Monthly Mentor

Natalie C. Jones (February)
Each month, a different member is the guest writer for the NAEA Monthly Mentor Blog. Natalie C. Jones is an artist, small business owner, and the director of education at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. She has 10 years of experience working as an art teacher and teaching artist throughout the east coast and the Midwest. Click "GO" to read her full bio.

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« Youth Art Month in Georgia! | Main | Highlights from Georgia's YAM Events »

March 22, 2017

Art With Purpose

From: Debi West, Ed.S, NBCT 

My intro STEAM-based freshman students just completed their collaborative Louise Nevelson inspired Recycled Mural. From the very beginning, our kids were having fun considering what daily recyclable products they could use in their box to create a strong composition. This lesson is great in that each student has the ability to consider shape, line, balance, and variety and how their piece will ultimately work within the whole mural where 48 boxes will become one large composition! Students chose to paint the piece gold and the final work(s) are truly incredible! Their responses were wonderful too in that they not only created a piece of art for our YAM celebrations, they also thought about the importance of recycling and their abundant use of plastic that is killing our earth. Overall, this is a YAM event that I highly recommend as it brings art to the forefront of social learning – the epitome of our #artwithpurpose learning!

And while that was going on, my Art II students were working hard on their Memory Project works. This year we “art-dopted” 40 children from Bolivia and honored their identity through portraiture. Students enjoyed drawing or painting these beautiful children and later this week I will be packing these images up to send back to the children! This is always one of my students favorite projects because it’s when they really begin to understand that when art becomes more than just a head and hands project, i.e., their heARTs begin to play a big part, their work goes to the next level! All 40 portraits are beautiful, creatively, technically correct, and full of love! I am always proud of my students, but this YAM event take us all to another level of teaching and learning!

IMG_4204  IMG_4207

For more info on the Memory Project, check out their website: www.memoryproject.org.

View a video for the Memory Project that my kids and I just made: The Memory Project - NGHS

Up next...the FUN Club concert, our county's Tapestry Art Exhibit images, and our 10th annual Relay for Life ART Auction!

-DW

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