Announcements
—Grandma Moses
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THERE ARE SO MANY EXCITING NEW PROJECTS IN THE ART ROOM THIS YEAR! EXPLORE MRS. VECCHIONI’S WEBSITE, STOP IN ROOM 305 OR NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME, ASK ME WHAT’S GOING ON—I LOVE SHARING THE GREAT THINGS WATERS SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE DOING! EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY INPUT, IDEAS OR FEEDBACK—I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU.
Important Fine Arts Dates—
Many thanks to the students and families that made our recent Happy Birthday Mr. Picasso! and El Dia de los Muertos Exhibits such a success! Look for student artworks from these exhibits on Artsonia.com
February 24, 2012 100 Days of School! (Kindergarten & 1st grade)
March 21, 2012 Celebrating Chicago Artists! 2nd Semester Visual Art Exhibit (All School) 5-7PM Opening
Thank you to all of the students, staff and families who participated in our 2011 Summer Mosaic Workshop! Check out our latest community-based artwork—NEW mosaic tile benches (an outdoor classroom) installed on the patio south of the Green Wing (coming September 2011). Our mosaic tile benches pay homage to the native Illinois prairie, our school’s commitment to fine arts and ecological integration and the Chicago River (which once ran through Waters School’s playground). The original Four Seasons of The Chicago River designs were created by some of our most recent alumni— Carelena, Kimberlee, Kimberly and Emily— as an 8th grade legacy project.
Many thanks to Ms. Kipp, Ms. Alvarez, Kerry Maiorca, Juan-Carlos Perez, Vicky Mendoza, Serena Hess, David Schroeder, Ms. Hooper, Ms. Ramos, Ms. Soto, Lowe’s Home Improvement and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education for grant writing, project sponsorship and coordination and mosaic expertise.
Again, THANK YOU!
Take a peak at our ART IN ACTION projects from 2010/2011!
GLOBAL WARMING KNIT IN!
Kids’ Knitworks Global Outreach Dulaan is the Mongolian word for warm. In the first stage of this service learning project, students will be spreading dulaan/warmth both far and near as they create hand-knit wraps and garments for families in need across the globe and close to home. 
This multi-age after school project will build camaraderie and community among Waters School students as they learn to knit, crochet and work together to help a variety of communities in need. We will promote global citizenry and broaden our concept of community by creating action-based artworks to help others. Each month, students will learn about a distressed target community including displaced and impoverished families in Mongolia, earthquake victims in Tibet, first-time women and girls going to school in Afghanistan, HIV/AIDS orphans in South Africa, seriously ill and traumatized children in Illinois and elderly men and women on fixed incomes in Chicago. We will utilize historical knowledge and current events to learn about these communities as students build knitting skills. We will then donate and ship our finished knitted wares to each target community via our partnerships with respective global outreach organizations within each community. Our partner organization in Mongolia will be The Dulaan Project and Kyegu Relief Fund in Tibet. Our partner organization in Afghanistan will be afghans for Afghans and in South Africa it will be Knit-A-Square. In greater Illinois, our partner organization will be Project Linus and Operation Brotherhood in Chicago. We hope to have written correspondence with global organizations so that students can meet (via photos/video/skype) the communities who will receive our knitworks. We plan to conduct hand delivery to some recipients of our knitworks in Illinois and Chicago so that students can experience firsthand all aspects of community service.
Additionally, in the second stage of our project, students will learn about the contemporary “yarn bomb” movement in the USA and discuss its distinction as surprising knitted street art made to “warm up” public spaces in an ecologically-friendly fashion. We will practice a bit of yarn bombing around our school and grounds, including knitting a tree cosey (a yarn doily around the circumference of a tree) around one of our precious 300 year old oak trees to commemorate our school’s 100 year anniversary in May.
In the third and final stage of our project, each student will choose to knit a portion of their collective “yarn bomb” for the target community in Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan, South Africa, Illinois or Chicago that they feel most impassioned about. 
Together, students will design and create a 3-D knitted art installation, entitled Yarn Bomb For Peace that will quilt together each student’s personal yarn expression. We will look at renowned crochet artist Xenobia Bailey’s fine art mandalas and 3-D installations as inspiration for our indoor knitted sculpture. In this way, throughout this project, students will learn how knitworks can be functional art, outsider art, fine art and always (ultimately) art with/for a purpose. At the culminating Knitworks Global Outreach presentation, students will unveil their handmade Yarn Bomb For Peace installation as a thank you gift to Waters Fine Arts School for being our own dulaan/warm space to create art, participate in social activism and promote global citizenry.
