Week 5: Sharing The Art

Hello Everyone! Welcome back to another week at BASIS Independent Brooklyn and RHAP. Some exciting things happened this week so let’s get right into it!

At BASIS this week we spent a lot of time prepping for the fine arts festival this weekend which will be very exciting. While helping to make the backdrop displays for the elementary art school projects Ms. Weathers showed me a third-grade project revolving around emotional expression and how the students see themselves. They were instructed to make little monsters depicting how they felt in the moment and how they saw themselves overall. I will talk more about this in my final presentation as these were wonderful examples of how important artistic expression is for understanding oneself and one’s emotions. I’ve attached an image below to show how expressive and captivating these third-grade monsters really are, as they are truly unique works. They also wrapped up their self-portraits this week which gave me insight as to how art is beneficial for different age groups in different ways. The younger students were very critical of themselves, whereas the fourth graders laughed off most mistakes and uplifted each other. Making art is so vital for younger kids to show them how to be easy on themselves and go with the flow and the farther they got into their portraits the more smiles I saw.

At RHAP we took a field trip to the Mary Whalen boat that is docked by the ferry. The students all spread out and practiced drawing different perspectives of the boat. I sat and drew with them and it was so relaxing. As I’ve gotten older and moved away from art classes with rigid assignments it was so calming to be given a task and just draw without the expectation of making art with strong meaning. I think some of the other older kids felt that way as well, they all seemed so serene and focused as I walked around. They were all leaning back in the sun taking in the view and loosely drawing the boat, it was a beautiful afternoon.

This week and next week I will be focusing on finalizing my surveys for the parents, so stay tuned!