ART EDUCATION
I am very passionate about education. I believe that knowledge is the key to success and happiness. Through teaching you are opening the gateway for others to experience such things in their lives.
I have experience in several different teaching environments and with many different age groups. This summer I had the opportunity to teach art at a private day camp for children ages 3-8. The community is nestled among the High Peaks of the Catskill Mountains, an area known for inspiring the great artists of the Hudson River School. I hiked to Kaaterskill Falls, the subject of one of Thomas Cole's great masterpieces. I read John Burroughs' accounts of the area. I looked out from the same overlooks and walked the same trails that he spoke of. The environment could not have been more ideal for inspiring young artists. Below are a few examples of the work we created.
Jungle Junk! is the title of the music video we created. We took just one week to create the 3-minute masterpiece which uses stop motion animation, claymation, and video. The kids enjoyed seeing the project through from planning to making costumes, props, and sets, to filming, and presenting the video at our gallery show.
We studied the work of Jackson Pollack and had a great time creating replicas. We used paintbrushs, sticks, string, and squirt bottles. This was definitely one of the more fun projects. We laid our canvases out on the lawn and went a little wild!
We looked at the work of pop artist Andy Warhol, and used animals we saw around camp (owl's and frogs) as our subjects. We painted them using common Pop Art techniques. We talked about foreground versus background, alternating colors, and repetition.
We discussed the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The kids enjoyed his work and had a blast creating their own self-potraits using only fruits and vegetables.
Paul Klee was a fun artist to study. We discussed using simple shapes and experimenting with color. The kids had to practice great restraint not to paint every rectangle neon!
Nature and the outdoors were never too far from our mountaintop classroom. The kids enjoyed planting seeds, and watching them grow. They made terrariums, bear track molds, leaf journals, bird nests and pet rocks.
