Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Thanks to a recent opportunity created by art teachers in the Niskayuna Central School District, we’re getting the chance to see the student experience through the eyes of our fifth graders.
The district used grant funds to partner with Super Stories, a non-profit organization that focuses on community storytelling through public art, hands-on experiences and partnerships with local artists and educators.
Super Stories co-founder Ramiro Davaro-Comas, an Argentinian-American artist with
a background in public art, was invited to work on a collaborative mural with all fifth grade students at each of our five elementary schools.
About a month prior to painting the mural Davaro-Comas sent art teachers a slideshow about Super Stories and examples of other murals. He created prompts for the students centering around social emotional learning (SEL), asking them about what activities bring them joy and what emotions they feel around their friends and families.
Then, each student created their own “icon” representing these feelings, activities, emotions and art teachers sent Davaro-Comas all of the sketches. He and his business partner pulled a selection of them from each building and created a compilation and split it into five sections for each of our fifth grade section.
Davaro-Comas began with an assembly to introduce himself, talk about murals, public art and show the sketches of the mural they will be working on together.
At that point, each fifth grade class went into their respective art rooms to take turns painting their portion of the mural.
“I think that the idea behind kind of pulling the SEL and doing this collaborative mural is very fitting because it allows them an opportunity to, you know, be a smaller piece of a really big project that allows them to really gain some confidence in themselves and their value in the community,” said Craig/Glencliff art teacher Stephanie Graves.
“I’m always really, really happy to work with young students who haven’t had
this opportunity, who maybe don’t live in areas where there is a ton of public art so that they get to see the impact that the public art has, not just on their small fifth grade community, but like on the larger community as a whole,” Davaro-Comas said.
The mural can be viewed at the District Offices at 1239 Van Antwerp Road.
You must be logged in to post a comment.