Artaware's Blog

Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/354.html

Students from grades 3, 4 and 5 at Camden Forward Elementary school traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see Picasso, thanks to Art Aware informing art teachers Julie Kring Schreifels and Susan Baker that a PMA grant was available to them.

What a great time they had. And you will too! The show is on until April 25th. The Camden Forward students are doing artwork influenced by Picasso and friends, which I’ll post later.

Picasso was a spiritual prophet to the world of art and philosophy. Although he died in 1973, he is still leading human beings away from a representational fundamentalism that cripples creative minds. How many times have you heard people reject their artistic nature by saying “Oh, I’m no good at art. I can’t draw a straight line.” In 2010 people have options way beyond having to draw something that looks “real.”

When artists, young and old, experiment, investigate and play with ideas in the art studio, they open up paths of communication – variations of what has been done before, but also perhaps  forging new ground for the art and philosophy of the 21st century.

At the PMA show, I thought about perspective:  my own, the kids’, the teachers’, the docents’, the guards, etc. The artwork forced us to bust our brains making connections between the world and how we see it. We mentally climbed on the vehicle that brings us to universal dialogue:  Art!

Above are samples of 4th graders artwork initiated by Nicole Cucinotta at Sacred Heart School. It was influenced by Pablo Picasso and Maurice Sendak.

Many of my education colleagues wear more than one hat in their lives as homemaker, teacher, volunteer, etc. Sylvia was such a person – a long-time friend, teacher, past AAUW President and Co-chair with me of the Children’s Concerts in which The American Association of University Women provides subscription series tickets to Philadelphia Orchestra performances for Camden elementary school students.

One year the Orchestra sponsored an art contest for kids to draw their favorite thing. Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” was to be played. The winning drawings and photos of the artists would be displayed during the concert. ALL of the drawings we submitted won. What a thrill for the students to see their artwork and photographs shown on large screens at the Kimmel Center, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra playing “My Favorite Things.”

Sylvia died this week, suddenly of congestive heart failure. She leaves behind so many friends she touched as teacher and volunteer and also countless inner city children (and adults) who don’t know her by name but know and remember her through their Academy of Arts and Kimmel Center visits – often once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

We will miss Sylvia so much but her legacy lives on.

Camden, NJ, a struggling city, has reason to be proud of its elementary school art teachers who produce results similar to those in Cherry Hill, a well-to-do town. Please enjoy the samples of artwork initiated by Ms. Kring Schreifels at Camden Forward School (Urban Promise).

The students did variations on themes by William Johnson and Romare Bearden.

On Saturday, home-bound by our 29″(!) of snow, I made origami in preparation for an upcoming class with 7th graders. I needed a hard surface to work on and chose the nearest thing to where I was sitting, a children’s book by Romare Bearden, “Li’l Dan, the Drummer Boy.” On the back of the book is a wonderful picture of the artist’s sensitive face. I felt he was looking up at me, helping with the difficult origami instructions!

Several years ago Art Aware got a grant from Faith Ringgold, the African American creator of story quilts, to teach students about Romare Bearden, the African American collage artist. It was after Bearden had his huge retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and part of that show was to go the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

The grant allowed us to work with art teachers in eight Camden elementary schools and one Philadelphia school. Large murals of collages in Bearden’s style were created and displayed and then nine busloads of elementary school students went to the Whitney to see his original artwork.

I hope it was an experience those two hundred young artists will never forget. I know I never will.

And my origami session with Bearden on my lap made me feel even closer to him.

Art Aware would give presentations to all the art classes scheduled for the week with the resident art teacher observing. Five hundred students a week from first through eighth grade would be an average number for most schools.

Thanks to having art every week for all of their elementary school years, the students knew how to put their marks on the page.

I gave them oil crayons and the choice of plain paper or graph paper to work with. Hexagon-sided paper in some classes was given out so that the finished art could fit together a class mural.

Julie, a sixth grader, chose vibrant colors and solid shapes to do a flat view of Van Gogh’s bed; her modern, yellow chair was influenced by the Lichtenstein reproduction.

Stephanie, a fifth grader was entirely creative in her design of the bedroom which was influenced by Van Gogh, Mondrian and Lichtenstein.

You can see great results when kids realize different strokes for different folks is entirely the way art works – and that they themselves are the artists!

012710 We’re so influenced by the art we do, the art we see.

It’s important to display children’s artwork for the sake of the students themselves and for the sake of adults to keep them in touch with spirit of youth.

*Indiana is the creator of  “Love” statue in Philadelphia

  I’m new to this wordpress blog site and the upload of the Art Aware 2008 Poster of Camden Students at Peace Doing Art wasn’t successful yesterday (or I didn’t do something I should have) from my home dial-up Internet connection. I’m now on Wifi at the library. You can get an idea from this image how creative the art teachers in Camden, NJ are in initiating a variety of styles of artwork from their elementary school children.

I don’t want to wear out my welcome on this blog so I’ll try to post  just once a week.

This is the first blog for Art Aware, a twenty-year non-profit organization created to bolster the arts in inner city elementary schools. I am Barbara Pfeiffer, Founder and Director. For an introduction, we’ve uploaded the 2008 Art Aware Poster of Camden Students at Peace Doing Art.

It represents 17 Camden, New Jersey, schools and work that was initiated by art teachers from grades pre-K to six.

Art teachers are absolutely necessary for students to achieve a well-balanced education. For the under-achiever as well as the over-achiever, art class is the great leveler. Different strokes for different folks. There is no right or wrong. Showing reproductions of famous masterpieces from Leonardo da Vinci to Jackson Pollock proves it.

And so in this poster there are examples of talented art teachers encouraging children to experiment with many styles.  Go to artaware.org for close-ups of some of the work. 

Visual images are not only for kids to learn by.

A balanced human being is one who can tap into one’s own creative energies as well as others’.

Celebrate the arts!

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