3 posts tagged “art education”
I just received a great Youtube connection: inspiration and innocence, set to music, a poem about how important the
arts are to all of us. A sweet, original, validating musical video about art: Tanya Davis' song Art by Andrea Dorfman.
To watch it click here: Enjoy!
A great way to start the day.
It was sent to me by Brian Treece in Portland, Oregon via his Twitter account @PDXCulture.
The Albuquerque Youth Diagnostic and Detention Center is a teaching facility for very troubled young men and women. They have committed a serious crime, and are on the brink of lengthy incarceration. YDDC is a stepping stone. They are evaluated and given educational challenges and training, They have a chance to learn new skills with which to re-enter the world.
Lin Putnam-Johnson, my friend of many years has been an art educator at YDDC for more than a decade. Over the years she has helped countless youth find inspiration, self esteem and motivation through their artistic abilities. Indeed, many are very talented but have never had the opportunity or tools to learn basic studio skills, much less the encouragement and guidance to follow through on an artistic project.
A great gift Lin gives them is validation and connection to their heritage, as evidenced by this vibrant mural, now installed in the Pera Building in Santa Fe. It was designed and created entirely by students from YDCC, with the guidance of Lin. One of the students who worked intensely on the mural is now going to art school, emerging from the weight of socio-economic pressures to enter into society in a positive way. It's a long road, but he's taken many steps already.
A powerful example of art as a transformative power.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first create the universe.
-Carl Sagan
For lunch we take a walk up to the ice- cream store, and have a picnic by the lovely swimming pool belonging to the Brandon Inn. Then we stop by the Inside Scoop, an ice-cream and antiques store, with cool toys, games, fascinating trinkets, Mexican folk art and fine antiques. Lots of inspiration to be found there, and great ice-cream too!
Not a bad way to spend a summer day!
This year the Brandon Artist's Guild's community project is titled "Starring Brandon" so we chose that for our Aartz theme as well. Large cardboard cut out sandwich board costumes, and some ingeniously engineered constructions will be part of the Fourth of July Parade. It's always so much fun to see what these fabulously creative minds come up with.