Views from an Art Show

A couple of weeks ago, I subbed in my former art room, so that the art teacher could set up the annual art show in the gym.  In other words, this is NOT my students' work, though the older elementary and secondary students were once my former students.  It has been three years (wow, that went quickly) since I retired. I thought maybe you'd like to see what was on display, even though they are no longer my students - perhaps you may see a project that was inspired by something you've posted or seen on a blog somewhere!

Below, a kindergarten project:

I took these photos in the gym at the end of the day, when the art teachers (my elementary replacement and the high school art teacher too) had almost everything hanging.  All of today's photos are work from the elementary art room, grades K-6.

 Above, grade 2, below, grade 4 tooling foil

 I guess one group of 4th grade students was given the choice of an alternate project at some point, and 3 kids selected to do this black glue and acrylic on burlap painting, below.  I really was intrigued by the idea, since I like playing with paint on textured surfaces, so I'll have store the idea for future reference!

These scratchboard vases below are grade 6.

 Woven pouches by grade 5.  We've all made these, haven't we? 

 Grade 4 Mexican bark

 Sharpie bugs on foil by grade 2

 Grade 5 tooling foil designs

Weavings by grade 3

 Grade 2 value studies in geometric shapes

 The display label says this 3rd grade project in the 2 photos below was inspired by Klee, but every time I look at these colorful pieces, I think of Kandinsky! 

 Just like last year, I think my favorites in the art show were these clay looms.  I only used air dry clay with my students, especially since clay is not my expertise or favorite.  But my replacement uses the 'real thing' and then ships them down to the high school art teacher, one floor down at the opposite end of the building, to be fired.  I suppose I should feel guilty I never did this?  But I don't, since we always made large papier-mache projects!  Anyhow, this year, she gave the students the option of giving their looms a 3-dimensional twist, as with the photo at the very top of this post.

 Finally, on a previous visit subbing, she had asked me to start a 'toothpaste batik' project with her students.  Yippee!  I love doing this!  This time, I saw that the students had completed the painting portion of the project, and now have to wash out the resist.  I'm curious to see the finished products.  I discouraged the use of yellow and didn't allow any tints when I did this project with my students, since they seemed not to 'hold' as well when washed out.  But maybe she'll have better success.

Meanwhile, I left behind my sample demonstration piece for the current teacher to show the next steps.  This time I found it completely painted (thoug hmaybe not with the colors I would have chosen!  I probably would have chosen black, reds, violets, and blues) and had been washed.  Here is the finished quickie sample.  I guess it is now a collaborative piece! The muslin it is painted on is beige, rather than white.  I think the beige could be interesting for autumn landscapes, perhaps, though I think I prefer the bright colors on true white.  One shape has been re-traced with a Sharpie marker in this sample.

I also found in her room a sample that I had made a couple of years ago and had searched for with no luck.  I had taken my other sample pieces with me, but I guess I had left this one for her and forgotten!  Here it is, below.

Lunch with the ladies

It being school vacation and all, I  got to have a lunch date yesterday with two of my favorite former co-workers.  One is friend C, who, if you are a longtime reader of my blog, will know as the fourth grade teacher down the hall whose head I painted with henna (three times!) while she was going through chemo for breast cancer.  You can read about her our henna adventures here.  She remains healthy and cancer-free, has left the fourth grade behind, and now is in her third year of teaching math and computer skills to crazy middle schoolers.  She still is the driving force behind the wonderful school garden and the school's bottle recycling program.  I miss the long afternoon visits with her when we took breaks from our work to put together puzzles in my art room.

The other co-worker I'll call E, the high school art teacher who I mentored when she was newly hired, and who now is in her 3rd year teaching grader 7-12 art. Since she was hired, she has totally turned around a program that had totally fallen apart.  Check out what she found when she was hired, here and here!  She has made the classroom an inviting environment, created curriculum, gained the respect of the students, exponentially improved the quality of student work being created, and just been all around NICE, even while becoming the new yearbook adviser, supervising the creation of props and painting sets for the school musical production, and teaching everything from crazy 7th graders to digital photography to ceramics to drawing and painting and more.  I don't know anyone who doesn't adore her, and ironically, she and C, whose classroom is around the corner, have become good friends.

The day before our lunch, I had spent the afternoon in my old art room with my replacement (at her request), showing her some tips for making molas, using tooling foil, and doing imitation batik with toothpaste.  While I've never blogged about molas (but I will some time, I promise), if you check my labels to the right you can find my various posts on tooling foil and toothpaste batik by just clicking on the words!

Backpedaling

I need to back up to a couple of recent posts, about the new art teacher and the art room condition. I know blogs are a very public place, and everything I said and showed was real and true, BUT there are also things I haven't said that perhaps I should have... (and no, nobody told me I had to post this entry today).

