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JANUARY 2003

Arts Educators Learn Tools of the Trade
by Sybil Maimin

Art teachers from the five boroughs recently met at Fiorello LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and Performing Arts for the 22nd annual New York City Art Teachers Association (NYCATA) conference to share talents, techniques, and perspectives and to honor some of their own for outstanding work in the field. The full day of activities included a keynote address by noted architect James Stewart Polshek and numerous hands-on workshops that ranged from how to make puppets from everyday materials to using computer technology in the art studio. The day concluded with a gala reception in Lincoln Center’s Cork Gallery where many works by teachers were exhibited.

James Polshek, who was honored as “Artist of the Year,” is particularly well known for designing the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. His firm, Polshek Partnership Architects, primarily serves not-for-profit educational, cultural and scientific organizations and its credits include the Santa Fe Opera, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and the renovation and expansion of both the Brooklyn Museum and Carnegie Hall. Current projects include the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and a new building for New York City’s Lycee Français, a private school.

Polshek explained to the assembled teachers that he does not consider architecture an art form because, unlike art, it cannot be arbitrary. With the help of slides he illustrated the evolution of two projects, the Rose Center and the Lycee Français, emphasizing, “architecture is about collaboration” and involves many skills including design, construction, technology, heat, and light. Twenty-four people in his office worked on the Rose Center. He lamented that today “architecture is increasingly a celebration of the individual,” “an ego trip,” and noted that we marvel at the great buildings of medieval Europe and Asia without knowing the names of their designers. Ideas for the Rose Center were explored via science fiction illustrations, Styrofoam models, and flashes of inspiration. The “idea of a space where events in space can be replicated” was key. Because some people are intimidated by museums, the Rose Center was made visually accessible to those on the outside. The museum is a landmark, he acknowledged, but “landmarks have to go on, to be transformed. Architecture is a vehicle for giving new life to an old place.” Meeting a different challenge, he and his firm designed the Lycee to be “sublimely rational,” because “that’s what’s French about it.” It will be an ècole de verre, a school of glass.

Inspired by this master architect, the teachers chose from among 34 workshops that offered exemplary curriculum models, management strategies, and resource guides. Becoming students themselves, teachers sat at tables in the class of Temima Gezari, a 96 year old dynamo who shared her secrets of how to give students confidence in their abilities to draw (stroke the head and back of an imaginary cat and then replicate that stroking movement with a pencil on paper). Using simple materials–scissors, colored paper, and glue–teachers produced wonderful two-dimensional designs in Muriel Silberstein-Storfer and Electra Askitopoulos-Friedman’s class while learning the effectiveness of hands-on experiences in conveying the importance and joy of art. Eastern art techniques were learned in a sumi-e (ink-stick painting) workshop. The teachers were given brushes, ink, and rice paper and taught the brush strokes and ink gradations used to depict traditional subjects such as bamboo, chrysanthemums, and irises. A model-making workshop taught architectural principles and suggested how they could be learned in the classroom through references to the school, home, or neighborhood. Learning “to see” from Noguchi sculptures, telling students African tales to foster pride and broaden understanding of “ethnic chic,” and planning museum tours were some of the many other opportunities to learn and bring ideas back to the classroom that were offered. Joan Davidson, president of NYCATA, explained that the New York City Visual Arts Standards formed a framework for the workshops, and the perspectives gained would help teachers accomplish the vital task of “building art education.”#

 

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