Traveling Exhibits Inspiration Avenue: I'd Like To Share A Love Note......

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

I'd Like To Share A Love Note......

As coordinator for Traveling Exhibits I get the wonderful privilege of working with Teachers, Librarians and Museum Directors across the country gifting awe, inspiration and a memorable, cultural, museum experience to "Many". Whether hosting Art exhibits, Science or Social Studies there is a lot to experience and learn from each Traveling Exhibit, bringing their subject matter larger than life. As Traveling Exhibits continues to grow, we are becoming busier and busier and our fan mail is poring in. Skip the owner of Teacher's Discovery has re-named our fan mail to our "Love Letters". If you've read my introduction here on my blog than you know that I have created this blog to be used as a venue for our exhibit renters to inspire their peers. Well keeping on with that agenda I decided that I really wanted to share this love letter with you from Ms. Maxwell, Spanish Teacher at Woodglen School in Califon, NJ. So.... Here's Ms. Maxwell.....
Dear Lisa,
I extend tardy but hearty thanks to you and Teacher's Discovery. I have always enjoyed and used all the great items I have purchased in the past from Teacher's Discovery, but I was most impressed with the traveling art show. The promotional material was excellent. Our custodial staff, Mrs. Gaskill and I had no problem installing and dismantling the show. What a great product from conception to presentation. However, now there is an emptiness that must be filled. We realize what we were missing.... art and color.
What a transformation Picasso made to the room and what a reaction we had from our audiences. We planned the date to coincide with our drama club presentation of "Mulan" to increase exposure. Everyone who entered the room paused to study when confronted with the paintings on the wall. The PTA who sponsored the show had but one response; what are we going to do next year, Kahlo? The Board of Education enjoyed the back drop to their meeting. The show affected many. The custodial staff had their coffee breaks and lunch in the room just to be able to see it more often.
Cheryl Gaskill and I were able to co-teach a lesson to our joint Spanish classes using the life sized Picasso paintings. It was great to have them see the paintings almost as they would be, rather than using a book or a too small poster. Many were truly mesmerized and it gave them an opportunity to study three paintings in depth. Had they gone to the museum, they would not have walked away so impressed nor so educated. Less is more. Students we did not expect to like the show wanted more. They loved it, but that is how art works, it speaks to some more than others. Even if they did not like art they were able to see how two paintings by the same man can be very different. They could sense the light, colorful calm before the storm of Night Fishing at Antibes compared to the negative, harsh reality of Guernica.
In my next class I had the students try their hand at drawing like Picasso. They were to draw faces of other students and were to try to capture their personality or their physical characteristics... but not in a traditional manner (no oval face!), as Picasso might have at age 80. Amazingly many could. They seemed to understand what he was trying to do and a bit more of the man himself. I credit the show for allowing them to experience art in depth for at least one day.
Thank you again, personally I loved it and miss it. However, it inspired our school to create some Student Wall Art next year. Looking forward to future exhibit rentals.
Sincerely,
Jerilyn Maxwell, Spanish Teacher

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Things That Make You Go Hmmm.... Did You Know?

Did you know x-ray technology has shown that there are three different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci spent 12 years on Mona Lisa's lips?

Did you ever wonder where Mona Lisa's eyebrows are?

Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is 2'6" x 1'9"?

Did you know that when Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, six replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price in the three years before the original was recovered?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci invented high heels?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci wrote all of his personal notes from right to left, forcing those who read them to use a mirror?

Did you know in all of Salvador Dali's paintings you can find a self-portrait?

Did you know Salvador Dali designed a chess set for the American Chess Federation? The pieces were modeled after his and his wife Gala's fingers using casts of his molars for crowns.

Did you know Henri Rousseau was a self taught artist? He never took an art class and began painting in his forties.

Did you know although Henri Rousseau was known as a charmingly naive "primitive" artist, his rap sheet included jail time for theft and bank fraud?

Did You know Vincent vanGogh was a missionary before he started painting?