SO - I want to tell you this: the former art teacher, while completely different in style and philosophy than me, and while leaving her room in a distinctly less than admirable condition, is nevertheless a good person. She is an immensely talented artist, has for years designed and created phenomenal sets for all the school musicals, and is a deeply caring person and well-liked by the students. Every student was always welcome in her room, whether or not they were signed up for an art class, and I doubt that she ever even took time out for lunch without kids in the room. Her room was an environment where 'different' kids felt they belonged. I know I rarely saw her anywhere else in the building.

Despite our differences in, as I said, style and philosophy, we did not have an adversarial relationship. As a matter of fact, we rarely saw each other. The two art rooms are as far apart in our building as they could possibly be, and as you know, the schedule of an art teacher is busy. Because we are a small school, frequently she was scheduled for (as is the new teacher) more than one course in the room at the same time - for example, studio in art at the same time as sculpture and/or photography. This obviously makes planning challenging, and your day busy. Mostly we would call each other on our classroom phones when one of us had run out of some color paint (usually white). And then a student would bring the missing color from one room to the other, and exchange a bottle of a color that was more abundant.

A lot of her annual budget was spent on materials for the sets, so she, like so many of us art teachers, spent personal money for materials to enhance her program. The unusual materials she ordered, while seemingly odd, were indeed purchased with specific plans in mind, or because they were a less expensive alternative to other materials.

I've not written this to excuse her for how she left her room, but to remind us all that bad choices don't necessarily make bad people!

By the way - there's absolutely no reason for the photos of my sweet kitty other than the fact that I always like to start a post with a photo and I have no new art room photos to share today.

She's still smiling...or the disaster area, part 2

If you read my saga the other day about the mess in the high school art room, this is a follow-up, as today I took a few photos in the room. These images show what we found in many storage bins, plus a couple of other photos of the mess. I wish I remembered to take pictures of the room as a whole, so you could see a BEFORE and AFTER comparison after it is all clean.

And the rest of these photos below show the inside of the clay room. I don't think I need to say more or write captions for you to get the message. Because none of the buckets, barrels, tubs, cans, etc are labeled, there is very we are able to salvage beyond the wheels and kiln. What a waste!

But - the new young teacher is still smiling, and will be working all next week to have the room ready for the day after Labor Day weekend, when school actually begins.

A major blessing is our school's WONDERFUL custodial and maintenance staff, who have been just magical. Dan & Dawn, I know you wouldn't be reading my blog, but I'm going to say thank you here anyhow. These two terrific custodians have been in the room, keeping the new teacher company, music playing, taking one bin at a time, scraping, scrubbing, & washing, with cheerful faces and conversation all day. They have hauled out loads of trash, and been such sweethearts to the new teacher. I've been in there when I can, but honestly I still have stuff I need to do in my room - some supplies to put away, shelves to label, lessons to set up, etc, so I need to divide my time. But her room is more critical. I feel like we should be putting out yellow tape to mark out a 'condemned' area!

Also today, a kindergarten teacher gave up some markers, a music teacher offered a loan of a rolling white board, and I'm sure other acts of kindness will follow. And the superintendent, a strong supporter of the arts, kindly told me that she could put in an order for whatever she needs to get her program up and running. And your many comments to my prior gloomy blog posting, when everyone else is posting their shiny happy squeaky-clean rooms, make me know that the time spent blogging is worth it. It's good to know people care! THANKS, everyone!

My heart goes out to the new art teacher

Dear art teachers, this is my second post of the evening, and my other one was upbeat while this is decidedly the opposite. So please take the time to look at both! Thanks.

When you leave a job, for retirement, or a new career, or a move to a new locale, you'll be leaving behind a room that you spent a lot of time in and put your own 'stamp' on. Keep in mind that the next person who takes the job will only have what you left behind as a reflection of your teaching, your personality, your character. So this post may be kind of ugly. I'm sorry but I think it's important.

In my previous post, I showed you my new bulletin boards in my shiny classroom. But today I spent the day in my school but not in my room. Instead I was helping the new art teacher. My district hired her hired yesterday to teach art 7-12, and since we are the only two art teachers in the district, and our whole district is in one building, I'll be her mentor. But even if I wasn't assigned that 'job', I would have offered her my help anyhow.

Now I don't think there's a chance of the former art teacher reading this blog, but if she does, there's nothing I'll say here that isn't true. But it will be harsh. It certainly made me think about how I want to leave things when I go.

Here's what we found:

• a clay room with we think 5 potter's wheels, a kiln, and giant containers/bins/pails of clay, all open, all dried out. No way to get through the room, or access the utility sink. Don't know if there is a drop of useable clay, or a glaze anywhere that is not left open and dried out.

