The Art of Teaching Aspiring artists, art education students learn from each other

By Melissa Mitchell

The last place most kids want to be on a lazy summer day is in school.

But 7-year-old Kelly Carter doesn't seem to mind. And neither, apparently,
do dozens of other children whose parents enrolled them in the UI School of
Art and Design's Art Enrichment Program this summer.

"I want to be an artist when I grow up," said Carter, who added that her
parents enrolled her in the course "because they thought I was a good
drawer."

Budding young artists of all ages - and all stages of artistic development
- are encouraged to explore their creative potential and pick up skills
through participation in the program. The classes are taught by graduate
students in art education and are staggered throughout the summer, with
sections offered at all levels - from preschool to high school.

The younger children attend two four-day sessions that allow them to
experiment with a variety of artistic media; those sessions end this week.
Students in grade seven through 12 participate in an intensive, four-day
ceramics workshop, which starts July 24. An adult-level, intensive workshop
on basic printmaking and design will be offered July 31 to Aug. 3.

Creative art classes for children and adults also are offered on Saturday
mornings during the fall and spring semesters. During holiday and spring
festivals at the Krannert Art Museum, participants often get the chance to
exhibit their work in the display area that links the museum and the Art
and Design Building.

Art education professor Sandy Bales coordinates the summer and Saturday
programs, and art education professor Tina Thompson is in charge of the
early childhood sections during the academic year.

"The art classes for children started over 30 years ago and became part of
the early field experience for undergraduates in art education," Bales
said. In the current structure, graduate and undergraduate students in art
education receive valuable teaching experience,  while the classes
function as a lab for the undergraduates in elementary education  who
frequently visit the classroom as observers.

"The classes serve as a way to give them the best possible teaching
experience," Thompson said. "It gives them a vision that lasts of what
teaching can be."

Classes geared toward younger children focus not only on introducing them
to a variety of media and techniques, but also integrate music, drama,
story-telling and other creative activities. Teachers also draw on a range
of campus resources in their instruction - from the Krannert Art Museum to
the sheep farm, which has arranged sheep-shearing demonstrations for
classes studying fiber art.

As a rule, rather than focusing on the development of skills in any one
medium, "the early childhood  classes are more thematic," Thompson said.
"Usually, the teacher will start with an art concept - say, animals - as a
theme, and uses that to explore creative ideas."

Before creating sculptures from wood and beads, the first- and
second-graders in Kathy Hughes' class this summer learned about sculpture
and sculptors through inventive exercises. At the beginning of class, the
children gathered around a "time machine" - a wooden box the teacher pulled
from a Dumpster, decorated with objects the kids brought from home - while
Hughes set the dial and played a tape of appropriately spacey synthesizer
music.

The machine initially took them back to the last century to meet sculptor
Lorado Taft. Hughes then led the children on an expedition across campus to
view Taft's Alma Mater statue. The next day, the time machine was set to
the 1950s for a visit by sculptor Alexander Calder. Later, while the
students labored over their own sculptures, Hughes piped in '50s music -
"from around the time your parents were born," she told them - to add to
the theme and keep the kids' creative juices flowing.

"Some of our kids are just astounding," Bales said. In those cases, "if we
see something unusual, we try to point it out, since parents might not have
anything to compare it to," she said.

Talented or not, children usually leave the program enriched in one way or
another.

"Once," Bales said, "a professor in the law school across the street
wandered over here and said, 'I see so many joyful children coming out of
this building. It made me wonder what you're doing in here.' "

Some openings remain in the grades seven through 12 and adult classes.
Registration begins mid-August for the fall session, which runs Sept. 9
through Dec. 3. To register, or for more information, call 333-1652 or
333-0855.