International High School at Prospect Heights
Judgement Day Mixed Media Art Residency
This Visual Art Residency was truly an Advanced Art Laboratory! Our collective mission was to help the students build a visual language that spoke to key themes in Judgment Day, a play written in 1937 by Ödön von Horváth. The play, directed by Richard Jones, had a dark and mysterious feeling with shadows and trees playing a dominant role as a visual.
A big idea that we worked with was personal identity by showing pride in our names. On the other side of the positivity we feel about ourselves there is the potential for stereotyping and gossip within our small groups and in society.
The students began by ILLUMINATING their own names by drawing in a large scale. Each day we added more art materials so each student could choose to practice and develop designs with tools they were comfortable with or they could choose to take on new studio challenges.
Next we integrated images of trees and NATURE to connect the students to that key visual in the play and to express their own feelings and ideas about the natural world around them. Many students reminisced about the beauty of the nature in their homelands.
Last, we made photographic still images we called STEREOTYPE TABLEAUS. The tableaus are theatrical and powerful! The students really ran with this part of the work and no matter how the residency progressed it seemed they kept taking time to arrange and photo document new poses.
Along with being a truly mixed-media residency, where countless art tools were introduced, there was a really interesting and unexpected outcome. The unexpected outcome was the many independent projects that popped up in every grade and class. Some of the students maintained working in their groups while others took on new visions that we supported every step of the way. The art room felt like a real living contemporary art studio. Music from around the world played, students focused or laughed or looked at each other’s work. In the end they inspired each other to try harder and get better at their art practice!
Our site-specific art installation never made it to the Park Avenue Armory but the story got told in two short films. As luck would have it, Teaching Artist Hawley Hussey had the student work wrapped safely in her car when the COVID-19 social distancing began. Innovation became the word of the day and to honor the students Ms. Hawley installed their work in her neighbor’s trampoline. The Trampoline Gallery was born! Congratulations students of International High School at Prospect Heights! Your work is heartfelt and masterful! It is as powerful in a trampoline as it would be in one of the historic rooms at The Park Avenue Armory!
This is a digital story of the Park Avenue Armory Judgement Day art Residency with 9th, 10th and 11th grade students at the International High School at Prospect Heights and their classroom art teacher Ms. Katherine Mahoney.
2020 Spring Advisory Residency
Speak it into Existence
Ms. Padmini’s Advisory Group:
Hadja, Salimatou, Shariar, Faysal, Aliou, Luis, Rachel, Cristian, Jorge, Jose, Wilbert
In this remote Advisory Class there was one main goal from Ms. Padmini: She wanted her students to connect, to have fun and to feel some joy during this unusual moment in history. We began by introducing Surrealist Games and Afro Surrealism. We invited the students into a world where art and music and research was rich and inspiring! We planted a seed called ASSEMBLAGE ART and we let the students know that the most easily obtained materials for this art form were found objects all around them. We asked a question: Why do every day objects, arranged unexpectedly, become triggers for unlocking the subconscious mind or the imagination? We talked about how artists create personal codes of communication with their art. We built a solid play list of music from around the world. During our residency the whole world changed and we thought about moments when language is so powerful it becomes an actual object. We took a look at the phrase Black Lives Matter in bright yellow bold block letters painted on the street in Washington DC. At the end of our residency we introduced artist Kerry James Marshall who invited us to think more deeply about what we think is possible! He said: "You are limited only by your ability to imagine possibilites." The Park Avenue Armory sent every student a beautiful journal to take into summer and to encourage continued creative exploration. Artist Aaron Fowler encourages us to speak our ideas into existence and that is how we got the name for this residency.