Fort Valley Middle School

It has been an eventful Youth Art Month in the art room!
For those who didn't know March is Youth Art Month and this year's theme is "The World Needs Art".  While of course the art teacher agrees with this statement the students of Ms. Kilitzian's Year Long course were challenged with "But why does the world need art?"  Students were encourage to explore and discover their reasons for why they love art and the importance of it.  Through group discussion as a class and reviewing over the answers with Ms. Kilitzian the students decided they wanted to make a collaborative art piece, and not just as a class but with the whole school!  Allowing for creativity and ingenuity to take off, the students and Ms. Kilitzian jumped into developing what their collaborative art peices would be, design an Academic Focus lesson for each grade level and put all the work together to display in the halls of Fort Valley Middle School.  The students took the answers they gave for "Why does the world need art" and seperated them into three topics, assigning each one to their own grade level.

Emotional Drift

Headed up by Wenddy Avila-Mancio and Jordynn Gaskins, they challenged the 7th graders to explore Art's ability to express emotions and things sometimes hard to express in words.  They let the student color in butterflies to express their emotions they felt this week or over the school year.  They then cut out each butterfly and organized them along with their painting and hung them up in the hallway. Here is the artist statement for Emotion Drift:

"This piece represents the emotional build up that happens when we try to ignore all the emotions we go through everyday.  Through this piece we wanted to encourage people to positively address their emotions and show off the beautiful individual you are."

Art and Culture

Brayden Weatherspoon and Melanie Zavala Pantoja took charge of Art's ability to express and preserve culture.  They showed 6th grade how art tends to reflect the values, beliefs and traditions of the community through images, patterns, music or even fashion.   Each 6th grade teacher was given a specific culture to explore and students drew out different images that represented the culture.  These pieces were then collaged by our art class with painted jars that were then arranged to come together demonstrating how culture can be both individual as well as a wonderful melting pot that brings more beauty to our world.

Art and Social Change
What a wild one with this one!  Having 8th grade student come to me to talk about how art is a part of every movement in social change was definatly not one that I would have ever thought would pop up but I am so proud of all the year long students for not only bringing this up, but running with it.  This piece took a lot of work and rework and called upon a lot of extra helpers to make it all come together.  Special shout out to Lucero Avila-Hernandez and Tori Johnson for running with all the changes that happened in this project.  We had some very interesting conversations about about social change in art as well as the proper way to then express this both in a powerpoint presentation to the whole 8th grade and as an visual to be put up in the school.  They definatly learned a few things about how educating people on a topic and expressing their own beliefs are two seperate things and I'm so proud of how well they took all the reworks to the powerpoint to create both an informative piece as well as a mental challenge to give the 8th graders to discuss with their Academic Focus class.   Another shout out to Mr. Thublin for reviewing over the slides with the eyes of a social studies teacher used to walking these tightropes.   Leonardo Vazquez and Christopher Martinez-Pulido helped the girls paint a flower for each 8th grade teacher and helped hand out materials the day of the event.  8th grade students were challenged to discuss social changes they had gone over in class from social studies, social changes they have witnessed and social changes they wish would still happen.  The later was written on the flowers and the art students put them all together in a piece meant to "give the students the ability to voice their dreams of the future...and let the flowers represent the growth against harshness of conflict so that we too can bloom into a better future for all."

Some behind the scenes photos of the academic focus lesson and students putting up their work...

To end off our wonderful Youth Art Month, we decided to celebrate and take inspiration for YAM's calander suggestions and invite our wonderful admin, support staff and custodians to the art room to just relax and create with us.  To unwind from such an intensive project as this the class worked on a simple art round robin with music playing.  I am so happy and proud of all students involved on this project and appreciative to our admin, support staff and custodial staff that supported us through it.  Thank you to all Academic Focus teachers who allowed the art students to take over their Academic Focus for a day and helped turn in pieces we were able to put together to make our final piece. Happy Youth Art Month everyone!  Have fun, be creative, and let art decorate your life in whatever way you need it to!