Students Explore Sokolov/Williams

For our spring 2009 school program students ranging in age from age 3-16 launched into wonderful discussions and created inspiring artwork based on the exhibitions featuring Hugh Williams and Joel Sokolov. Joel's floral abstractions elicited comments about flowers, gardens and the ways flowers can look like other things (animals, tornadoes, body parts). Students compared photos of Joel's garden in Hawaii with his drawings of the same garden. The kids noticed that his photos have a lot of color but the drawings are black, white and gray. One student, after hearing Teaching Artist, Kate, tell Joel's story about moving from NYC to Hawaii, postulated that Joel must miss home because he uses the colors of the city in his drawings.

Are Hugh's wire structures drawings or sculptures, the students wondered? And they were surprised and interested to hear that Hugh used a very unusual tool to create some of his works: his pickup truck! We wondered what other kinds of things artists can use as tools?

Referencing the way Hugh's drawings cast shadows, students traced shadows cast by fake flowers. The flowers, their shadows, and subsequent drawings were a lovely way to anticipate spring, learn about local plant life, and generate drawings that brought together the formal qualities in both Joel and Hugh's work.


The teaching artists brought the students drawings back into the classroom where they added more layers and used their drawings as a way to build "community gardens" that were installed in the school.

11-14 year old after schoolers from our new partnership with Good Shepherd Services at the PS 15 Beacon installed their "gardens" in the gallery. When the question, "how do you want to hang your work?" was presented to them they broke into two groups to deliberate. By consensus they chose to use their drawings as mark making tools to collectively create a flower on one wall and a dragonfly on the other wall. We were very impressed by this wholly unsolicited curatorial decision. Way to go after schoolers!