Lowcountry artist, educator, interior designer, and now children’s author Pati Arseneau has spent decades creating beauty – and helping children discover their own.
There are days in every elementary art room when two hands are simply not enough. One student needs help with glue. Another wants to show off the next step of a project. Someone else is waiting patiently, too shy to ask for help. Across the room, paint is drying, paper is curling, rockets are being built, and 26 small voices all seem to need the teacher at the same time.
In those moments, Pati Arseneau knows exactly what to ask. “What do I wish I was?”
Her students know the answer by heart. “An octopus!”
The classroom joke has been repeated for years at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School, where Arseneau has taught art for 17 years. This summer, the playful exchange became something more. It became Mrs. Artipus, Arseneau’s first children’s book, a colorful, rhyming story about an art teacher who dreams of having eight arms so she can help every child at once, only to discover that the greatest gift she can offer is not doing everything, but giving time, attention, and heart.
“It just started from all the years of going, ‘What do I wish I was?’” Arseneau said. “I sometimes wish I had all these arms to help everybody, but you can’t. I am a two-armed person.”
A Life Built Around Creativity
Arseneau has lived in the Lowcountry for 35 years, building a life that has always revolved around art in one form or another. Originally from Atlanta, she moved to the area and began working with interior designer Charlotte Tilton of The Finishing Touch, a creative partnership that has continued, off and on, for more than three decades.
“We can’t quit each other,” Arseneau said with a laugh. “We are so close. We’re like family.”
Over the years, her creative path has taken many turns. She opened The Art Café, a paint-your-own pottery studio on Hilton Head Island, later opened Pottery in Paradise in Old Town Bluffton, sold her own artwork at Bluffton’s Mayfest, worked on interior design projects throughout the region and beyond, and continued creating in every season of life. Yet the work that most captured her heart arrived unexpectedly.
After her mother passed away 18 years ago, Arseneau met a woman in her neighborhood who had known her mother through chemotherapy. During a long conversation, the woman mentioned that St. Gregory the Great needed an art teacher.
Arseneau was not Catholic and had not planned on becoming a schoolteacher. But she agreed to meet with Sister Canice, then the school principal. “I said, ‘I will give you a year,’” Arseneau said. “I just didn’t know. It was something different.”
One year became 17. Now beginning her 18th year, Arseneau teaches pre-K through sixth grade, which means she may have the same students every week from age 4 to age 12. “I love it so much,” she said. “I’ve had these children for eight years. I really get a relationship with them.”
Teaching From the Heart
For Arseneau, teaching art is not only about technique. It is about confidence, kindness, patience, and helping children see creativity as something far bigger than a finished project. “I want my students to know there’s more than being an art teacher or a painter,” she said. “There are so many other things you can do with art.”
That belief has shaped the way she teaches. One year, her entire classroom theme centered on art careers. She introduced students to clothing design, toy design, costume design, lighting design, and other creative fields they might never have considered. A former neighbor who founded a clothing company Zoomed with the entire school. Her sister-in-law, who works for a toy company, donated Lite-Brites so students could explore how product design changes over time.
“They just don’t understand how it develops,” Arseneau said. “I wanted them exposed to other worlds.”
Arseneau also helps organize the sixth grade Cupcake Wars, in which students create and decorate cupcakes as part of a full presentation – another reminder that art can show up in unexpected places. “They have to decorate it really creatively,” she said. “The whole table has to be decorated. It’s art.”
In her classroom, Arseneau does not grade art based on whether one child’s work looks “better” than another’s. Instead, she looks at participation, effort, direction-following, and growth. “I’m not going to ever judge your work, because everybody’s different,” she said. “Some are very unique and add their own twist, and I love that.”
The Birth of Mrs. Artipus
The seed for Mrs. Artipus was planted years ago during summer art camps, when Arseneau created a small octopus teacher character for a theater-themed project. The idea stayed with her, resurfacing every time her students crowded around, asking for help all at once.
In the book, Mrs. Arseneau begins as herself, an art teacher surrounded by eager students painting, drawing, and creating. As the classroom grows busy, she dreams of becoming Mrs. Artipus, an art teacher with eight arms who can help every child at the same time.
“If I was only an octopus,” Arseneau recited from the book, “to help each child in every way, then that would be the perfect day.”
At first, Mrs. Artipus seems to be the answer. With all those extra arms, she can do more, reach farther, and help faster. But soon, she realizes that doing more is not the same as connecting more. In the rush to help everyone, she begins to miss the quiet moments that matter most.
“The biggest thing I didn’t want to lose was the attention,” Arseneau said. “If I sit down with that person who won’t get up, the next thing, they’re just talking away and telling me what they’re doing. I love that one-on-one.”
That realization becomes the heart of the story. Mrs. Artipus might have eight arms, but Mrs. Arseneau has something better: the ability to slow down, listen, encourage, and notice each child.
Pati Arseneau with her new children’s book, Mrs. Artipus.
Every Child is an Artist
The book is written in rhyme, a style Arseneau chose with her students in mind. Because she teaches children from preschool through sixth grade, she wanted the story to feel joyful, accessible, and fun for a wide range of young readers.
Inside the pages are the same values she tries to cultivate in her classroom: kindness, creativity, confidence, and joy. Those words are not decoration. They are the foundation of her teaching. “The whole thing at our school is being kind to each other,” she said. “Because everybody’s different.”
For Arseneau, the book is also a way to show her students that creativity can lead them in many directions. She wants them to see that an artist can become a teacher, designer, author, entrepreneur, inventor, baker, illustrator, or anything else imagination allows. “I did this to inspire my students,” she said. “I want them to know you can be more.”
That message is especially meaningful because Arseneau has lived it. She has been an interior designer, business owner, artist, teacher, wife, mother, and now author. Each chapter has looked different, but all have been connected by the same thread: creating beauty and helping others discover it.
Although Mrs. Artipus was written for children, its message will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to be everywhere for everyone.
Teachers will recognize the chaos and comedy of a room full of children who all need help at the same time. Parents will understand the wish for extra arms. Children will see themselves in the eager, shy, messy, imaginative students who fill the pages. But at its heart, the book is not about an octopus. It is about presence.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing a teacher can offer is not the fastest answer or the perfect project. It is a moment of undivided attention. A word of encouragement. A reminder that every child’s work matters because every child matters.
That is what Arseneau hopes readers take away.
Her students, of course, are already thrilled. When she told one class they had inspired her to finish the book, they immediately wanted to know if they would get a copy. “They were so fun,” she said. “They said, ‘Do we get one if we’re inspiring you?’” Arseneau laughed at the memory, but it also confirmed what she already knew: This story belongs to them.
After all, they are the reason Mrs. Artipus exists.
When those same children smile and say maybe Mrs. Artipus should visit the classroom today, Arseneau knows the truth. She might never have eight arms, but she has spent 17 years giving her students something far more lasting: Her creative spirit is already there.
Find Mrs. Artipus on Amazon.