Artaware's Blog

Ten Months of art by Camden elementary students – exhibited on the walls of Cooper Hospital! It was the largest and longest display in Art Aware’s twenty-five history.
With all the updating to the Art Aware website (www.artaware.org), the blogging and Facebook postings, I can’t believe I haven’t electronically documented our Cooper Hospital Show of 2008.
I guess it’s because I was overwhelmed at the time – it was so much work putting up the artwork of 100 murals (which included the work of over 1,000 students), and the fact that I had recently returned from a trip to Japan and China, and Matt Katz (now with the Philadelphia Inquirer) wrote about it in the Courier Post (5/13/08), so I didn’t have to.
You can read the article on the Art Aware website (as soon BJ Swartz has a chance to put it up) or on my Facebook page (as soon as I get a chance to type it up). So finally I’m electronically documenting the 2008 Show of Camden students’ work initiated by Camden art teachers and Art Aware.
I’ve gotten much more computer literate in the past four years and of course the Internet technology has progressed in leaps and bounds. The Cooper Show was only a few years ago – and yet I couldn’t find the article in the Courier Post online archives and had to go to Cherry Hill Library to make a copy from microfilm. That seems like the middle ages.

In view of the horrific child abuse scandal at Penn State, I find it especially important now to celebrate the beautiful, innocent images of children through their artwork. How important it is for everyone to encourage children’s self expression through the arts by exhibiting it everywhere! Art Aware makes a point of creating and distributing a yearly poster of images of elementary students’ artwork from approximately twenty-six Camden public, charter and parochial schools.

Let me know if you want a poster. There will be no charge.
Barbara Pfeiffer 11/14/11

*school name (art teacher) student name if known (grade level) title of piece

*Camden Forward (Ms. Baker, Ms. Kring-schreifels) 8th graders “Lion King Masks;”
*Lanning Square (Ms. Lippincott) Saleiyah (5) “Paper Mache Puppet Family;”
*Forest Hill (Ms. Jones) Kindergartener “Butterfly;”
*Whittier (Ms. Allen) Vinasia (1) “Self-portrait;”
*Cream (Ms. Grey) Leonardo (8) “Reverse Nike;”
*ECO Charter (Ms. Subramanya) Group project “Banana Tree;”

Hopefully you’ve seen the first two blogs of quadrants and gotten the hang of how the work is listed:
*school name (art teacher) student name, if known (grade level) title of artwork.

*Davis (Ms. Mosley, Ms. DiMedio) Leslie (K) “Butterfly Bees;”
*Dudley (Ms. Spann) 5th grader “Aboriginal Bark Painting;”
*Leap Academy (Ms. Speart) Melanyd (2) “Cold Hands, Warm Heart;”
*Molina (Ms. Demarais, Ms. Moore, Mr. Deitz) Tatyany (K) “Daisy Tree;”
*Washington (Ms. Sassano) Cierra (3) “Dancers in Kente Clothing;”
*Cooper’s Poynt (Ms. Wallenburg, Ms. Knopp) Tianay (7) “Bubble Shop City;”
*Yorkship (Ms. Baskins, Ms. MacArthur) Amanda (6) “Star Fish;”

The following lists: *School name (art teacher’s name) student’s name if known (grade level) title of artwork:

*Holy Name (Ms. Guzman) Lucely (6) “Abstract Tree;”
*Parkside (Mr. Auge) 4th grader “In 2099 I Will Turn 100;”
*Sumner (Ms. Savarese) Siana (4) “The Emerald S Lizard;”
*Wiggins (Ms. Guida) Nayaritte (6) “Red House;”
*Bonsall (Ms. Gail, Ms. Rohr) Monet (3) “Giraffes;”
*McGraw (Ms. Manning) 4th grader “Abstract Flower;”

Some of you have seen the 2011 poster on our website http://www.artaware.org and may have wondered WHO did this artwork? Well, you can click onto the 2009 poster (http://www.artaware.org/2009poster.htm) to get an idea of the scope of Art Aware’s yearly posters in the whole city of Camden.

