Maria Castro is in the seventh grade at Hamilton Grange Middle School and a participant in Creative Art Works in-school digital art program, where she has been creating posters that promote social justice issues that matter to her. Maria says her opinions have been shaped by her family and her teachers, but she has also been influenced by the social upheaval happening around the world in recent years.
Read MoreAccording to a study by the Wallace Foundation, middle school students say they want three things from an art program: they want to learn real skills from real teaching artists in a real art space. Last fall, Creative Art Works hit the trifecta at two after-school programs in The Bronx. Students at MS 45 created their own comic book characters in the Cartooning and Anatomy class, while students at IS 254 explored a variety of techniques in a formal drawing class. Both these semester-long programs were taught by CAW Teaching Artists and offered a deep dive into a single subject.
Read More“One thing I learned painting this mural was patience. I had a lot of arguments with my teammates over the summer, but I had to learn to get over it. We used a lot of tools this summer, but two big ones were compassion and teamwork.”
– CAW Youth Apprentice Floyd Thompson
Read MoreSculpture is meant to be viewed from all angles. This creates unique challenges for both the artist and the audience. This spring, after-school programs at MS 254 in The Bronx andPS/MS 278 in Manhattan challenged students to expand their definition of what sculpture looks like. The results include abstract sculptures made from nylon stockings, three-dimensional self-portraits, and gigantic household items such as sunglasses, playing cards and headphones.
Read MoreAlexander Calder is probably best known as the inventor of the “mobile,” a type of kinetic sculpture carefully balanced so it can move freely. Calder’s sculptures can be seen all over the world, but the reason we chose him for inspiration for a stay-at-home project is because he often made art out of things he found around the house or on the street, such as wire, yarn, fabric, recycled cans, and scraps of metal or wood. He often worked with very simple tools or no tools at all. In fact, he made many sculptures out of nothing but some wire using just his hands.
Read More“Kids at this age are perfectly ready to create stories. Characters spill from their brains. These characters might be the product of an active imagination, or a response to something they read in books or saw on TV, or they may possibly be a way of processing their own personal development.”
— CAW Teaching Artist Ayla Rexroth on student-created cartoon characters in the Cartoon and Anatomy program at Hamilton Grange Middle School.
Read More“Design is design, whether you are cutting and pasting with paper and scissors or 'cutting and pasting' on a computer. Kids who have a chance to do both make those connections.”
— CAW Teaching Artist Brandi Martin Yu on the common thread between CAW’s Book Arts and Digital Arts after-school programs at PSMS 278 in Manhattan.
Read MoreCreating a short animated video is a whole lot of fun. It’s also a whole lot of work. Bringing a few seconds of animated video to life requires hours of planning, patience, and persistence. In this Creative Art Works’ after-school program, students learned the many skills needed to bring their creative vision to life.
Read MoreStudents at Hamilton Grange Middle School are studying Greek Myths in their English Language Arts class. While Greek gods had awesome powers they also had human flaws. To better understand how fictional characters can have complex personalities, these same students will be creating their own versions of gods with a mixtures of powers and flaws in a CAW integrated painting and drawing class.
Read MoreAs an undergraduate, I studied with Stanley Whitney, who taught me to embrace the unpredictable nature of color. Stanley said you have to admit that some things are beyond your control. When your paints don’t do what you want them to do, you have to turn that into an opportunity. That’s one of the axioms in my classroom, “There are no mistakes in art!”
Read MoreIn the internet age, when social media platforms allow young people to instantly broadcast their thoughts and opinions to the world with a just a few taps on their smart phone, face-to-face conversations can seem quaint, if not downright low-tech. Yet impromptu speaking is a skill that both kids and adults use every day in school, with friends and family, and on the job. In January, students in CAW after-school art workshops had a chance to talk about their art to friends, family, teachers and administrative staff in RL (real-life) at culmination events.
Read MoreHow can a social media post help students better understand the motivations of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird? What qualities do Greek gods share with everyday heroes? These are questions that students in Creative Art Works' integrated arts programs are contemplating with this fall.
Read More“Kids at this age want to tell their own stories. The cartooning class gives them the skills and the opportunity to do that.”
CAW Teaching Artist Tom Palmer
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