Did you know that when you look at a bright color (like red) and then look at a piece of white paper: You briefly see its opposite (pale blue)? Try it, it works!

Did you know that Michelangelo was 26 when he started his statue of David? He finished it 17 months later.

Did you know that Frederic-August Bartholdi sculpted The Statue of Liberty?

Did you know that Pablo Picasso's career lasted seventy-eight years? From 1895 until his death in 1973.

Did you know that the only sculpture that Michelangelo signed was The Pieta, completed in 1500?

Did you know that Mary Cassatt was the only American to exhibit with the Impressionists?

Did you know that Vincent vanGogh completed over 800 paintings and 850 drawings in the decade before his death?

Did you know that Jackson Pollock studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York?

Did You Know? Picasso's Girl with a Ponytail Sylvette David is an artisit

Lydia Sylvette David began her artistic life not as a painter, but as a model for Pablo Picasso. When she was seventeen years old, she was living in the south of France with her English-born mother who was an artist, her brother, and her boyfriend, Toby Jellinek, a maker of avant-garde metal chairs. Picasso had set up a studio nearby and noticed Jellinek’s unusual pieces. He asked him to deliver a couple of the chairs to his studio, and with him went Sylvette David. Shortly after, Picasso presented a picture of her, drawn from memory, and convinced David to model for him.

A shy girl, David was tall and had striking looks. She wore her hair in a long, blond ponytail, a style like that which Brigitte Bardot would later adopt. It was her hair and face that captivated Picasso, but unlike many of his other models, their relationship was purely platonic. In the months she sat for him in 1954, Picasso produced over forty pieces based on her likeness. Photos of Picasso and his model also appeared in an issue of the widely read magazine Paris-Match.

David would relate that she began drawing to pass the time while she sat for Picasso, often posed in a rocking chair. She later married and moved to England with her husband, and not wanting to capitalize on her fame as a painter’s muse, signed her work with her married name, Lydia Corbett. Eventually, she added a second signature to her paintings and watercolors, that of Sylvette David. As her reputation as an artist grew, she exhibited her work in England and France, including several London exhibitions.

I was inspired to contact Lydia Sylvette after reading Laurence Anholt's book
"Picasso and the girl with the ponytail". She's a lovely woman. She sent me images of her artwork in hopes of developing curriculum and getting more recognition in the states. What do you think? Would you like to know more about Lydia Sylvette?

Diego Rivera helps celebrate Mexican art, music and language in Bannockburn, IL

Art Instructor Shawn Le Gloanec had this to say.... Hi Lisa! the murals were the connecting link for our cross-curricular study of mexican art, music and language. Our Spanish teacher ,music teacher and I each created lessons in our respective areas. The students listened to and performed music from mexico .The spanish classes identified many of the important Mexicans portrayed on the mural and researched their lives. In my art classes, we watched an excellent video about Rivera and other mexican mural artists such as orozco and siqueiros. We also designed and painted cloth tote bags using many of the colors and objects inspired by the mural. All of this culminated in a marvelous field trip to our Mexican Fine Arts Center in Chicago. We are looking forward to our next opportunity to bring a new mural to our school. Thank you for making yourself so available by phone,

Escher Visits Bartlesville, OK This Is What Their Daily Paper The Examiner-Enterprise had to say

Satin prints of the works of famed artist Maurits Cornelis Escher are on display this week in the library of the Bartlesville Mid-High School. Pictured along with some information about Escher are Mid-High art students (from left) Nicole Caster, Luke Libby, Blaize Kissell, Ashley Ryel and Matthew Reeder. The exhibit features some information about the artist himself, whose works have been well-received over the years by math scholars and scientists, who enjoy his use of geometric distortions. The Escher exhibit was made possible after a grant proposal by Mid-High art teacher Lea Burke was accepted by the Bartlesville Public School Foundation. The grant will result in four more exhibits being displayed in the Mid-High library during the second semester of the 2008-09 academic year.

Traveling Exhibits Meets Viktor Schreckengost