Here’s the Schedule! Volunteer Program for 2010-2011

It’s here:  10_11 Workshop Schedule  – the workshop schedule for the coming school year.  A World of Art:  New Mexico’s Treasures will help you teach children about Pueblo pottery, Navajo weaving, Hispanic tin smithing and the landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe. Just click on the link and you’ll have a printable version of the schedule for the coming school year.  And if you’re getting ready to recruit new volunteers at your school, here are some posters you can use.  Just put your contact information in the bottom right corner:

Poster for schools 2010 color   Poster for schools 2010 bw

Stay tuned for registration forms!

Mola Workshops Began Today

The new year is off to a great start for Art in the School volunteers.  Today we had the first of three workshops for the lesson Mola! Kuna Women Create a Layered World. Dr. Nancy Pauly of UNM’s Art Education Program returned to lecture on the Kuna  women’s wonderful art in colorful fabric.  She brought her own collection of molas to share with us.

A few of Dr. Pauly's molas

Then Bethe Sailer talked about the slides which accompany the lesson and showed how to teach children to make paper and felt projects inspried by molas.  Here are a few the volunteers came up with:

     

2nd Graders Making Masks

Learning About Masks

 

       After the training workshops, our parent and grandparent volunteers ventured into classrooms throughout the city to share this lesson with the children. Joan Ellis, a long-time volunteer at Petroglyph Elementary School, introduced Courtney Silecchia’s second grade class to African masks. These are some sketches they made as they looked at slides from the lesson. Aren’t they great?  Joan also read them one of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories” – How the Elephant Got His Trunk.  One student got so interested in the masks and observed so carefully, he went home and made a mask out of cardboard and various found objects – before the mask making session in the classroom! Ms. Silecchia has it hanging in her room. I love the yarn eyebrows.

African Mask Lesson Workshop

Trainings for our Volunteer Program lesson on African Masks were held October 6th and 10th in Albuquerque, then Oct. 14th in Moriarty. Dr. Nancy Pauly, Associate Professor in the University of New Mexico’s Art Education Program, provided a wonderful background lecture on African art. She brought items from her own collection, gathered during her many trips there. Bethe Sailer showed the volunteers how to make a mask from a paper template, decorating it with seeds, beans, raffia and more. They really got into it!

It’s funny, but when you ask a bunch of adults to get their picture taken with their mask, they instantly stand up and pose!

A World of Art: Distant Shores for 2009-2010

We’re planning four very interesting lessons for the coming school year for our Volunteer Program:

An Heroic Biography: Assyria’s Royal Portraits in Relief will explore ancient Assyrian clay relief sculptures and how to create clay relief tiles.

Then it’s off to sub-Saharan Africa for African Safari: Craft a Mask. Children will learn about this art form used in tribal rituals and ceremonies, then will create their own mask.

Across the Atlantic to just off the shore of Panama in the San Blas Islands, we’ll find Mola! Kuna Women Create a Layered World. Learn how the Kuna women reflect their world in colorful, layered molas.

Let’s Explore Modern Painting: Mondrian, Kandinsky, Frankenthaler, and Stella will explore modern expressionism in European and American painters’ works. Registration forms for volunteers are on our website.