• An area with the supplies she ordered, all still in boxes. There were 10 boxes of plaster, 25 lbs each. Also 6 cartons of plaster bandage, each probably at least 20 lbs. What could she have planned? There were boxes of pre-stretched canvases, gessoed black, a strange choice. There were 15 mini-glue guns. There were boxes of metallic markers, silver Sharpies; and wax, and fabric dyes kit. Other odds and ends of stuff too, but a pretty unusual assortment. We wish we knew what she had planned.

• We looked to see what materials were already in place. The room has a large cabinet with pull-out bins for supplies. Several bins each contained a mixture of: colored pencils, crayons, chalk pastels, oils pastels, dried markers with no caps, paintbrushes hardened with acrylic paints, an occasional razor blade, Exacto knives, and massive blackish-gray chalk dust covering everything. Totally filthy, gross, useless, and dangerous. Other bins contained dirty-looking fabric, yarn with hair in it, a box filled with loose (unstacked) staples mixed with screws, nails, and assorted metal pieces of non-descript stuff. Bins of dirty kiddie stickers, scraps of mangled paper, etc. The new art teacher tried to sort, but I told her to dump, dump, dump.
• We found an old dresser drawer with sections of cardboard mailing tubes glued inside.
• We found unclaimed artwork that was all a pitiful mess, unclaimed I assume because the craftsmanship was so poor nobody would want it.
• We found graffiti and schlocky paintings on pretty much every wall, cabinet, and table top.
• We found dust and dirt everywhere.
• We found about a dozen balloons that had been covered with plaster bandage and paint (props for a play) that had been left behind for trash.
• We found open 1/2 gal. bottles of acrylic paint, dried out.
• A paper-cutter, covered with dirt and dried paints.
• Two ramshackle file cabinets, with not a single file inside but instead filled with strange odds and ends of materials etc.
• A pile of random hard cover books, covered with paint and glitter, with pictures cut and pasted, and scribbles drawn inside, totally messy and unacceptable as high school art (if you regularly have read my blog, you know I'm not opposed to altered books, but this was ridiculous).

What we didn't find:

• A white board, a blackboard, or a white surface to use as a screen.
• A bulletin board.
• An Elmo or Smart Board or any projection system.
• A teacher desk.
• Useable clay or glazes (it didn't appear any had been ordered).
• A lesson plan book or any sort of register.
• Any sort of record of what had been taught in the past (if indeed ANYTHING had been taught at all...)
• A single piece of student art worth saving.
• The mat cutter that should have been there.
• 4 or 5 cameras that should have been there, for the digital photo classes the new teacher will be teaching.
• Any attempt at order for arranging the materials in the ample casework.

Please note: this school of mine, this art room, is only 10 years old, and the room looks like a dump. SO SAD.

I am so sad. First of all, I'm sad for the brand-new eager young teacher who has less than two weeks to put the room in order and establish some plans for beginning the school year. I'm sad that she will encounter resistance from kids who are not used to being given parameters, and expectations.

I'm also sad for the students, who in my elementary art room were allowed to be creative, but still learned craftsmanship, responsibility, and limits. I expected my kiddos to take care of materials, to clean up their messes, to recycle paper, to wash brushes. I expected them to be proud of their work and want to take it home. For a number of years now, the high school art teacher has been a friend to all the kids, but not a teacher. Kids were free to eat, horse around, throw clay, check their facebook accounts. There were no expectations for craftsmanship. High school artwork was not entered in area juried shows, even though there were students who are quite capable. The kids have not been given the art curriculum they deserve.

And I'm sad for the district, that has put up with this for so long.

I'm very happy for the district, to have someone willing to take the job. And for the kids, who hopefully will have opportunity and education previously denied them. And even for me, who will have a colleague who seems to actually care. But it will be a very difficult, challenging year. We spent about 6 hours working today, opening boxes, dumping bins and trays of trash. Every drawer, cabinet, tabletop, bin, etc will need to be cleaned before being refilled. So today was only a start of the work ahead. And unfortunately, I can't always be available to help, as I have my own work to do. But I'll do what I can, so she doesn't change her mind about accepting the job. We want her to want to be at our school!

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to read this, fellow blogger-art teacher-friends. You definitely care about what you do -Thank you!!

Too hot to play outside -global warming has arrived

It's a major HEAT WAVE here in northeastern NY state - I know this string of days in the upper 90's may seem like no big deal to you southerners out there, but it is unusual for us, and the air is thick and humid. I love the summer, but right now it's pretty unbearable outside. :-(

So - what's the vacationing art teacher (with no kids at home) to do when it is simply TOO HOT to swim, kayak, or even read a book on the dock by the lake?

Stay inside, and play with beads, of course!

Here's a little of what I've been up to - mostly easy stuff...