Return to J.C. Stone Sculpture Symposium

Wow – the creations

Yesterday I took some time and scooted to JC Stone on route 17 in Jefferson to see the progress that had been made in a week at the sculpture symposium. You might remember reading the post from earlier this week called J.C. Stone Sculpture Symposium. I was most curious to see what Miles Chapin and David Curry had created.

Shalimar photographing Miles holding his maquette of his sculpture

Miles with his sculpture

Miles is creating a very intricate piece. He shared some of this learnings with Wiscasset High School art teacher, Shalimar Poulin and myself.  He zoomed through several expensive diamond blades on his amazing sculpture. He’ll return home today after the show scheduled for 11-4:00 with his piece unfinished, but happy with his accomplishment and his opportunity to work side by side with other sculptors.

David was very happy with his accomplishment since he wasn’t sure what he had designed would actually work. His dove tail cut fit almost perfect into the second piece of stone. Both sculptors mentioned how much they learned through the experience by conversing with the other artists, seeing what tools they have in their tool boxes and how they use them.

David with his sculpture

It was great to hear the echo of life-long learning from both sculptors. I look forward to following their progression as they continue with their passion.

This is the second symposium that J.C. Stone is sponsoring and this year they are partnering with Maine Home & Design. You can read more at http://stonesymposium.jcstoneinc.com/

Washington County Assessment Workshop

Harvest of Ideas

Lisa presenting

There are 23 workshops scheduled throughout the state during this school year on arts assessment. The sessions will be facilitated by Maine’s arts assessment teacher leaders. Last week, Lisa Marin, Art teacher from Jonesport-Beals HS & Jonesport Elementary provided a regional workshop for Washington county teachers. Eight Visual Art teachers and one PE teacher! met on Tuesday, October 11 in Machias for Washington County’s annual Harvest of Ideas teachers’ conference held at the University of Maine. The day long workshop about creating authentic and meaningful assessments provided a great day of sharing and discussion.

Comments from teachers:
“A very fun and fruitful day, you gave me some good ideas that I can implement immediately.”
“I think we all need a broader vocabulary for rubrics and a lot more discussion.”
“kudos to everyone who has been working so diligently on the assessment piece.”

workshop participants

Concerns:
“The most important thing I learned in this session is…”
That I am a bit frustrated with the standards-based rubrics and need to rework my idea of a rubric.

Crucial question that still needs to be answered:
Why use a standards-based rubric if we are still resorting to number grades on report cards?

Lisa:                                                                                                                                                                 “There is still work to be done. The teachers agreed to meet again in December to continue the conversation, work on next steps, and to share their best assessments that really work for us!”

Lisa set up a wiki for the assessment work that has many resources. The address is:
http://newartassessmentswiki.pbworks.com If you’d like to view Lisa’s wiki you will need to go to the address and request permission to join.