Celebrating Color & Light.

The marriage of artist and teacher comes alive when individual student artists collaborate to create works of art. Collaboration in the visual arts has a rich history. Ranging from the exchange of information among established artists to the master-apprentice relationship, collaboration provides a ready means to expand art making beyond the traditional, isolated, individual-studio setting.

Several years ago, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art brought artist/educator Tim Rollins in as an artist-in-residence to Petree Middle School in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Through the pedagogical paradigm which Mr. Rollins provided, I became as much a learner as my students.

Collaborative Adventures

As a stained glass artist, I greatly desired to bring that knowledge to the artroom, but fear always kept me at arm's length from that reality. Rollins' presence established not only a smooth transition of experiential learning but provided a metaphor throughout the project. That first hand experience sparked the idea for a succession of collaborative adventures in art and architecture.

Since Rollins' residency and inspiration, we've created four architectural installations in stained glass for the enjoyment of our community. Two of these four installations have been school-based projects.

Breaking into the Community

The first stained glass installation project was locally funded by our local arts council. Because we were using local funds, a local installation for Winston-Salem seemed appropriate. Our local science museum, SCI Works, was in the process of building a salt-water aquarium area within the museum. Plans were underway to break into the wall to allow for more sunlight, so the designers were receptive to the idea of a coastal life window.

Art and Science

One of Petree Middle School's missions is to serve the needs of our at-risk students. These middle school students studied North Carolina's coastal aquatic life, various creatures within the depths of the sea, endangered species of the ocean, and the work of ecologist and nature conservationist Rachel Carson. Using the science museum as a resource, students individually designed contributions to the collaborative composition and fabricated the 4 x 8' (1.2 x 2.4 m) stained glass architectural installation. Students learned all facets of stained glass processes from drawing, pattern making, glass cutting, grinding, painting on glass, and copper foiling, to leading and soldering the panels.

The New Apprentices

Apprenticeship has long been the approach in which artisans have learned the tradition of stained glass technique. However, within these studio workshop situations the traditional apprentices or dent learners rarely have had opportunities to impact the design they are executing. This is contradictory to what our most fundamental art educational standards and goals promote. It has been my perspective that apprenticeship experiences should be a solid collaborative effort that incorporates the active contributions of student artists.

Inspired by Nature

Last year, fifth graders at Brunson Elementary constructed a window for the school's lobby. The theme of the window was the Wildflowers of North Carolina. We began our study with a field trip to a nearby Gothic revival church. It provided a wonderful resource to inspire our project. During this same field trip, students saw windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

We continued this unit with a series of hinged lessons before actually working with stained glass. Students first made their own Gothic arch windows with construction paper, colored tissue paper, and glue. Next, we researched North Carolina's wildflowers and made colorful floral studies using a finished glue-line drawing colored in with oil pastels. Students submitted wildflower studies for the maquette and final cartoon.

Celebrating the Function of Art

Small groups of students took equal turns working on the 3 1/2' (105 cm) square window through its completion. Students had the opportunity to learn as apprentices, but also learned all the aspects from its conception--from idea, through the processes and techniques of fabrication, to its actual installation.

We recently had the opportunity to dedicate the window and celebrate the process together with the students, their families, and faculty members of the school. We displayed all the steps that led up to the finished window--the paper Gothic arch windows, the wildflower studies, the wildflower drawings, and the individual maquettes and window cartoons.

Student groups had a rare opportunity to learn about stained glass through all phases, but also learned profound virtues of art, regarding how art provides a great service to humankind and how art aesthetically functions within our daily lives. To have created something through a positive collaborative effort that will be appreciated by future generations at the school, perhaps even their own children, has been a powerful learning experience!

RELATED ARTICLE: NATIONAL STANDARD

Students synthesize the creative and analytical principles and techniques of the visual arts and selected other arts disciplines, the humanities or the sciences.

Betti P. Longinotti is a K-12 lead art teacher in the Forsyth County Schools in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.