Center for Art and Community Partnerships: News

The Big Draw is an international art movement begun by U.K. based Campaign for Drawing. The goal of the Big Draw is to "prove that drawing can be a public activity as well as a private passion." On Monday, October 9, the CACP partnered with the Gardner Museum, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Fenway Alliance to bring the first Big Draw to Boston. The day-long affair in Evans Way Park yielded an incredible amount of mixed media artworks made by passerbys that included young people and adults alike.





DRAWING GIZMOS
On the day of the Big Draw, visitors were challenged to invent 'Drawing Gizmos' (giz-mo: a device considered to be more complicated than necessary) Using sticks, and wire, velcro and rubber bands, brushes and charcoal, string and markers, fake fingernails and gloves, visitors used their unique tools to create collaborative drawings.

DRAWING ACROSS SPACE
Also on the day of the Big Draw was "Drawing across Space," an interactive video conference co-hosted by the Museum School and MassArt. A webcam at each site recorded drawings created on a giant wall, and projected those marks across the neighborhood to overlap with images created at the second location.

SPARRING PARTNERS EXHIBITION
As part of the Big Draw, three MassArt students and three Museum School students have work exhibited in the Sparring Partners window space on the corner of Longwood and Huntington Avenue. The works consist of painting and mixed media drawing, and are on exhibition for the entire month of October.

A collaborative project of Handshouse Studio, the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at MassArt, and art classes at Ipswich High School, Duxbury High School, Beacon High School, and Norwell High School.

September 11 - October 5, 2006
Arnheim Gallery, MassArt (South Hall room 108)
Reception: October 5, 6:00 - 8:00pm free and open to the public

MassArt sculpture professors Rick and Laura Brown have worked for two years with five high school teachers and their classes to reconstruct the 17th century Polish Gwozdziec Synagogue which was destroyed during World War Two. This project is part of an international effort to understand the symbolic potential in architecture, the dynamic relationship between technology and culture, and the importance of the preservation of the cultural landscape. The project was carried out in six stages:

1. Teachers participated in a workshop where they learned about the paintings’ history, received technical information, created a replica painting, and produced curricula.
2. Each teacher introduced the project to their respective institutions and art classes beginning with an historic overview.
3. High school students learned how to draw, trace, and lay out images, extracting information from limited documentation of the synagogue’s interior frescoes.
4. Students were introduced to period paint and pigment types as well as color studies, brush techniques, templates, and stenciling.
5. Students produced test paintings and then produced final paintings at full scale on traditional wooden panels.
6. The four completed panels are brought together for a group exhibition

Visit the Arnheim Gallery starting September 11th to see portions of the Gwozdziec Synagogue’s interior frescoes recreated with the help of the Browns’ research and collaborations with Museums and art schools from RISD to MassArt to Poland.

The Center for Art and Community Partnerships announces the opening of the 2006 Sharing Our Stories exhibition on June 8th in the Sparring Partners Gallery at 635 Huntington Ave and the MassArt Arnheim Gallery at 621 Huntington Ave.

Sharing Our Stories is a 7-year-old art and literacy program in which undergraduate students from Massachusetts College of Art work with elementary school classrooms in selected Boston Public Schools on the integration of visual art and writing.

During the 2005-06 school year, Sharing Our Stories partnered with two combined second and third grade classrooms at the Mission Hill School in Roxbury, taught by Kathy Clunis and Amina Michel-Lord. MassArt student teachers worked with 45 Mission Hill School students on a self-portrait and autobiography project in which children assumed the roles of historical figures. With help from teachers and MassArt students, the 2nd and 3rd graders conducted research on their chosen characters and time-periods from futuristic robots to Japanese Geishas, hip hop artists, 1970’s rockers, and Native Americans during the time of Columbus. Classes have mixed drawing and writing lessons to allow students’ art to inspire their writing and vice versa. For both art and writing, lessons have emphasized the creation of multiple drafts and sketches to hone the final product.

The end-of-year exhibition and celebration showcases the Mission Hill School students’ writing and artwork from sketch to framed paintings and from rough drafts to completed writing.

BOSTON: The Dana-Farber Children’s Hospital Cancer Care Program, the Massachusetts College of Art Center for Art and Community Partnerships, MassArt design students and Associate Professor of Graphic Design Lisa Rosowsky have collaborated on a new cookbook for pediatric cancer patients and their families, which has just recently rolled off the press. What’s Cooking: Fun Recipes for Family Wellness will be distributed free of charge to incoming patients at both the Dana-Farber in Boston and at the Sloan Kettering Center in 
New York.

Children receiving treatment for cancer often experience appetite-affecting side effects such as nausea, diarrhea, constipation, mouth sores, high blood pressure and changes in taste. It becomes critical to find foods these children will enjoy eating, and which will also offer maximum nutritional value. Although several good cookbooks exist for adult cancer patients, there is currently no resource of this kind for children with cancer, whose needs and tastes differ greatly from adults. Nutritionists, nurses, child life specialists and education resource specialists at the Dana-Farber see a genuine need for such a cookbook, which would benefit young cancer patients, and could become a model at other cancer centers nationwide.

What’s Cooking: Fun Recipes for Family Wellness contains recipes that address many aspects of pediatric cancer care issues—recipes for children on high-calorie diets and for those experiencing nausea related to chemotherapy or other cancer treatments, but it also contains recipes the entire family can make and enjoy together. Dana-Farber currently offers a What’s Cooking class to teach patients and their families how to prepare appetizing foods such as smoothies and pizzas, and this class has generated many favorite recipes, which have been included in the cookbook as well. Nutritional information appears throughout, as well as food preparation and safety tips for children who want to cook alongside their families. The cookbook is generously illustrated with full-color photography by Jim Scherer, and designed for ease-of-use, with a stay-flat binding and wipe-clean covers.

