Students from all of School District 55’s elementary schools shared their art work with parents and the public last week in a show at Hawthorne.
Amidst walls covered in paintings, water colors and drawings, students sang Christmas songs under the direction of Craig Frank.
The event provided the public an opportunity to see what students are doing in the Community Learning Centers’ after-school program, a program that provides help with school work and a variety of activities for students.
Angie Vogt, a substitute teacher for the School District, has spent the year working with elementary students in the program. At Foster, she and her students made paper from drier lint, newspaper, leaves and colored tissue paper.
At Oak Heights, they made drawings inspired by artist Joan Miro, creating abstract shapes and designs, and collages inspired by Henri Matisse. Australian aborigines inspired “dot” paintings at Oak Heights and Crawfordsville; and African Adinkra was the model for Holley.
“Cultural arts” motivate students, Vogt said. “They really like it.”
Dot painting, for example, was used to tell stories. They included symbols that served as communication. They would include the outlines of animals in the paintings and draw patterns within them.
Vogt recently moved to Eugene from Minnesota. She has an arts education degree and is looking for full-time work in an art teaching program.
Nellie Markert, who has sold watercolor paintings, and Sue Chenowith, a 22-year employee with the District who works with the TAG program, taught watercolors at Foster this year. The second trimester, they will move on to Hawthorne and in the third to Holley and Crawfordsville. Last year, they taught water colors at Oak Heights.
Chenowith has painted in oil at the amateur level. Interested in watercolors herself, she and Markert began teaching the watercolor class. Last year, they took their class to the state Capitol where they delivered watercolor paintings to State Schools Supt. Stan Bunn and Rep. Jeff Kropf. Their visit was videotaped as part of a high school after-school activity and later shared with the School Board.
In this year’s class, Markert and Chenowith have taught some 20 watercolor techniques, blending colors, using salt and other effects.
“I think this neat that they brought all of this together,” Chenowith said. “Kids need to see what’s out there.”
Schools have arts and crafts, but the after-school program gives them exposure to much more, she said. It’s like having a continual artist in residence.
Showing the students’ artwork was Community Learning Centers Director Claudia Hatmaker’s idea.
The kids’ work is wonderful, Hatmaker said. “Why should I (and the teachers) be the only one who gets to see it.”
Following the show, held Nov. 27, artwork was to be displayed at various places around the community, School District and Board Room.
Holley fourth-grade student Brad Pitts enjoys the chance to learn different arts after school and the chance to catch up his schoolwork.
“I just wanted to get caught up in my work,” Pitts said of why he attends the after-school sessions, but he also gets to have some fun with it. “It’s fun. It’s not just homework. We get to do activities before we our homework.”
Pitts’ favorite after-school activity is music. He enjoys music in general and loves listening to the radio, especially Three Doors Down, a contemporary rock band.
In one area displaying Holley artwork Kris Kirkeby a nature artist from Eugene talked with students about her display. Among them are the “bird-cicles,” museum mounted birds she uses as models. The birds are preserved in glass tubes.
Students peered curiously at them.
“Eww, you put birds in that?” one asked looking up at Kirkeby.
“Yeah, we draw them,” she replied.
“Oh,” the student said, and that was good enough for him. He wandered off to look at more of the art.
Kirkeby teaches some 5,000 students a year in nature art or observational drawing. Before moving from Minnesota a year ago, she taught kindergarten through the 12th grade. Now, she mostly works with elementary and middle school students.
She works with students in any number of media, from airbrush to acrylics. In Sweet Home, she has used mainly colored pencils because they are inexpensive and easy to use.
Kirkeby has illustrated national textbooks, written children’s books and drawn signs.
The Community Learning Centers program is in the second year of a three-year grant. It provides a number of opportunities for help with class work and various activities with volunteers from the community.