When art teachers like East Rock Magnet’s Liz Cassidy and Melody Gallagher (right) guided their shy third-grader, Johaline Hurtado, in the making of an African mask, they made sure she was learning symmetry and angles as well as the thrill of creativity. They were addressing multiple audiences, including budget-cutters and school reformers.
The teachers were among several hundred proud parents, young artists, and their teachers who turned out Monday afternoon at the Board of Ed for the opening reception of the citywide visual art show.
The theme this year, from many teachers’ perspectives, wasn’t just the intrinsic value of art, but also how art helps boost test scores. Call it a sign of the times — of pressures for numerical academic results, and of looming teacher layoffs.
The annual exhibition of painting, sculpture, and photography highlights New Haven Public School kids’ visual range and panache, from pre-K through high school. It will be on view in the Board of Ed’s second-floor board room daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., through April 28.
Whether embracing a new approach to art teaching or in the thrall of anxiety about possible cuts or both, many of the New Haven Public School art teachers present appeared eager to make the instrumental case for their discipline: Namely that art taught in an interdisciplinary fashion, is also helping the kids succeed in math, reading, science, and other subjects as well.
For 12 years now Nilda Morales has been the system’s arts supervisor and organizer of the exhibition. “Art is important,” she said, “not only because it’s what makes us human, but all the latest research also shows students involved in art, in any form, simply do better academically.”
As she stood in front of two Coop students’ sculptural responses to paintings by Henri Rousseau and Roy Lichtenstein, she explained: “At its heart, art is about problem solving, and kids usually love to solve problems artistically. It’s something they look forward to, and it makes them come to school.”
In schools such as Edgewood and Hooker, art is specifically employed to teach academics.
Bishop Woods fourth-grader Naomi Knight wants to be a scientist. So she was particularly drawn to the interior anatomical vistas created by students at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School after they went up to the New Britain Museum to check out an edition of the blockbuster exhibition “Bodies Revealed.”
Her sister Rachel wants to be an artist. She collaborated with Alexandra Garcia (pictured with her proud dad Rogelio) and a team of other kids from Betsy Ross on this splendid “Color Wheel Installation.”
It was also inspired by art the kids saw on a museum trip. Never have several hundred plastic cups seemed so worthwhile.
Alexandra wants to be a glass sculptor like her hero, sculptor Dale Chilhuly. She learned about the primary and secondary colors. In her work on this project, she said, she was reconfirmed in her belief that yellow, which is bright and fun, remains the best color.
In the view of Conte West Hills art teacher Chris Cozzi, art is a rigorous subject in its own right and doesn’t have to be justified as being instrumental to other kinds of learning.
“Maybe,” Cozzi said, as he showed “This Night the Perfect Shade of Blue,” a subtle acrylic painting by his eighth-grade student Amanda Alling, “people should stop thinking of, say, math as a hard subject and of art as easy.”
“I work my kids hard,” he said. He guides them through what he called a course on visual literacy, in no small measure because “most of the information we take in, we take through our eyes.” That included, Cozzi said, learning symmetry, foregrounding and backgrounding, perspective and balance in a landscape by, in his most recent lesson, Nuremberg old master Albrecht Durer.
An industrial designer in his pre-teaching career, Cozzi (pictured here in front of those fine plastic cups) said Amanda’s work was the culmination of a basic unit. “First I had the kids design their own identity, like a brand or logo; then we studied Warhol and saw how he made art of mass market branded advertising. Finally, we studied Jean- Michel Basquiat, the graffiti artist, and the kids combined an expression of themselves artistically with language too.”
The result in Amanda Alling’s work is full of depth and poetry written within the letters themselves and the interplay of tet and image. (“This flood, this flood is slowly rising up/The ground beneath my feet tells me how anybody thinks/I’ll swim as the water rises/I’ll wait, I’ll wait for the ambulance to come.”)
The K-8 curriculum, according to Ima Canelli, the assistant superintendent for curriculum, is now codified, so that color and symmetry are taught the same in all schools. Little kids receive about 45 minutes of art a week; fifth to eighth-graders take art classes twice a week. In high school there’s a wide range of specialized courses from design to ceramics to print making.
Anxiety that art may not be fully appreciated was also evident in the fact that this Artful, the schools’ art-illustrated literary magazine, has lost its funding. Morales said that the approximate $10,000 needed to produce and print the attractive annual magazine was, for the first time in at least six years, not available this year from the BOE’s general fund.
However, she’s applying for grants and remains hopeful. Anyone interested in helping can reach Nilda Morales at 946-8817
hey people im Alex Garcia and thats me with my daddy and i would love to no if u guys loved the project my class did!! But now me and my class were inspired by this show on the foodnetwork channel, its called "Ace of Cakes", (which is the best show ever!!) and now me and my whole class are gonna make cakes (non-edible). My theme is a 15 year olds party! Well im actually thinking ahead and disigning MY 15 b-day cake! So i guess its more of a suprise for my parents instead! Im only 12 going on 13 on August 17, but its ok to plan ahead! :P (Dale Chihuly Rockz!!!) And thanks to Mr. Appel, the reporter who interviewed me, for over hearing me and my daddy talking bout the project, you've made me like an internet star!LOLz! Peace!