Send in the Clowns

Frank Sinatra and Oldies but Goodies

This is a great resource with many performances from years gone by. A connection to history and comedians from a different time period. I’m sure many of you are old enough to remember some of these comedians, perhaps not while they were alive but when we see them on TV or in the movies. Here are just some of them in this YouTube video: Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, Art Carney, Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, Carol Burnett, Mickey Rooney, Abbott & Costello, Jimmy Durante, George Burns & Gracie Allen.

Visible Discourse from Maine’s Western Foothills

Union of Maine Visual Artists

Artists Diana Arcadipone, Don Best, Nikki Millonzi and Judith Schneider

Union of Maine Visual Artists, Portland Media Center, 516 Congress Street, Portland, ME

September 6 through September 28, 2019

Opening First Friday, September 6, from 5 – 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Monday: 12 PM – 5 PM, Tuesday -Thursday: 10 AM – 5 PM,             Friday-Sunday: 1 PM – 4 PM

Visible Discourse is an exhibition that celebrates Maine’s natural and diverse environment; the wildlife, woodlands, lakes and ocean that draw visitors to Maine from around the globe. This exhibition is a collaborative installation by four artists living in Oxford County: Diana Arcadipone, Don Best, Nikki Millonzi and Judith Schneider. Four distinct voices visually explore their surroundings and collectively celebrate the beauty of Maine. These artists share works inspired by the magic and collective energies of the Oxford Hills, an area with a rich visual and performing arts culture. One well known artist claims the local art springs from “something in the water.”  The juxtaposition of this work celebrates the beauty of Maine and offers a poetic contrast and respite from the historic vitality of urban Portland. Through this presentation of work, the artists hope to advocate for the need to preserve the natural beauty that exists throughout Maine as well as help the viewer perceive new ways to “make sense of things”.

Diana Arcadipone

Diana Arcadipone creates artworks on and of paper. Her passion for making art with natural materials and mixed media emerged from an early devotion to traditional craft techniques such as papermaking, book arts, basketry, and textiles. Trained as a painter and printmaker, Arcadipone’s work is informed by primitive art, folk art, traveling, and the natural world; it is the intersection of these influences that defines her work.

Don Best

Don Best works mainly in wood. He carves, paints, assembles, burns, and hand colors his work, which often uses animals as its subject and theme. Much of Best’s recent work has been reliefs, which give him the opportunity to use his drawing, painting, and sculpture skills to create engaging narratives. Shadow boxes become stages for his carved animals. Best’s work has a playful quality that makes it accessible to people of all ages.

Nikki Millonzi

For Nikki Millonzi, nature, the arts and the world around her all help her to make sense of things. She loves and cherishes the natural world so political activism is important to her. This year Nikki felt an increasing need to express the interconnectedness of life on this planet. Using newspaper and ink her installation We Are All In This Together helps us resonate with this underlying unity.

Judy Schneider investigates place and memory through the physical properties of landscape. By collecting and analyzing nature – dissecting it by color, form and line and then reassembling it, she finds meaning. Scale, density and layering are important. How the images find their natural edge and how memories form present a nice duality.  She is in pursuit of what is physically present, woven with memory, dreams and how the energy of “place” is conveyed.

For more information, contact Judy Schneider, Curator Judywestschneider@gmail.com

Teaching Artist

Huey

Film maker and teaching artist Huey has several screenings and broadcasts coming up this summer. Huey is one of the teaching artists on the Maine Arts Commission Teaching Artist roster. Check out the information below. 

Surveyor of the Soul

July 14, 7PM, Concord Museum, Concord, MA.  

Q&A with Huey and Laura Dassow Walls , author, Henry David Thoreau: A Life 

Free and open to the public. Part of the Thoreau Society’s Annual Gathering so limited seating for the public. To reserve seats go to  

https://concordmuseum.org/events/film-screening-surveyor-of-the-soul/

August 1, 7PM,  broadcast on Vermont PBS.   The film will also be available during the month of August to stream for online viewing at https://www.vermontpbs.org

August 21, 7PM, Monson Arts, Monson, ME. Free.  Q&A with Huey

https://monsonarts.org/uncategorized/summer-2019-public-programs/

Thoreau took the stagecoach through Monson on his way to Moosehead Lake in Greenville for his trips that he writes eloquently about in The Maine Woods.

August 20, 8PM & August 25, 3:30PM broadcasts on Maine Public Television’s August Pledge Drive.  Become a Maine Public member and get a DVD of Surveyor of the Soul.

Wilderness and Spirit: A Mountain Called Katahdin

September 5, 6PM, Maine Historical Society, Portland, ME. Free. Q&A with Huey.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition, Holding Up the Sky: Wabanaki People, Culture, History & Art

More info, trailers, order DVDs at  http://www.filmsbyhuey.com

America’s Got Talent

Kerr James

This 12 year old from Glasgow told the judges on America’s Got Talent that she admires Freddie Mercury. Listen to his voice and you be the judge.

