Frazier students learn art in ‘new way’
FAYETTE CITY – Picking up a pencil and drawing what he referred to as a value sketch, Christopher Lutska, a fourth-grade student at Central Elementary School, said he was having fun learning more about art during a weeklong artist-in-residency program. The program was conducted earlier this month at Central and Perry elementary schools in the Frazier School District.
Greensburg artist Susan E. Pollins spent a week with students in kindergarten through sixth grade, teaching them a “new way” to see the elements of art.
Pollins, a visual arts painter, has an extensive background in art, but she focuses mainly on watercolor.
“I think anyone can learn to draw with the right direction, because drawing is seeing,” said Pollins.
The artist-in-residency program is sponsored by the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA) “Arts in Education Program” and is being paid for with a grant issued by the Benedum Foundation.
The grant allows SAMA to bring its programs into the schools for the next four years and covers the cost entirely the first year, while the school districts must contribute some money the remaining three years.
The purpose of the artist-in-residency program is to provide rural school districts statewide with in-school art presentations by professional artists ranging from musicians to choreographers, actors to painters.
According to elementary principal Ken Meadows, the students and teachers were very upbeat about the program, as were the parents of fifth-graders, who received the opportunity to view their children’s work in an art exhibition at the end of the week.
In 1997, SAMA selected Pollins to become an artist in residency, and she usually teaches at schools four weeks a year.
Pollins also owns Walnut Hill Studio in Greensburg, is past president of the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society and is a past board member of the Greensburg Art Club. She serves on the board of directors at Touchstone Center for Crafts in Wharton Township.
According to Pollins, watercolor is the hardest media, but it is accessible and readily available at most schools because it is the least expensive paint.
The idea of the program is to educate the next generation to value the arts through a variety of themes.
In addition, core groups of students work directly with the artists in residence to receive hands-on instruction in the creative process. Artists also provide lectures and demonstrations for students, teachers, art groups and the local communities.
“It’s not just the idea of a painter coming in to paint, but sharing their life as well,” said Pollins.
In both elementary schools, the fifth grade was selected as the core group, with 19 students in each class.
Pollins said the core group received more intensive art instruction daily, as opposed to the other classrooms, in the hope of having them teach other students what they learned.
“The idea is to plant a seed that can grow after you leave,” Pollins said.
Meadows said the program worked well during his tenure at Brownsville Area School District.
Although art is integrated into the regular subject areas at Central and Perry, Meadows said having an artist come in and teach gives art a new meaning for the students.
Meadows added that a different artist in residency is scheduled to visit both elementary schools for another one-week session in May.