Students in Professor Rosowsky’s Graphic Design Print Production course at Massachusetts College of Art designed and produced What’s Cooking: Fun Recipes for Family Wellness. The course covers all issues involved in print production, from pre-press through post-press and everything in between. Each year, the class teams up on a public service print project, often one that benefits or is about children. Students are immersed in every aspect of each project from design to editing to production. Past projects have been printed by some of New England’s finest printers.

On December 14th 2005 MassArt architecture students in Professor Paul Hajian’s Design Works class presented designs for re-configuration of the Joslin Diabetes Center’s Pediatric and Adolescent Unit. Staff from MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships met with the Joslin Pediatric Clinic’s child-life specialist and other staff members during the summer of 2005 to determine the Clinic’s needs and interest in partnering with MassArt. Joslin staff felt that MassArt students could be most useful in providing options and ideas for a re-design of the Clinic’s public spaces including the reception area, main hallway, waiting areas, and play areas for children. The Center contacted Professor Hajian, and facilitated a partnership between Joslin and the Design Works class through the Center’s Classroom-Community Collaborations program.

Students in Professor Hajian’s class conducted interviews with Clinic staff and users to determine patterns of use and occupancy in the space, as well as to solicit users’ ideas and needs. Designers tackled the challenge of conceptualizing a unique and inviting space that would appear reassuring and welcoming to all Clinic patients ranging from infancy to young adulthood, as well as stimulating and aesthetically pleasing to Clinic administrative and medical staff. Over a period of 6 weeks students created designs for the Pediatric Clinic while learning about mapping interior spaces, creating elevations, interior lighting concepts, and theories of color in interior design. Relationships between colors, lighting, and interior space were the focus of Professor Hajian’s class.

MassArt students presented their final design concepts to a group of Joslin administrators, doctors, nurses, and child-life specialists at the end of the Fall 2005 semester, drawing upon their personal artistic interests as well as concepts learned in Design Wo

BOSTON - 635 Huntington Avenue (Formerly Sparr’s and the Spa-rriffic Soda Fountain) has been converted into the Sparring Partners gallery through a partnership between Mission Hill Main Streets, MassArt, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Harvard Medical School. This storefront space will be used to exhibit work by MassArt and Museum School students and by artists (both adults and children) living in the Mission Hill neighborhood. Over the coming semesters, Sparring Partners will serve as a bridge between local art schools, encouraging collaboration and mutual appreciation of student work and ideas. In addition, the gallery space will provide a collaborative forum for local artists, community members, and students to share work and ideas, contributing to Huntington Avenue’s and Mission Hill’s growing arts presence.

On December 5th the Sparring Partners sign was installed on the building’s Huntington Avenue face in preparation for the gallery’s first show. “A Room of Our Own,” coordinated by Mission Hill Main Streets, opens on December 10th and runs through early February. The show consists of a collection of autobiographical works by local women based around a standard-issue 14’x14” cardboard box and Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own. “A Room of Our Own” was first exhibited in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2002 – more recently the concept of the show has been adopted by communities and artists around the country.

Representatives from MassArt’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships, the Museum School, Harvard Medical School, and Mission Hill Main Streets designed the gallery space, and will jury submitted artwork and oversee installation. Students from each school will be invited to join the committee for the purpose of selecting art for specific shows, and the group will encourage MassArt and Museum School students to submit proposals for joint shows including work from both schools. A team of MassArt and Museum School students will be responsible for gallery upkeep and the logistics of designing and hanging new shows.

BOSTON: The Center for Art and Community Partnerships at MassArt was recently awarded a one-year grant, with the possibility of continuing support, from the Linde Family Foundation. These funds will allow the Center, now entering its second year, to strengthen and expand existing programs and collaborations with local organizations, schools, and communities.

“This grant proves to be a wonderful vote of confidence,” say Center Co-Directors John Giordano and Sandy Weisman. “We look forward to using our resources to offer inner city children exposure to and training in the visual arts, engaging MassArt’s scholarly, artistic, and educational expertise in partnership with the broader community.”

Support from the Linde Family Foundation will provide funding for:

Expansion of Looking to Learn, an innovative gallery education program that brings elementary, middle, and high school students into MassArt’s professional galleries to build confidence in analyzing, discussing, and responding to contemporary art.;

Development of Art After School, a new visual arts program for middle school students from the New Boston Pilot Middle School, administered in partnership with MassArt’s Art Education Department and the Boston Arts Academy;

Expansion of MassArt’s youth scholarship program offering students from local neighborhoods and elementary schools opportunities to participate in MassArt’s K-12 programming during the school year and over the summer, including Saturday Studios, XTreme Week, and Creative Vacation.

All these initiatives further the Center’s goal of facilitating local young people’s engagement with the discovery, creation, and appreciation of the visual arts, while introducing them to college-level facilities, coursework, and academic support.

After a year of creating new programs and expanding on previous community collaborations, the Center is poised to expand its impact, both on campus and in Boston’s neighborhoods. Recruiting student and faculty participants to strengthen programs is a key goal for the Center this year, along with building thoughtful, mutually beneficial partnerships with community organizations and schools.

# posted by Center for Art and Community Partnerships @ 3:35 PM