World Arts Festival

Post date: Mar 13, 2014 9:47:51 PM

Every year we, district 145, hold a what's called a World Arts festival. It's a chance to celebrate the arts and world cultures, the bands all get together and have a concert at the high school (that's pretty much every band, elementary, middle school, high school, and choruses etc. etc.) and the art departments try and get something together. The problem is we don't have a lot of places to hang artwork in the school. There's no tack strips and sometimes students can be kinda destructive so no one has really pushed for hanging art in the school. (At some point, when I find the time I'd like to write a grant to get some tack strips). We hang art on a travelling bulletin board which is really easy to use and set up, every school gets to put about five to six artworks on it. This is how the festivals gone since it's inception. Our department tries to do as much as we can, we provide free face painting, we've done tie dye, and clay demonstrations.

This year we had enough money to hire two guest artists, Tim Pfinner and Brett Whitacre. Tim is one of the founders of Great Lakes Clay, he does workshops and was kind enough to come and throw for us despite the weather ruining our original plan of having him fire Raku ware. He made quite a few forms before settling on a 25 lb. plus large vase which took the whole afternoon to complete in about three sections. Below are some pics of Tim throwing.

Our other guest artist Brett Whitacre was commissioned by Jeanie Eiler, Carl Sandurg's middle school art teacher, to paint a large work collaging things that her and Mrs. Melinda Cook's student's couldn't live without. Brett uses a reverse glass painting technique where he masks off the entire painting and cuts out sections to layer spray paint. Students were able to watch him work and ask him questions, some student's also contributed stencils to use in the spray painting process. Brett cut shapes out nearly all day and spray painted into the night. In the end Jeanie, Melinda, and I had to help paint to help finish the painting. there are some pics of Brett cutting and painting below.

Both artist's were a tremendous success and a pleasure to have, they inspired our students and brought a lot to the community. We look forward to having Tim come back to Raku in the spring and maybe having Brett back again if he's willing.