|
|
Banner photo
PAAM’s curator of education, Lynn Stanley, with Kyle Ings from the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School during preparation for the student-curated exhibition. |
|
|
Banner photo
Jonathan Earle and Alex Leonard from the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School work on their sketches from paintings by Selina Trieff and B.J.O. Nordfeldt. |
|
The art of critical thinking
Students use curating and creating to hone sharper minds
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Art, what’s it for? Why does it matter? In terms of education, how does it enhance the students’ understanding of life and of themselves? The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St., has been asking and answering those questions in a hands-on way for 13 years, and the results speak for themselves as the youngsters have become comfortable looking at art, thinking about art, writing about art and making art.
As part of the ongoing student-curated shows that include original artwork by the students as well as selections from PAAM’s collection, students from the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School’s 6th, 7th and 8th grade are presenting “A Closer Look: The Art of Interpretation.” There will be a reception for the show (along with a member’s show titled “Black and White”) from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday. The student show will remain on display through March 26.
The current exhibition was curated by Lighthouse Charter students Ryan Chartrand, Jonathan Earle, Nicholas Fiske, Spencer Houde, Kyle Ings, Patrick Kimber, Alex Leonard, David Moller, Connor Mountain, Lily Olin and Georgia Zinn. Vicky Tomayko and Susan Lyman served as instructors and artists to work with the youngsters to put together the show.
PAAM has been working with Outer Cape schools, beginning with Veterans Memorial Elementary School and Provincetown High School, for 13 years. In that time of inviting students in to curate and make art, an entire generation of students from grade one through graduation has taken part in the experience. More recently, PAAM has expanded its reach to include students in Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham and Orleans.
“The program started with the idea that the children of Provincetown live with a rich cultural history,” says PAAM’s curator of education, Lynn Stanley.
The children, Stanley says, had family members who were artists, family friends who were artists and access to 100 years of art being made in town. The program was intended to reintroduce this heritage to local youngsters. In the program’s early days, before today’s technological world, paintings were taken to the elementary school and discussed. Then the thought was to bring the students, and by extension their families, into the museum.
At that point Polaroids were used to take a sampling of work to the kids for them to choose from, and over time, a list of what comprises appropriate art for each age group was formulated. For instance, younger students relate better to narrative, figurative work since they are starting to learn to describe their world.
Over the years the program has expanded to include both making art and writing about it. What has emerged is much more than art appreciation, Stanley says. The experience dovetails with the educational thrust toward improving critical thinking.
“When children and adults look at art and discuss what’s happening, critical thinking is developed and expanded in ways many other kinds of teaching do not do,” says Stanley.
She describes the four stages of critical thinking and “meta-cognition,” which is thinking more comprehensively about what one is thinking. The first stage is observation and the second is making inferences based on the evidence one has observed. In the third stage, one speculates and makes predictions based on the evidence, and in the fourth stage, one develops the ability to revise and expand on conclusions one has drawn based on taking in new information either from continued observation or interaction with others relating to their observations.
Stanley says the student curators constantly surprise her with their observations. A recent group of second-grade students was looking at an installation piece which included matches, and the kids decided that clearly the work was not done by a kid but by someone much older since kids are not allowed to work with matches. In discussions about the work the kids get to direct the conversations and focus on issues that are important to them in their life at this time.
The program has turned into a multiple whammy as kids get to see art, make art, have fun and sharpen their thinking and writing skills.
“Art feeds us spiritually and emotionally and it gives us context for meaning,” Stanley says. “It is so rich. You can return to the same piece of work again and again. When the students come in we hope they have a direct emotional response that expands and enriches their lives and that they feel it belongs to them and that they belong here.”
Another part of the program is aimed at countering the pervasive thought that art and museums are elite. When the kids come in they get so involved with the piece they have chosen to work with that they wind up with a sense of ownership for that piece of art that ensures they will remember it for life.
“There’s not a kid out there who doesn’t want to make art,” Stanley says of the wide open creative urges of childhood. “Somewhere along the line we lose people. We want to be meaningful to our community and right now [relative to art] there is a whole kind of disenfranchisement in our culture.”
One class at a time, PAAM is fighting that and winning hearts and minds with each student exhibit.
“You can have a really great building with not a lot going on in it. That’s not where we are at,” Stanley says. “I cry sometimes when I read what they’ve written. It reaffirms how important art is and how it allows for dialogue we don’t get to have usually.
“Learning takes place in the body. Creating a fertile environment for that to happen, child by child, that’s what we do.”
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
|
In the Arts
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 9th, 2006