Perpich Center for Arts Education – Pat Benincasa – 5 Hours
This week at Perpich I got to sit in on a critique. Pat gave her students an assignment to create a "fantasy bridge," like an architectural model. The students were open to use any material they wanted, some were made of legos, others of trees, chains, toothpaste, styrofoam… the options were endless! What a great assignment - am I right? She started off teaching them about different kinds of bridges and that gave them some options to start thinking about, and left materials wide open. The critique was very different from anything I've seen in a high school setting, the students gave great critical feedback!
The painting students began a new assignment on a painting about negative space. I'm starting to get to know the students more and I'm building a bit more of a relationship with some of them. This will be very helpful when I teach, I think.
Walker Art Center - Ilene Mojsilov - 3 Hours
I had my first session with Ilene Mojsilov at the Art Lab in the Walker Art Center. I had never seen the Art Lab before, it was a great space! I helped Ilene set up some materials for the group that was coming in. We had middle schoolers come in and do a project with us, based off of the gallery space. The Walker has a new exhibition up right now celebrating 75 years of the Walkers collection. I haven't had the opportunity to see the entire show yet but I will soon! It was interesting how instead of just having little artistic activities, she bases her projects off the the idea of the gallery.
For the project, the students had to make their own small gallery. Ilene described the roles of the artist and the curator, and had the students assign two artists and two curators to a group. Then the artists picked out little photos or "artworks" and the curators arranged them in the little gallery space made out of foamcore. They had about 20-30 minutes to work on their spaces and then shared with the group. Some things I noticed were that when Ilene asked them about each others work instead of asking something along the lines of, "Which gallery space is your favorite?" When a group put their gallery space on display for everyone to see, Ilene would ask the viewers, "What makes this gallery special?" I thought that was brilliant wording. It helps support the idea that even the people who think their not creative, can still make something very special and different from the person next to them.
After one group did the project, they went and did a gallery tour, the second group came into the project already having seen the gallery. It was very interesting seeing the difference in the two groups! I had a blast helping Ilene… All I did was man the hot glue gun station, but I had a lot of interaction with the kids, and saw their excitement and work ethic. It was a ton of fun! I can't wait to go back next week - we will be working with adults with disabilities.