Goodnow Garden Totem Project

This is an awesome project! I was invited to a 6 day residency by Amy Macht (The Macht Foundation) and Gloria Jenkins from the Goodnow Community Center in Baltimore. I have worked with them before to create Good Character Banners, Ancestor Masks and even a fiberglass Baltimore Crab sculpture with the young people who come to them for after school activities.

When I arrived at the center for a planning meeting, I saw the new community garden that they had created last Summer. I immediately envisioned the totems in my mind's eye! I was told that their neighborhood has new residents who are refugees from Bhuton and the Congo. The fact is that they had requested the opportunity to grow food on some unused land at the center. Out of this sprung a Community Garden.

Six workshops later, our participants had reviewed totem history in the Americas as well as abroad to inspire them. The created shapes and sketches for each piece on the poles. They then painted their shapes which were assembled onto the poles to bring the energy of growth, partnership and sustainability to their own garden.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Collaboration

Within each residency, students achieve success as individual artists as well as in collaboration with fellow students.

Baltimore Ceramic Mask Making Residency

This is definately an exciting opportunity. I am working with an awesome art teacher and students to create "self portrait" masks. I have 4 days with the students, day 1 we worked with clay to cast faces, day two we shared a cool presentation on mask history and current uses from all over the world. We then created unique surface designs for our masks. Here are some pics from the first two of four workshops.

MSAC Arts in Education Selection Conference 2009

Today I attended the annual MSAC Arts in Education Selection Conference. This year it was held again at the Howard County Arts Council in Ellicott City. The conference is held to give schools and artists a chance to network and plan for the upcoming AIE grant cycle.

I was surprised to see handful of schools that were represented. In fact the whole event was pretty well empty in relationship to past year's events. Usually I have 15-20 new contacts when I leave the place and today, 5 new folks!

It was also good to meet the new MSAC AIE program director, a writer whose name is Christina Stewart. Thanks for the pic Chris! After she welcomed everyone to the conference, she announced that there have been a few changes to the program for next year. Most amazing, is the fact that all artists now MUST have a certificate of insurance on file at the MSAC office proving that we carry liability coverage of 1 million dollars.

I love these unfunded mandates. I remember when the Bush administration passed nclb and the schools were crying about this sort of thing. Now they are doing the same to the artists who offer residencies in the communities.