CAPE After School 2020-2021: bAnansi Knowbody / Tracy Netter
In our After school visual arts program we wanted to explore the concept of self and sculpture. We wanted to gain a better understanding of ourselves through mindfulness and portraiture.
Many of our students were without art supplies when we began. We improvised and came up with small self-reflection booklets easily constructed from folded paper. Starting out we were most concerned with making adjustments and keeping the students engaged. We did not record much or think to take pictures so I only have examples of the samples I made before and during class. The students were given prompts in the form of 3 questions for them to ask themselves. Simple questions like; what makes you sad/ happy and why? And one thing that they were looking forward to. They were then asked to divide their papers into four quadrants by folding them. In the first space, they were asked to draw a portrait of themselves by looking at their image on the computer/ a mirror/ or their phones. In each remaining space, they were asked to draw a picture or write out a response to the questions.
Self Reflection Booklets
Drawing ourselves
I had the students draw versions of themselves as stick people, an idea I came up with during a previous summer where we were exploring yoga and sculpture through clay. Students drew out stick figures and then a body outside of the stick figure. afterwich they identified major points of mobility (neck, wrist, elbows, hips, knees, and ankles)
Yoga Books and Mats
We'd plan to keep an element of stretching and use our warm-up as an introduction to yoga similar to a previous sculpture class where students used clay to replicate yoga poses they'd learned in class. We bought books and mats and initially began each class going through a series of poses and breathing after which each student would read a passage from the book and lead us in the prompted exercise. Not everyone had a book, to begin with so sometimes Mrs. Netter would have to pull up the available pages online so that each of our students would have a chance to read. Some students like Valerie our most consistent student took it upon herself to create her own breathing exercise.
Snowflakes as sculpture
The kids were getting kind of restless making booklets and talking about themselves so we started talking about sculpture. As I mentioned before in a previous class we made sculptures depicting yoga poses. That was kind of the motivation at the start, but students were loosing interest in yoga real quick so we new we would have to pivot. The class size was beginning to diminish. I wanted to keep them engaged without needing a whole lot of materials. We started to make snow flakes. We did this for about a week, during which we talked about symmetry, and patterns, 2D vs 3D, the need for a strong foundation or a wide base for something to stand on its own. We talked about the snow flakes as sculptures and propped them up as tents. I told them if they put a light up it becomes a lamp and cast cool shadows on the wall. Some of them tried it out to see. We were trying to think of materials available that kids could use other than paper. I asked them about foil and cardboard and only some had access to them. Using some leftover foam and wire I made a cursory sketch of a sculpture. I showed it to class and pictures of the Alexander Calder sculpture downtown at the post office. Some mentioned that they'd seen it before. We decided we need to get them more materials other than yoga mats and books.
I designed packets of art supplies sculpture packets for the class. It included a wood plank with five peg holes drilled in it. 5 10 inch wires, an assortment of pipe cleaners, scotch tape, glue, construction and tissue paper, and some water paints. I took them to the school and encouraged the kids to pick them up when they could. In the meantime, the snowflakes were getting kind of played out. We were still engaged in our daily routine of yoga and stretching and I wanted to make sure the kids were still making a connection between the bodywork of our yoga exercises and the artwork we were producing.
Paper-Doll Families
Paper-Cutout Chains
We had the students sketch out the basic yoga warrior 2. In the shape of the body outline we drew out a stick figure and identified our joints or "places of mobility", that allows our bodies to move, bend, and turn. I encourged the students to personalize each cutout as different examples of self or general interest. I told them to use their imaginations, to think of them as differences in personality, or persons within a family. They seemed to be more interested in the connectedness of the paper people and less about the details of each. I think this had to do with limited color options. I made examples of myself but because the class was at this point solely made up of girls I made cutouts of ladies with skirts or shorts and long hair.
We were trying to get the kids to have fun, stay engaged, and represent themselves and families with pride. We drew out members of our families on paper, glued them to cardboard and cut them out. Cardboard was found material discarded or appropiated from cereal boxes or shoe boxes.
I didn't know at the time of suggesting paper doll families but it turned out that Mrs. Netter collected paper doll books which served as the perfect example of what we were trying to produce. Vanity is seen here showing one of her doll cutouts.
Interest would wane from time to time and sometimes students just wanted to show what they'd been working on, on their own. This would occur while we had and ongoing project or while I was in the middle of giving instruction. Different from in person learning where I can more easily re-direct their attention, with remote learning we just kind of leaned into these deviations. We had no choice but see the value in the un-orthodox way of learning and teaching our class was taking.
We managed to get a few of the families completed before they lost all interest. The picture above shows some examples of the work produced. I recall this being a particular difficult time because students weren't showing up consistently and when they did we found ourselves spending so much time catching them up to speed it took away from some of the progress of the students who were more engaged and had more regular attendance.
Describe something or give instructions about something you know how to do.
We brought back the self reflection books. To break up some of the monotony. We we're down to only one regular student and an alternating pair, from 6-8 person when we first started, and when they did come they either have their cameras off or turned toward the ceiling so we couldn't tell if they were even engaged or not. I was begging to loose interest and motivation myself. We added a new element to our reflection booklets. Valerie described making fried chicken.
Reaction to Derrick Chauvin verdict...
On occasion we would take the pulse of the students reaction or concerns about current events. On this particular day Valerie was the only student in attendance.