RAMS Art Project

Great work Anthony Lufkin – 2018 Knox County Teacher of the Year

Art Educator and Maine Arts Leadership Initiative Teacher Leader Anthony Lufkin teaches grades K-6 in MSAD #40 and with students at the Rivers Alternative Middle School. This spring the middle school students took on an amazing project. They focused on social and health issues that impact individuals and communities. Students quickly got into a deep level of learning and the connection with these topics and issues on the brain. The topics were challenging ones and each students selected a topic to research and create a response artistically. Two other teachers worked with the students along with the Farnsworth Art Museum. This is a great example of students engaged in and taking the lead in their learning. Take a look at this video and gain an understanding of an amazing project for middle schoolers.

G/T Opportunity to Present

Step up and share your ideas at the statewide Gifted & Talented conference

Please contact Diane Knot at diane.knott@gorhamschools.org for a ‘request to present’ form.

America

Happy 4th of July!

HundrED Youth Ambassadors

Share with students

Are you a student reading this OR do you know students who are interested in participating in making positive change? If so, watch this video, join Jordy, and contact HundrED and apply to participate in the HundrED Youth Ambassador program.

 

Express-a-Book

Not your traditional book club

Express-a-Book uses the Arts, to create a learner centered, collaborative environment to share ideas. Participants experience the Arts and the format highlights the accessibility and power of the creative process. When we bring people together in a collaborative and creative environment we see learners, of all ages, engage at a high level. The Express-a-Book process supports this notion.

In 2017 Maine Arts Leadership Initiative (MALI) Design Team members Falmouth High School music teacher Jake Sturtevant and Sweetland School founder and director Lindsay Pinchbeck and Argy Nestor who was the Director of Arts Education at the time created Express-a-Book – an innovative and creative approach to a traditional book club.

They presented the idea, after creating a protocol and experiencing it themselves, to members of MALI. Other teacher leaders stepped up, formed groups and experienced the process themselves. The results were amazing!

“It was wonderful to have the opportunity and excuse to jump in the sandbox and find ways to play with, highlight, reflect, and communicate my learning in a unique way.”

~Jake Sturtevant

HISTORY
Lindsay, Jake, and Argy planned and tried the process and presented it to the MALI participants. Lindsay wanted to read about creativity in teaching and learning so she read the article A call to action: The challenges of creative teaching and learning by R. Keith Sawyer.
Jake was curious about the power of boredom. He listened to In defense of boredom on WNYC, Radio, Manoush Zomorodi’s Podcast Note to Self, and read the book Bored and Brilliant. Argy wanted to focus on leadership so she listened to Simon Sinek’s TED Talk called How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

Once they completed their review they responded by creating artworks. Lindsay made a painting and wrote a poem, Jake created a remix mp3, and Argy made a black and white illustration. They shared and responded to each image/sounds by giving feedback and asking questions. This provided the opportunity to learn about each of their topics in a collaborative environment.

What has been learned by using Express-a-Book?

• Share ideas and resources through an active process
• Use the arts to make information accessible and engaging for learners
• Learn together as a community
• Allow for individuals who do not often engage in art making processes to experience the potential of the arts to enhance learning 
• Offer a low cost, simple, scalable and refreshing approach to a ‘book club’ 
• The process has practical applications for a variety of classrooms and settings. Express-a-Book can be applied across disciplines or in professional learning communities, it can take place face to face or electronically, within or across schools, districts, across a region/state/country/ or even the world.
• Individuals must be willing to stretch and be vulnerable
• Example of teachers teaching teachers

If you’re interested in seeing the protocol please email Argy at meartsed@gmail.com.

Express-a-Book has been used successfully at conferences and gatherings in Maine and beyond in a variety of ways. The format has been shared in workshops, videos, short articles and highlighted in Teaching Strategies That Create Assessment-Literate Learners by Jeffrey Beaudry and Anita Stewart McCafferty.

 

Beyond the School Year

Happy July!

I hope you’ll take the time to reflect on the 2018-2019 school year and consider your successes and challenges. We know that summer is a time to relax, rejuvenate, and recharge. In order to do that it is important to look back in order to move forward. I hope you’ll ask yourself the broad questions as well as specific ones. Getting ‘down in the weeds’ about of own teaching can be very productive.

I see that Edutopia included an article that dispels the myth around students learning slipping during the summer. The original study that supported the loss of summer learning is from the 1980’s. Paul T. von Hippel, a policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin revisited the study and he learned that there are flaws in the study. He claims that the testing methods “tended to distort the test scores”. It’s an interesting follow up and I suggest that you READ the article.

Proven or not, I wonder about visual and performing arts. We’ve all heard that students lose ground in reading and math but what about their other areas of learning? What about their progress in music or visual art? When your students left on the last day of your class did you suggest that they keep drawing or playing their instrument? Did you help them devise a plan to continue ‘working at’ their art form? We all know that during summer vacation many students spend more time engaged in the arts than they have time for during the school year. Community arts programs, day and overnight camps, museum and gallery programs, activity specific programs – in many communities opportunities in the arts are plentiful. Are these ‘art experiences’ or ‘high quality arts education’? I wonder, do learners keep developing their skills, creativity and passion for the arts during the summer in great part, thanks to these programs? What do you think?