Editor’s Letter: Connections

To experience a connection with art, music, or reading is to allow ourselves to become vulnerable and open our minds to new possibilities. It helps us navigate new experiences, drives us to expand our knowledge, tackle difficult conversations, and even practice inclusivity and address our emotions in response to significant events. Granting ourselves the space needed to connect—to reflect, engage, and listen—can make a difference in how we present curriculum to our students.

Ocean Animal Sculptures

As students in separate pre-K classrooms throughout our center became interested in different animals, weekly studio time was used to support and extend their interests from an arts-based perspective. One pre-K class after another became fascinated with ocean animals. Using these interests as the starting point in the studio, I designed a model-building project around sharks.

Say Hello to Zorro

Say Hello to Zorro! is about a family who gets a second dog, but more importantly, it’s about the adjustment that the dogs have to make in this new situation. I thought this would be a great way to tie social-emotional learning into a project and talk about how sometimes families change and getting used to new situations can be a challenge. Many students and even adults go through this, sometimes very unexpectedly, and our emotions can run the gamut.

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Ancestry and Empathy through Art

I’ve been working on a series of projects with my class of seven-year-olds based on the idea of slowly growing our understanding of our identity, and then, as we understand our own identities, expanding outward to see how we are a part of a whole. A predictable result from understanding our own stories and valuing ourselves is that we begin to extend that value to others and see our place and responsibility in a community.

An Artist Like Me

I want my students to connect with the artists I introduce them to on a personal level. I want them to see themselves in the faces of the artists from whom we learn. In this lesson, I chose to focus on Derrick Adams, a New York-based multidisciplinary artist who celebrates contemporary Black life and culture. His work is bold, powerful, and easily relatable for students.

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Raising a Village

Having a class pet in the art room is amazing! It immediately calmed students’ nerves, and many of them had never held a hamster before. Gus-Gus became the perfect muse for art, and having a class pet helped with classroom management. Our laughter and fun with him fostered relationships and built a village—literally. Our first year with Gus-Gus, we built a cardboard Christmas village complete with gingerbread houses. The following year, we created a village of haunted houses.

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Eco Punch Art

Connecting our work to Eco Art gave students the chance to use their designs to tackle important topics that concern our environment, such as the conservation and preservation of our waterways. Plastic bags and other materials were punched onto canvases to raise awareness about the negative impact of trash on the environment. Students also incorporated watercolor, acrylic paint, and appliqué to add interest and variety.

The Color and Shape of Music

I came up with the idea of using the emotions inherent in music to drive the choice of colors and shapes in a collage composition. We started out by listening to different kinds of music and discussing what shapes and colors would best express that music’s emotional qualities. We noted that shapes seem to correlate best with rhythm. Smooth or soft music pairs well with circular motifs, aggressive music ties easily to triangles, and the regularity of squares emulates music with a consistent beat that makes you want to tap your feet.

Tibetan Mandalas

We are called to open doors for our students, introducing new and different ways to see the world through the lens of the arts. We can often open several doors with one lesson. Exploring the arts of Tibet was an effective way to introduce basic geometry, design elements, and the spiritual beliefs of another culture through the creation of a mandala.

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Upcycled Metamorphosis

Artist Nnenna Okore addresses ecological concerns such as waste, carbon emissions, and energy consumption in her stunningly beautiful sculptures and installations. Her work itself is a solution to these issues, as she creates the media from plant-based materials such as food waste, resulting in a lower environmental impact.

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