It felt surreal when it started appearing all over town.” 

In front of the Stubblefield Center, another legacy of Cullum’s stands—or rather leaps.  

He was part of the committee that chose the sculptor of the Leaping Lion statue and even has his name on the plaque—a physical and symbolic representation of his legacy and connection to the university. 

“These things live on, and you can do these things that live on at a smaller place like this. I don’t know that I would have had that opportunity elsewhere,” he said.  

By 2015, Cullum knew he enjoyed teaching and was looking for a way to make it more permanent. So, he packed his bags and headed west to the Flatirons of Colorado, where he earned his master’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in the spring of 2018. 

Even with a combined 15 years at UAFS as a student and employee, there was still more to come. 

Cullum returned to campus, having accepted the role of associate professor of art. He picked up where he left off, teaching students practices to hone their skills as artists. 

He said it makes him a better educator and artist when students challenge ideas that go beyond classroom instruction.  

“You don’t really know something until you try to teach it to somebody else,” he said. “Teaching is by far the most challenging and creative thing I do, even above and beyond any sort of painting or things like that. Teaching draws on everything, and it demands everything.” 

For Cullum, the importance of art is akin to the importance of breathing. He explained it as an ability to explore and problem-solve, and at the core, art is what it means to be human.  

“In some ways that’s terrifying, and in other ways, it’s incredibly exhilarating,” he said.  

Cullum added that he hopes his passion, along with years of experience creating and studying art, will inspire his students.  

“At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, they call it the unbroken line. You can trace the art instruction that you receive all the way back to the earliest artists in the United States. (There’s) the idea that you’re getting involved in a lineage that’s being passed down and changing and evolving over time,” he said. “When I came back here, it became really tangible, being part of this thing that’s being built over time. … Ultimately, what we’re doing here is carrying it forward and letting students see what we’ve got.”

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Watch how Peter is inspired by teaching art:

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