Art. Family. Success.

Augusto Bordelois is a Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio Professional Teaching Artist. He worked with the students at Luis Munoz Marin to create a mural that celebrates and honors the nationalities of all of the school’s students, encouraging them to embrace their heritage and support the rich diversity in their community.

First, the students all took surveys about their nationalities. Students then researched their national animal, flower, and bird. Initially, Augusto was going to incorporate all 3 items into the mural, but this school is so rich with diversity that he decided to take a little more of an abstract approach (see photos).

 

As mentioned in a previous post, murals can teach collaboration, teamwork and show students how important it is to maintain the discipline to start and finish a project with dedication. This particular mural not only involved the Marin students and their caregivers, it helped to beautify the school and will continually remind everyone that individuality should be celebrated.

Happy Earth Day!

Why celebrate Earth Day on just one day of the year? Incorporate the arts to celebrate our planet all year long.

Here’s how:

7 Mile Isle

Engage a trio of musicians from the acclaimed 7 Miles Isle to perform a concert of music from instruments made entirely from recycled materials. Students will create music and learn that re-purposing items from a junkyard can help save the planet.

Hal Walker

Invite Hal Walker to your school. Hal uses everyday materials to shape sound and experience how sound travels. Students experiment with making music out of just about anything, as they’re challenged to become scientists out of sound.
Recycled materials also benefit the world of visual arts.

Bring Wendy Mahon or Kristen Cliffel, for example,  to your school so students can utilize recycled materials to create stunning works of art. Create masks, ceramic pieces, and murals, made all the more beautiful due to the unique materials students use to create them.

Beautify your school with a mural!

And speaking of murals…students of all ages can work to design and create a mural to beautify any space!  The design and images for the mural may be based on whatever classroom connection you’d like to emphasize, and utilizing recycled materials from the community can help your mural become even more meaningful.

How do you celebrate Earth Day all year long? We’d love to hear from you!

Magna Studios—ArtWorks’ Animation Co-Op

Here in Magna Studios, ArtWorks’ Animation Co-Op, we have made a traditional-to-digital transition. We started making hand-drawn storyboards, where each intern drew out a sequence of frames to create one scene without using words. These storyboards were the first step to any animation process. We put our storyboards in motion using flip books. We then used light boxes to trace frames and make small transitions between each frame. By taking a photo of each frame, uploading it to a computer and using Adobe After Effects to compile the images, our finished result was a scene in motion. We are currently working on collaboration with all the co-ops in ArtWorks to create a commercial for our Shoe Design Co-Op, Thunder 11.

There are many teams that bring a project to life, such as the art director, script writers, storyboard artists, animators and video producers. With Allison Dykes as the Art Director, she makes sure that all of her coworkers are responsible for certain roles and deliver in a timely manner. Script Writers Michelle Allen and Shakayla Core create the dialog and put select scenes in order. Terah McGowan and Gabby Calabrese, the Storyboard Artists, create the frames for certain scenes. These frames should flow smoothly enough for the Animators, Aristide Smith and Briana Barnes, to take the storyboards and transition them into motion graphics. Doneisha King and Marcus Billingsley are the Video Producers, who take the necessary video footage and composite the scenes together.

Thunder 11 finally meets Magna Studios! Magna Studios, the Animation Co-Op of ArtWorks 2013 was tasked with creating a one minute advertisement for Thunder 11′s artistic sneakers. Fortunately, Magna Studios was not alone in their process. Recently, the Script Artists, Shakayla Core and Michelle Allen, and the Creative Director, Allison Dykes, of Magna Studios held open auditions for the voiceover position for the script they had created. The script was a one minute read of a compilation piece consisting of lines from every poet’s poem on a chosen shoe. The auditions were a success and two star voices were found, Gabrielle Calabrese (Animation) and Chukwuka Okoro (Recording Arts). Next, Magna Studios received the edgy beat for the ad created by the Recording Arts Co-Op. Now the Animation Co-Op is working on the actual animations, based off of the storyboards hand-drawn by each animator. The animation is supposed to reflect the idea or theme behind each shoe rather than the just the shoe itself. Although each shoe is completely different and follows a different theme, the overall idea revolves around Cleveland. The nine animators, Michelle Allen, Briana Barnes, Marcus Billingsley, Gabby Calabrese, Shakayla Core, Allison Dykes, Doneisha King, Terah McGraw and Aristide Smith, continue to work diligently.  Everyone anticipates the final outcome of the collaboration!

By Shakayla Core, Michelle Allen and Allison Dykes

Mural Creation in Action!

Young Audiences’ Professional Teaching Artist Mark Yasenchack worked with early learners and their parents at Cuyahoga County Universal PreK (UPK) to create  innovative murals for the school and the community. Each workshop included parents, teachers, and children, reinforcing how important teamwork and collaboration is to success.

Mark started the project by asking preschoolers what made a school, a home, a neighborhood, and a community, and was surprised to hear that the students named people and animals (instead of what he expected–cars, buildings, etc). Their conversations resulted in murals that are more mosaic in nature and leaves a message with viewers that they are a part of something bigger.

See mural creation in action by clicking above.

Want to create a mural for your school or community? Email requests@yaneo.org or call 216-561-5005.

