PAEA members and a few guests were really "fired" up on May 14th when Region 6 hosted the Fire and Flame workshop at Touchstone Center for Crafts in Farmington, PA.  The day started out with a welcome at the lodge when all the participants had arrived. They were able to view the Regional Student Art Show with some fine examples of artwork from schools in Fayette, Westmoreland and Somerset counties.

Next we split into two groups and headed to the Ceramics Studio and Glass Studio. Each group spent half the day in each studio. Joy Knepp, region 6 co-rep instructed the participants in glass beadmaking using Nortel Major and Minor Burner torches. The process involves heating rods of colored glass in the torch and winding the molten glass around stainless steel mandrels. The group also learned how to "paint" and embellish the beads with hand-pulled stringers. "twisties" and dots of glass. The beads were annealed in the kiln and sent to the participants after the workshop.

In the Ceramics Studio, Joe Sendak, a regionally known potter, led the group in a Raku firing. The participants brought bisque fired pieces and were able to use the Touchstone Raku glazes and fire the pieces. Joe was equipped with actual fireman jackets to help ward off the heat. The metallic colors were amazing in the finished pieces.   

At the end of the day we had a successful workshop and went home tired and really "fired" up to come back to Touchstone again soon.

Contact PAEA region 6 representative, Deb Theys dat6paea@yahoo.com or Joy Knepp joy.knepp@gmail.com to share your news, or to find out about upcoming future professional development opportunities.    

Participating in a PLC Might Be Just What You Need Right Now!

Melissa Gallagher, Region 7 Co-Representative

 
     Professional Learning Communities (PLC) are a popular concept in education that many school districts in recent years have allowed teachers to use in lieu of traditional observation. Educators meet in small groups and select current articles, research or books in their educational field and then meet to discuss and consider the merits of the research and possible implementation ideas. Many of the art teachers in my district (Carlisle ASD) decided to try this for the last two years and we've found it to be a great way to socialize, read some of those things that we often put in a pile for later, and discuss the values of a strong education in the visual arts. My personal feeling is that participating in a PLC is much more meaningful to veteran teachers than yet another formal observation. Discussing current educational theories with a group of new and veteran teachers that come from a variety of colleges and experiences has been extremely inspiring for everyone. I also believe it's been uniting and beneficial for us in this current educational climate of cutbacks in any program that doesn't appear to directly teach content that gets evaluated by our PA state standards testing.   

      One of the books that we read and recommend is Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan. The authors purpose was to find the benefits of a strong visual art education program based on facts and scientific research. What they found is that most non-arts, academic classes utilize educational practices that are part of an export paradigm, such as answering questions, memorizing information, and a variety of other exercises that specifically target much later payoffs. However, studio work is authentic learning that involves complex knowledge, through which students learn things now that will also be useful later.  Research suggests that import paradigms (authentic learning) are a better mirror of the kind of think we want students to be able to do than export paradigms. Studio thinking provides students with an opportunity to struggle with challenges that cultivate a number of habits of mind, such as persistence, envisioning possibilities, expressing, observing, reflecting, and stretching beyond the immediate and familiar. The export paradigm tried to approach future complexities by talking about them rather than engaging in them and too much of what is taught in an export paradigm does not come together for students until years later, if ever. Importing knowledge into complex meaningful endeavors with the future in view, is what excellent studio thinking can do and is the reason visual arts education is essential to our students. The book explores the eight habits of studio thinking in great detail so that the reader can gain excellent insight into what these habits are, recognize when they are and are not occurring in student thinking and can talk about them with non art educators that may not understand the value of visual art education.    

This summer, the Palmer Museum of Art in State College is featuring two outstanding print shows. The larger exhibit, "Associated American Artists:  Art by Subscription" is comprised of 75 remarkable prints spanning the late 1930's through the early 1960's, with most of the work from the 1940's and early 1950's. Well-known artists such as Isabel Bishop, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and Reginald Marsh are represented in this collection of works from the Springfield Museum of Art. The story behind the production and sale of these prints, and their influence on American culture, is fascinating, and is explained through extensive label and panel text. The basic story is that a young art dealer named Reeves Lewenthal established this organization as a way to profit from mass marketing artists' prints, provide artists a means of financial survival, and introduce the public to fine art at affordable prices. While many aspects of the organization paralleled Roosevelt's New Deal, it was a private enterprise in which Lewenthal purchased the artists' plates and had 250 prints produced, which were initially sold in department stores for five dollars (seven, framed). This show, which ends on August 7, focuses on the formative years of the Associated American Artists. For more information, please see the Palmer Museum of Art website, www.palmermuseum.psu.edu

"Treasures Transferred:  Selections from the University Libraries Print Collection" features prints in a variety of print media by such well-known artists as Louis Lozowick, John Sloan, John Stuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton. The pieces were selected from a collection of 360 prints that were transferred to the Palmer in 2009. This show, which dovetails nicely with the larger print show mentioned above, ends on August 28. In both shows, there are familiar themes to be revisited, artistic influences revealed, and exciting new discoveries to be made!