Energetic chatter fills the room, and it’s time for West Jefferson Elementary School art teacher Mike Wisniewski to mold the creative chaos into education.
“I’m planning for when half the class is done with their projects and half isn’t,” Wisniewski said with a laugh.
Wisniewski has taught art to schoolkids for 22 years, showing them how to use their subconscious skills and vision for creative results. He believes that “art comes from a play kind of place.”
He splits his time among Elk Creek, West Jefferson and Marshdale elementary schools.
“As a teacher, first and foremost I’m an artist,” Wisniewski said.
He teaches art at West Jefferson Elementary School most of the time, and different grades are working on different projects using the widest variety of materials possible.
Wisniewski uses many methods to get kids interested in art, including posters, puppets and even rap music.
In fourth grade, they talk about modern art and how it’s being created today as opposed to “dead-guy art,” as Wisniewski calls it.
He said his favorite artist, though it’s hard to choose, is Wassily Kandinsky. He likes his work because Kandinsky created artwork from something as simple as a feeling.
Wisniewski introduces art history with finger puppets that converse with him about important aspects of the artists’ lives and characteristics that define their art.
“I goof with them but answer their questions as seriously as I can,” he said.
After the business of art history introduction is over, Wisniewski adds a lesson in rap.
Impressionist artist Claude Monet was introduced to the class this way:
Claude Monet is here to stay,
We see his paintings every day,
In living rooms, shopping malls and even in elementary school halls.
For painting nature, he had a gift,
With shapes that seem to blend and shift,
Just like the wind was blowing right through it,
When it came to painting, he said just do it!
Music plays as big a part as paint does in Wisniewski’s life, and near the work tables sits his collection of CDs covered with the dust of past art projects. He’ll also play his guitar to inspire students to attack their art projects with the same zeal as they attack recess.
An old Beatles poster adorns the wall of the classroom near the images of Kandinsky, Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe and many others included in Wisniewski’s definition of artist.
“The kids like that. It’s another kind of input, a different kind of medium, different kind of art,” Wisniewski said.
Learning by doing
Dylan Hart, a first-grader at West Jeff, concentrates intensely while gluing down the edges of his color-weave project.
“I’ve been doing art since I was 3,” Dylan said. “I’m an expert with glue.”
First-graders are learning about mathematics through color-weaving that reinforces their counting skills. Other grades weave loom patterns, and some work on relief or flat sculptures made out of clay, creating vignettes and a moment in time.
Madeline Hornfeck, a second-grader, said she could see the picture in her mind even before she began working on her clay sculpture.
“It’s like pottery. Shape it, heat it, paint it and take it home,” she said.
The fifth-grade classes have made wire sculptures covered with plaster and painted with bright colors. The wire sculptures are destined for the display cases in the hall, where they will stay for the rest of the school year.
After the students are done with their sculpture and weaving projects, some classes will move on to building 3-dimensional models with working doors and windows, cartoon drawing and monochromatic studies using magazines and a variety of paints.
“The hardest part is to get them to stop working,” Wisniewski said, “and that’s a good thing.”
From the High Timber Times, April 21, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment