Arts Educators Learn
Tools of the Trade
by Sybil Maimin
Art teachers from the five boroughs
recently met at Fiorello LaGuardia High School for Music
and Art and Performing Arts for the 22nd annual New York
City Art Teachers Association (NYCATA) conference to share
talents, techniques, and perspectives and to honor some of
their own for outstanding work in the field. The full day
of activities included a keynote address by noted architect
James Stewart Polshek and numerous hands-on workshops that
ranged from how to make puppets from everyday materials to
using computer technology in the art studio. The day concluded
with a gala reception in Lincoln Center’s
Cork Gallery where many works by teachers were exhibited.
James Polshek, who was honored as “Artist of the Year,” is
particularly well known for designing the Rose Center for Earth
and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. His firm,
Polshek Partnership Architects, primarily serves not-for-profit
educational, cultural and scientific organizations and its
credits include the Santa Fe Opera, the National Inventors
Hall of Fame, and the renovation and expansion of both the
Brooklyn Museum and Carnegie Hall. Current projects include
the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and a new building
for New York City’s Lycee Français, a private
school.
Polshek explained to the assembled
teachers that he does not consider architecture an art form
because, unlike art, it cannot be arbitrary. With the help
of slides he illustrated the evolution of two projects, the
Rose Center and the Lycee Français,
emphasizing, “architecture is about collaboration” and
involves many skills including design, construction, technology,
heat, and light. Twenty-four people in his office worked on
the Rose Center. He lamented that today “architecture
is increasingly a celebration of the individual,” “an
ego trip,” and noted that we marvel at the great buildings
of medieval Europe and Asia without knowing the names of their
designers. Ideas for the Rose Center were explored via science
fiction illustrations, Styrofoam models, and flashes of inspiration.
The “idea of a space where events in space can be replicated” was
key. Because some people are intimidated by museums, the Rose
Center was made visually accessible to those on the outside.
The museum is a landmark, he acknowledged, but “landmarks
have to go on, to be transformed. Architecture is a vehicle
for giving new life to an old place.” Meeting a different
challenge, he and his firm designed the Lycee to be “sublimely
rational,” because “that’s what’s French
about it.” It will be an ècole de verre, a school
of glass.
Inspired by this master architect,
the teachers chose from among 34 workshops that offered exemplary
curriculum models, management strategies, and resource guides.
Becoming students themselves, teachers sat at tables in the
class of Temima Gezari, a 96 year old dynamo who shared her
secrets of how to give students confidence in their abilities
to draw (stroke the head and back of an imaginary cat and
then replicate that stroking movement with a pencil on paper).
Using simple materials–scissors,
colored paper, and glue–teachers produced wonderful two-dimensional
designs in Muriel Silberstein-Storfer and Electra Askitopoulos-Friedman’s
class while learning the effectiveness of hands-on experiences
in conveying the importance and joy of art. Eastern art techniques
were learned in a sumi-e (ink-stick painting) workshop. The
teachers were given brushes, ink, and rice paper and taught
the brush strokes and ink gradations used to depict traditional
subjects such as bamboo, chrysanthemums, and irises. A model-making
workshop taught architectural principles and suggested how
they could be learned in the classroom through references to
the school, home, or neighborhood. Learning “to see” from
Noguchi sculptures, telling students African tales to foster
pride and broaden understanding of “ethnic chic,” and
planning museum tours were some of the many other opportunities
to learn and bring ideas back to the classroom that were offered.
Joan Davidson, president of NYCATA, explained that the New
York City Visual Arts Standards formed a framework for the
workshops, and the perspectives gained would help teachers
accomplish the vital task of “building art education.”#