Now I’ll give you the details of the images in the 2011 poster, many of which have already been shown in past blogs. We’ll give you previews of the 2012 poster in upcoming blogs.

Art Aware celebrates students and the talented full-time art teachers initiating artwork in public, parochial and charter Camden elementary schools.

In the first quadrant we have
*Sacred Heart (Ms.Cucinotta, teacher) and 5th graders “Stop Killing Our Fish;”
*Catto (Ms. Dubbs), 2nd, 3rd, 4th joint projects “The Universe;”
*Sharp (Ms. Saeger) Dennis (1st grade!) “Circles of Color;”
*Cramer (Ms.Watkins), Ruth (4) “Matisse Lady Relaxing;”
*St. Joes Pro-Cathedral (Ms. Deets) Kayla (4) “Seven-Tone Banner;”
*Wilson (Ms. Babilonia) Zenasia (2) “Chinese Bowl with Oranges;”

Go to the website or past blogs to see larger images of the children’s work.

Please enjoy the work initiated by Nina Speart, Art Teacher at Leap Academy in Camden.

Sunflowers by Tiphany (4th grade) watercolor and glue;
Lilies by Giovonna (4) watercolor and glue;
Autumn Design by Jon Paul (6) cutout paper collage;
Fall Reflection by Ayanna (1) watercolor;
Cityscape by Brielle (3) warm color scheme;
Cityscape by Hashannah (3) cool color scheme;
Zebra by Sidia (7) aboriginal dot painting;

When Cassie MacDonald, the hearth keeper of Brigid’s House of the Sacred Heart Peace Community in Waterfront South, decided to replace all the old windows in her rowhouse in Camden with new ones, she asked artist friends to paint the old windows and donate them to a fundraiser. The fundraiser successfully raised enough money for her to build a real hearth in her rowhouse. Here are some of the decorated windows. Enjoy!

   Toshiko Takaezu, Artist, Teacher and Friend

She loved the Camden children’s artwork. One year a class of fifth graders at Yorkship School did individual color drawings of pots with freeform designs in Toshiko’s style. They were assembled together in a large mural, a copy of which was sent to her.

Toshiko was the force behind Art Aware applying for and being awarded a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation grant.

I first met her in the 1970’s and that is when she gave me this pot with the strong brush stroke circling around, and, tantalizingly, not quite meeting itself on the other side. For over twenty years I have been going to her Open Houses in Quakertown, NJ to be in her land of organic gardening and ceramics. She made no distinction between the two, as to which was the most important to her.

In 2004, I wrote:

What I want for Camden kids,
(and for all the people of the world really)
is for them to realize that they’re their own beautiful persons,
(like each leaf on my Honey Locust tree)
responding to what is.

And one way for them to do that is
to do art
and keep doing it
and doing it,
the way Toshiko Takaezu does.

In the same year I wrote this meditation:

All her little pots
Sitting together on shelves
Each making statements.

And all the big pots –
Personalities, strong, subtle,
Emanating spirit.

She was such a good, caring person. I miss her tremendously. She’ll always be close to my heart.

I just saw “My Kid Could Paint That” (available from Netflix), updated from 2003 when Marla Olmstead was first written about in the New York Times. She was still painting at age nine.

It is so important for children to be introduced to reproductions of fine art, including that of the Abstract Expressionists. When we showed five to ten reproductions of art-from cave paintings to Kandinsky, every child in the elementary school class could relate to at least one of the pictures and be inspired enough by one to try to his or her own variation on the theme.

How often we would go into a class and some kids would say “I can’t draw.” Then we’d go into our lecture that in the 21st century, you don’t have to be able to draw representationally to “do art” and we’d show some modern masterpieces.

Paul Klee and Joan Miro prided themselves on getting into the innocent, spontaneous mindset of youth and showing it in their paintings.

Here is some artwork (which will appear in the 2011 poster of Camden Students at Peace Doing Art), initiated by Camden art teachers that proves the point.