Art project

I have started a collaborative project at the middle school where I teach art. It involves working with the local Arts Center, a visiting artist, and 32 12-year-olds. It means working with broken glass, expensive adhesive, annoying grout, and mdf board sawn into 8" squares by an obliging helper.

The resulting 40x48" mosaic will be displayed in the local civic art gallery: pressure! Pressure to produce something "of value." Pressure to step out of my comfort zone of paper and paint, ink and watercolor.

If I forget about the pressure, though, and just enjoy the process, well then, how fun!

First the glass pieces had to be sorted into color groups. The artist had warned me that the sorting process would take forever. But when you have eight 12-year-olds working, it hardly takes any time at all. A handful of kids sorted 25 pounds of glass shards in less than 2 forty-five minute class periods. They loved doing this.

They loved the little pieces of beautiful glass. And so did I.

Well, I don't know. So far, so good. Dare I continue to share the progress of this project? Now that I started I suppose I must continue and let you know how it goes. Not everything we do in middle school art class is a slam-dunk. That's just part of the learning process, right?