This week students participating in K.I.D.S. Art Ed after school programs with Good Shepherds Services and Red Hook Community Justice Center (RHCJC) gathered for Career Day at RHCJC to hear graphic novelist Dean Haspiel talk about his career as a cartoonist. The students have been exploring Dean's work on view at K.I.D.S. in "Cuba: My Revolution-The Making of the Graphic Novel and Related Drawings." Their explorations have included a visit to the exhibition and art making sessions with our teaching artists.
Teaching artist Katherine Gressel and RHCJC students exploring "Cuba: My Revolution" at Kentler.
During the gallery visit students explored the content of the artwork through discussion and hands-on art activities. In their follow up art making sessions, students are learning about symbols, figure drawing, layout, drafting, and composition to created their own original comic-inspired artworks. Our goals in these workshops are for young people to have a positive experience making art, to feel more confident expressing themselves, and to have a better sense of what goes into being an artist both personally but also professionally. Since the workshops are mostly focused on art making, we decided to invite Dean Haspiel to talk to the students about the more professional side of being a cartoonist.
Dean's talk took the students through his development from when he got his first drawing gig to the present.
Dean's slideshow.
One on one with the kids. Great questions. Great answers.
Forthcoming about the good and the bad, Dean described his passion for drawing and stories and his desire to develop his own ideas along with his need to make money and take on jobs that weren't always feeding his soul. When a student asked about how one could "get started," Dean's advice was this (I paraphrase): Find other people who like to do what you do. Hang out with them, talk, share ideas and challenge each other. If you like someone else's work, talk about THEIR work (not just your own) to others. In other words, help each other out, support each other! Don't get upset if a buddy gets a gig you were hoping for. Remember that they got hired because their work looks the way the employer wants. When you get hired, it will be because of YOUR "look" and your look alone. Dean reminded the students, "Don't be shy to be who you are." Thank you, Dean!
Earlier this year GKEF sponsored an educational field trip for the children in our program. Board member and Enco-Cinq community member, Karim Koumbassa, took the Guinea Kids' students on a field trip to the village of Habita. The children in our program are inner city kids, many of whom have never been in a car let alone out to the village or the fields where their food grows.
Karim was inspired with this idea to supplement the children's school education with some experiential learning about their food culture, where their food comes from, how it is grown and used. So one day they all piled into a magbana (bus or van) and set off for the fields of Habita.
Some of the children had never even been in a moving vehicle, so there were a couple sick tummies on the way out to the farmland.
Once they were arrived in Habita, the children toured the fields to see where such foods as eggplant, pineapple, peppers, and rice grow. Many of the children had never seen how a pineapple grows...
A Habita woman working in the fields spoke to the students about the food growing on the land...
Next the GKEF students walked through the palm forest and learned about the many uses of the palm tree. There are at least 5 different things the palm tree is used for in Guinea: 2 different oils, medicine, roofing, and palm wine.
The children say goodbye to the farmland and Karim shares some of his thoughts on this exceptional experience for the children...
"This is not a small thing" for these children to be generously given these experiences in their lives. This was such a special event to them. You can see how most of them wore their best clothes...to go out in a farming field! But it was the act of kindness, the act of being treated to a field trip that made it a special occasion; something that most of the children we know here in the States take for granted as a part of their education. This trip for them was very out of the ordinary. They know they are part of something special; that people around the world care about their educations, their lives. I often wonder at the difference that knowing is making in these children's lives and the lives of those around them.
If you have been a contributor to GKEF in the past, thank you so very much for supporting the dreams of these children. GKEF is able to assist them because of you.
If you would like to get onboard with supporting these kids or continue to support them, visit http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/gkef.
Teaching artist Meghan Keane used the Red Hook Waterfront Arts Festival as a chance to explore drawing and sustainability. Recycling her plastic bag collection as a drawing material she engaged children and their care-givers in yet another exciting Drawing Together exploration. Participants had the option to experiment with sailors knots to attach the plastic bags to one another or to simply create their own silly, make-up-their-own knots. Participants came and went, tying and experimenting, and slowly our plastic bag drawing grew and grew:
Our latest session of RHI After School classes is in full swing. With the help of Kentler Teaching Artist Meghan Keane and RHI tutors, Ricky and Destiny, students have been focusing on their goal for this session: "get better at drawing" but specifically "learn to draw people"!
This week students and advisers did musical chairs observational drawing. Students looked across the desk at their neighbor, observing specific facial features, and practiced drawing different parts on cardboard pieces. They switched seats every two minutes in time to music, listening to a local string quartet's new Phillip Glass recording (Brooklyn Rider).
At the end, look what sort of playful, constructed, triangular portraits they created:
RHI middle school group hard at work.
Left: a collaborative portrait playing with textured, perforated cardboard.
Left: trying out what happens when a nose goes across multiple pieces. Right: using dark shapes to create contrast between the neck and the background.
As mentioned in my first blog post, students participating in the current K.I.D.S. + RHI after school program are exploring color and texture to create a mood. Inspired by the Kentler exhibition of work by installation artist Ilene Sunshine the students are exploring the idea of creating art that is both TEMPORARY and SITE SPECIFIC. Our final after school project will involve creating an installation. Students will work in the BCS classroom using all the drawings made over the course of the seven week session. They will wrap two tables, Christo-and-Jean-Claude-style, with their drawings that explore mood. One table will be positive moods (happy, excited, vibrant) and the other will explore negative moods (sad, disappointed, somber). We will see if our audience can tell that we are using color differently in each table!
Our spring 2012 school programs are now wrapping up and student artwork is filling the hallways of P.S. 15 and Brooklyn New School!
Throughout March, April and May, teaching artists Meghan Keane and Lance Paladino revisited students in their classrooms, where they expanded upon and completed the drawings they started in the gallery. Using their original observation drawings, photographs of their temporary "imagination" drawings, and new materials such as wooden sticks and cray pas, the students created colorful, multimedia scenes of things they would like to try in the future. Have a look at their creativity in action:
We are pleased to see such rich and varied work, with each child taking an individual approach to his or her artwork. Throughout spring, the students explored two types of drawing and reflected upon their own personal histories to prompt creativity from their memories and imaginations.
We are so very proud of our talented students and can't wait for more exciting programs in the fall!
To know 16 year old Bosana Toure (aka Ismael) is to know a bright and shining star. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, Ismael describes the role of an ambassador. A most charismatic young person, Ismael maintains his zest for life despite the tragic hardships he has recently endured.
Bosana took the name Ismael after both of his parents were killed in a car accident when he was 13. This has been a tenuous period for Ismael and school. After his parents’ death, he lost interest in school and was found to be wandering his neighborhood instead of attending school. GKEF board members Karim Koumbassa and Alya Koumbassa both counseled Ismael, having brotherly heart to heart talks and encouraging him to stay in school. He continues with school and the GKEF program and he is our student in the highest level: year 8.
Ismael has a gift for creative and entrepreneurial intelligence. His capacity for learning is great and his potential needs to be guided and challenged by a supportive, high quality education experience.
You can support a bright future for Ismael and many other children like him by making a donation today.