1,OOO CRANES OF HOPE…
Obon Origami Club 6th-8th graders are very eager to make 1,000 paper cranes of hope in this early morning origami studio. In addition to our paper cranes, we will be folding boxes, cubes, flowers and a variety of polyhedra throughout the school year. We will begin by creating simple origami forms and build our skills as we go!
See Mrs. Vecchioni to learn more about Sadako Sasaki and her 1,000 paper cranes or to borrow Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes—-one of my most cherished books of all time…
Click here to see an amazing feature presentation that documents Sadako Sasaki’s life (in origami). http://www.crumpart.net/video
Check out our highlights from 2009/2010!
UTHANDO=LOVE
Uthando is the Zulu word for love. In this service learning after school project we became dollmakers, creating fabric dolls that were donated to the KwaZulu Natal children of South Africa. One in five KwaZulu Natal children have been orphaned due to disease and poverty. Many of these children do not have toys or dolls to play with. We loved feeling like we made a difference in the daily lives of some of these children by sending our dolls, made with our love, to them to play with.
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The purpose of this project was to teach students basic sewing and design skills while building global citizenship. Students studied and created a variety of African textile arts (adinkra, bogolanfini mudcloth, adire eleko, kente, Pan-African batik) in order to make culturally sensitive clothing for their dolls for KwaZulu children to play with. REPSSI (Regional Psycho-Social Support Initiative) research states that this support of play in the children’s daily routine will help with many of the bereavement needs in KwaZulu Natal. In support of building cross-cultural understanding, students explored traditional songs and dance, cultural celebrations and folk tales of South Africa in this project.
Our goal in Uthando=Love was to create connections and build understandings that reached beyond our after school program. Our Fine Arts Parent Group assisted students by working as a sewing cooperative to create dolls for students to enhance with traditional Pan-African dress and adornments. We encouraged all Waters School families and artists to become involved in this global citizenship project by making dolls at home to be donated to our cause. The original Uthando Project is an organization based in Perth, Australia. We resourced their knowledge base in order to make our donations to the children of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Although our project is over, if you are interested in helping out, buying gift cards to support Uthando Project goals, making a doll or just learning more, please email me at alvecchioni@cps.edu or go directly to the Uthando Project website http://www.uthandoproject.org/
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This project was supported by grants from Chicago Arts Partnership in Education and the Oppenheimer Family Foundation. Ms. Beza, Ms.Okulinski-Reyes and Ms. Hutto/Global Explorers Kids collaborated with the art room on this project! Our Parent Ensemble volunteered to help us sew additional dolls to accompany the children’s efforts. Our Book Fair Parents donated children’s books to be sent with our dolls. Thank you to everyone for all of your support! Special thanks to parent volunteers Reyna Rayo & Naomi Fothergill!
Thank you to everyone who joined us April 24, 2010 for our Community Uthando Doll Making Cooperative in celebration of Global Youth Service Day. Over 60 Cityyear Corps volunteers collaborated with our community to create as many dolls as we could on this tremendous day of service! Overall, we sent 125 handmade fabric dolls to the children of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa last June!
VENACULAR ART INSPIRED BY SELF-TAUGHT AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS OF 21ST CENTURY SOUTH… OR… WAY-OUT WASHBOARDS!
Way-Out Washboards wass a Middle School project that looked at outsider, or self-taught, artists of the American South. We were in partnership with Ms. Zelle as we looked at the African American experience of the South in the last century documented by self-taught artists and musicians.
We explored vernacular artists and Blues musicians in this study. We utilized homeroom curricular themes such as the elements of fiction as we created stories in word, pictures and sound that document a a personal hero that inspired students creatively. These stories or honor statements were told in sound (using found object musical instruments) and in pictures (using vintage washboards as our “canvases” for our vernacular art). We created a multi-media art installation at the Intuit Gallery in May 2010 that showcased our work. Over 18 Waters School families were able to make it to our Grand Opening Event. Thank you for your support!
This project was supported by a Center for Intuit and Outsider Art Gallery Fellowship. For more on outsider art, check out Intuit’s website at http://www.art.org/index.html.
ADOBE YOUTH VOICES: AT THE CROSSROADS
Check the technology page of our school website to see more about this exciting 8th grade project that featured technology, music, drama and visual art! To see what Adobe Youth Voices is all about take a look at their website:
http://plantandinspire.org/
PARENT ENSEMBLE
Each Friday we meet to support fine arts programming at Waters School. We make art, sing songs and create puppet shows (to name a few activities over the years…) to share with Waters School students throughout the school year. This year’s theme is 100 Years!! All Waters School parents are welcome—Please join us! We are currently working on our annual Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. Come and make some papel picado with us!
See Parent Ensemble Short Video Here
Fridays
9:00- 10:15 AM
Room 305
Your support is really a powerful thing!
