What an incredible week full of culminating experiences! I was so privileged to experience the amazing work of graduate Art Educators from Queens College on our stage this past Saturday. This marked the end of a semester where the students interpreted Himalayan stories, created giant puppets out of many different material and performed a free show for our families.
I received an incredible workout on Thursday as I ran from one final student event to another! We welcomed the students of PS86 to the Education Center to share their work from this semester’s Thinking Through Art residency. The students crafted beautiful stitched thangkas. We displayed all of the thangkas in the Education Center, and students responded to all of the pieces by writing comments on post-it’s notes. I was incredibly impressed at the level of thoughtful, positive feedback that the students gave each other, and really, REALLY impressed at how comfortable they were with discussing the different stitching techniques that they learned! When you hear a number of 5th grade boys compliment each other on their couch stitching technique, you know something amazing is happening!
Amazingly, all of the projects were cleared out by the afternoon- just in time for our final Teen Art Lab critique for the Mixed Mythology class. Students created a narrative using a sequence of photos and discussed them in a group. Immediately after the critique, all of our Teens joined together in the theater for our end-of-year Teen Celebration and Bollywood Dance Party.
While all of this was happening, the Guides were taking a Master Class in Voice and Breath led by our own Michael O. It’s important to flex our vocal muscles now and again, and I learned a great tip: Open you mouth after you are finished speaking – it helps you to remember to breath!
