The ArtBreak studio at school is packed up ready to be restored and refreshed by Maddie Davis.
Maddie and I will be bringing Summer ArtBreak this year to the public libraries in The Plains and on the Ohio River in Pomeroy, in July.
Athens County Children’s Librarian Betty Ranck made a beautiful poster!
We are winding up this year’s ArtBreak sessions at school, and yesterday I found this evaluation posted on my door.
It is by a fourth grade artist who creates posters. He also encourages people – - every week while working at top speed on his projects he makes supportive remarks to his fellow makers about their work.
Below is his poster in support of sharks, which we put up in the hallway. Awesomeness! I am going to miss my ArtBreak students this summer.
We are beginning to wrap up this year’s ArtBreak studio. Yesterday I reminded a group that we have one more session and for that last meeting I’m making cupcakes.
Long silence from the children…and then:
“Mrs. Ziff, will they be cardboard cupcakes or will we be able to eat them?”
I think we’ll do both. Here is a cardboard cupcake, see more on Zippercut, a “Los Angeles lifestyles and fashion” blog.
Josh Birnbaum has produced a beautiful presentation about our Summer ArtBreak program and captured so well what ArtBreak is about. Click HERE to watch!
Project LAUNCH and IPAC sponsor Summer ArtBreak and Josh’s documentation of our work. You can learn more about Josh on his website.
Included are photos from our work in Pomeroy, Logan, The Plains, and McArthur.
Today in ArtBreak we used our old fashioned chalk board to solve problems. One child helped another figure out what grass looks like so he could cut bits of green paper grass.
Another sketched his vision of the kind of cardboard shape needed to make a fishing pole rack.
And another child used the board to total measurements.
We also use the board to figure out spelling, keep a list of things we need, and leave messages.
This week I learned, again, that the best things happen when you let them.
Early in January I noticed a mauve colored pine shelf a couple of hallways over in my school with a sign on it inviting someone to take it. No space in my room, too bad. The shelf sat there, and sat.
A couple of weeks later I heard a sliding sound along the carpet outside my room. Looking out the door I saw the shelf. Hmmm.
When that day’s ArtBreak group gathered in my room a child gestured to the shelf and remarked “we could paint that.” Someone had just given us a new tub of bright red Blickrylic paint – perfect.
I set out the paint and new brushes and the group fell to work with enthusiasm, occasionally bursting into a pop song new to me, something about life is beautiful. The following week they decided to add all kinds of bright designs.
Turns out the child who proposed painting the shelf had masterminded the project, organizing a couple of classmates to slide the shelf outside my room, quietly suggesting the idea and then painting with focus and care. The shelf now brightens up the hallway outside the ArtBreak room.
Snow day yesterday. It was COLD outside; I did some touch drawing in my studio.
