In the classroom
My work as a teaching artist in the schools has been focused on inviting students to become authors and illustrators and sometimes sculptors. I provide a curriculum of playful and interactive studio activities that integrate color, pattern, symbol with collage, poetry, and prose. Whether working on paper or cloth, participants learn to see like illustrators, value words as writers, and actively engage in developing a thoughtful and enduring narrative. Residencies have resulted in pop-up books, oversized puppets, published picture books, and story quilts and textile installations. Projects often include collaborations with other teaching artists allowing for story expression to span multiple disciplines (writing, dance, theater, music).
TExtile INstallationS
Our Challenges Help us to Grow, a collaborative collage project with the fifth graders at Mills Park Elementary School. Over the Fall of 2020, with the pandemic interrupting how we traditionally teach and learn in an art classroom, we innovated. I stitched up dozens of long fabric bags to route art materials to students: paper, glue, word banks and painting crayons. MPES Art teacher, Emilie Young facilitated Google Meet sessions that allowed me to be a visiting artist and “step into” improvised studio spaces in each of the students homes. We collaged, drew, cut and experimented. Works were gathered, stitched reshuffled and collaged some more. Together 160 5th graders helped create a dynamic paper sculpture for their school.
During Elon Winterterm 2019, my sculpture students explored color and translucency with ink, paper, silk and thread creating a large floating installation; Paperscape. The students worked collaboratively and individually to answer the design challenge of activating the Elon Gallery with a fiber based work. Using a simple monoprinting process, students created 100 strands of printed cloth and paper using only pine needles as a way to make interesting marks. Paperscape will travel and be reinterpreted in a new setting in Greensboro.
Textile Arts Residency with Billingsville -Cotswold Elementary School, Charlotte, NC. Funded by Myers Park Presbyterian Church.
The Star Project, created with Elon University Art students enrolled in my Approaches to Sculpture: Fiber Construction course offered during winterterm 2017, generated 400 stars for Erwin Montessori Elementary School, Greensboro, NC. Elon students worked collaboratively to dye cotton and silks, screenprint children's drawings gathered from Erwin's Art Room, creating large 2-sided fabric collages. Each student learned how to machine stitch; sewing with abandon and then with precision. Together they produced twenty constellations of stars that transform Erwin's spacious school cafeteria.
handmade Books
I offer book arts residencies that include secret rooms, spiral and accordion structures. Students create brightly patterned papers via simple printing and painting techniques and blending words and pictures via collage. Featured below: Hero Books by Durham Academy 6th graders whose work goes on view at the FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill, NC each March.
THE COLLAGE PROJECT
Art camp at the Duke School in Durham, NC, each summer means a wild week of making puppets, books, costumes, and improv theater with rising 6-8th grade students from across Durham and Chapel Hill. The Collage Project is a week of intensive arts collaboration in which storytelling moves from paper to fabric to stage! Campers collaborate in the creation of original life-sized puppets, develop scenes, dances, and song! Have a look at excerpts from Collage Project 2017; Room Full of Stars video. Read more...
STORY QUILTS
My art quilting residencies yield large site specific wall works inspired by host organization thematic goals. Activating dye, paint and thread, participants build a fabric story via collage. Dozens of projects have included collaborating with writer, Susie Wilde, in which students write an original story in an adjoining residency that drives the illustration process. Read more...
PANGEO'S STORY
Pangeo’s Story (2007-2008) is a multidisciplinary arts project created by Scroggs Elementary School students. The collaborative story quilt was written and illustrated by the fifth grade under the direction of writer, Susie Wilde and myself. Read more...