Psst! Click here to read more about early childhood education and the arts on our blog. You can also watch a video here about Young Audiences and UPK.

Thunder 11

Thunder 11 is an ArtWorks Spring sneaker design company (one of the student apprentice Co-Ops) that designs shoes for everyone and anyone. At the time of this post, Thunder 11 has 10 designed (and nearly finished) sneakers. They wanted to share the stories behind these amazing shoes!

Dream shoe, designed by Charlotte Christian

The is the Dream shoe, designed by Charlotte Christian. The word Dream is written in large white letters surrounded by the colors teal, blue and red on a white converse shoe, which is then surrounded by ‘rays’ of yellow shaded with orange. The idea for the shoe came from the idea of following your dreams, how many people from Cleveland have had their dreams come true and not letting adversity (or anything else) tear them down.

The Cleveland State University shoe, designed by Adaisjah Strother is not pictured. But we wanted to share with you that the shoe is in the colors CSU (dark green, light green and grey) with studs on the heel, the viking logo on one heel and the CSU  logo on the other heel.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shoe, designed by Kiara Brown

This is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shoe, designed by Kiara Brown. On the inside of the shoe it has a stylized Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On one side of the outside it has the American flag and on the other it has a portrait of Bruce Springsteen – 1999 inductee.  On the blue toe are the names of many of the songs he wrote.

Cleveland Indians shoe, designed by Shanna Hurst

This is the Cleveland Indians shoe, designed by Shanna Hurst. The outside panels have the Indians logo. The heel, middle panel and toe all have what looks like impossible to do wood-like look painted by Shana.

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Baby shoes, designed by Yanna Morgan

These are baby shoes with a neon theme with tribal print, designed by Yanna Morgan. Designed to stand out these shoes have neon orange, pink and green on a white background with black tribal print designs over the neon green.

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The Cleveland Browns shoe is also not pictured, but it’s designed by Damarcus Lett. On the outside panel is the brown b signature of the Brown’s across a white background.

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Kanye West shoe, designed by Darrin Moore

This is the Kanye West shoe, designed by Darrin Moore. The different designs and colors are taken from Kanye’s albums and then incorporated into the shoe by Darrin.

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Sherwin-Williams shoe, designed by Tahzane Jackson.

This is the Sherwin-Williams shoe, designed by Tahzane Jackson. The idea is taken from the paint spilling onto the world in their logo.

There are two more Cleveland Browns shoes, one designed by Nate Mendel. Nathan’s has the a football shaped white area with the Brown’s B in the center on the outside of one shoe and the Brown’s Elf on the outside of the other shoe. The other Browns shoe is designed by Jermaine Willis. On the outside of one shoe is has the Brown’s Elf and on the other it has the Brown’s B.

They’re even better in person, so mark your calendars for Spring’s Culminating Event on April 30th at the Halle Building from 5-7 PM!

Bring a Field Trip To You!

With ever increasing demands on a school’s schedule and budget, it may be harder for schools to find the time or funds to plan field trips. Even a “free admission” to an outside venue can be costly once you add in factors such as transportation and outside snacks.

Teaching Artist Jimmie Woody brings a novel to life in reader’s theater.

Let Young Audiences bring the field trip to you. Our 120 master teaching artists can engage your students in any and all art-forms, including programs that teach fitness, tie into physics, and promote healthy character development…just to name a few!

Avoid the hassle of getting transportation and finding parent volunteers to help coordinate the excursion.

Teaching Artist Wendy Mahon helping students brainstorm their visual art design.

Instead, students can stay in their own classrooms to work with professional teaching artists or they can meander on over to the gym to take part in an interactive assembly.

All of our programs can be customized to focus on whatever you are teaching in your classroom or community center.

The arts can help your kids dream even bigger by helping them know what’s out there. We’re here to help.

Email requests@yaneo.org or call us at 216-561-5005 to get started.

Listen Up! ArtWorks Slam Poetry Apprentices

The Slam Poetry Co-Op at ArtWorks this Spring has been busy. Check out what they’ve been up to thus far, and watch two of the Apprentices in action.  Want to see the rest of the crew? Come to the ArtWorks Open House TODAY (March 14) at the Halle Building from 5-7 PM.

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At this point in our co-op, we are learning many things from our MTA (Master Teaching Artist), Carla. Things such as performing our poetry, playing with words to make our poetry sound better, and body language in poetry. These are all things that will help us preform better for our upcoming competition during open house on March 14th.

Although we do a lot of work, we still have fun. For example, we previously went to the art museum, which was amazing. Everyone had an nice time viewing the beautiful art work.  There was a little work, but it was fun. We all had to pick one fine art and write an poem on it. It was so nice because everyone had poems on different pieces of art

Another place we visited was Playhouse Square. Their we worked on performance and movement with a lovely lady named Paige. We did an incredible workshop with her for Slam U! She gave us very good and useful tips on writing and performing our poetry. We are working on competing to be on the Cleveland team for the Brave New Voices national youth poetry slam in April.

-Shanautica Devine, Slam Poetry Apprentice

Hear Brandon Peck in action!

Hear Nandi’s take on a pair of custom designed baby sneakers.