• Dear Parents:

     
    For 15 fantastic days this fall (October 13 - November 17) students, teachers, administrators, and parent volunteers at Streams Elementary School will be working on an exciting Artist Residency Project with art teacher Angela Juliussen, Resident Artist ceramicist Laura Jean McLaughlin, and poet Bob Ziller to create a mosaic mural that reflects and inspires the entire school community.  Students working with Mr. Ziller will learn about the definitions of poetry, the importance of listening to poetry when read aloud, and how to become a poet.  The students ideas will be visually incorporated into the mosaic design using both images and poetry.

     

    Students working with Ms. McLaughlin will learn about mosaic murals, brainstorm ideas, create drawings, design layouts, and cut and glue mosaic pieces onto concrete board.  After the tiles are placed and glued, they are cleaned, and the grouting process takes place.  Students working with Mr. Ziller will learn about what poetry is, how the way words sound when read aloud is important, and how to write their own poems.  Throughout this residency project everyone will experience what can happen when artists, teachers, students, and parents collaborate!  This is truly a cooperative community effort. 

     

    The completed mosaic mural will be installed in one of Streams many stairways so it can be viewed and admired by students, teachers, and visitors for years to come.  Through our partnership with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts offers many innovative arts services to schools and community organizations throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. 

     

    Our Artist Residency Projects are designed to have lasting benefits for all of the participants: students are fully immersed in an art form and see how it connects to life and learning; teachers are exposed to alternative ways of experiencing and sharing a creative process and what it brings to their classrooms; administrators realize the ways in which the arts fully engage students and impact their learning across the curriculum; and parents see their children's creative and intellectual potential in ways they may have never before observed. 

    You can learn more about Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and all the interesting and creative experiences we offer at: www.pittsburgharts.org

     

    We look forward to working with everyone at Streams Elementary School this fall!

     

    Sincerely,

     

    Mary Brenholts

     

    Director of School & Community Programs

    Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

     

    Ms. McLaughlin is a full-time ceramic artist who sells her work to over 80 galleries, collectors and designers throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her ceramic work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, American Style, American Craft magazine and two books: 500 Teapots and 500 Bowls. Her work is in the collection of PNC Park, Kohler Art Center, Kohler Company and HBO in New York.  Her studio/ shop, The Clay Penn, is located on Penn Avenue in Garfield.  Bob ZIller is both a poet and a visual artist and was voted Most Artistic at Cambridge Elementary School in 1974! In addition to many other awards, he has received the Three Rivers Arts Festival Award for Sculpture in 2000, and has been exhibiting regionally and nationally for over 20 years.  Information about his most recent contribution to the Pittsburgh art scene, The Pittsburgh Beautification Project, can be viewed on YouTube.  You can read about another of Ms. McLaughlin and Mr. Ziller's current collaborative projects in Natrona, PA at: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/s_646297.html

     

    This project was made possible through the Arts in Education Partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the citizens of Pennsylvania through the annual legislative appropriation process.  The AIE Partnership is administered regionally by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the art center where artists and the community can create, see, support, and learn about the arts.  The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.