Urban Bright at Art House: Plastic Trash into Art
Working with children has been an exhilarating experience for Ron Shelton. Their inventive, sincere way of processing information is in keeping with his creative practice. In his recent ten-week residency with twenty 3rd graders from Dennison Elementary School, Cleveland Ohio, Ron provided information and hope within an art-making format that encouraged dialogue, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. With the help of internationally renowned artist, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson of Ghana, the class looked at the environmental effects of plastic disposal and learned about how some contemporary artists use this as a political, environmental, and aesthetic focus in their work.
The ten-week Urban Bright Project was designed for the children to create wire-framed cone hats embellished with plastic fragments. Plastic covered the studio floors for the children not only to see how consuming plastic waste is but also served as the source of the student’s caps. Using the disposable plastic materials they talked about in class, Ron also covered several of the 6-foot tables with plastic sheets for the students to doodle on. Then, through painting, drawing, and assemblage, the children made hats and plastic “fabric” that delighted them as wearable art objects and vehicles for self-expression. The interchange among the students and artists in this residency created an atmosphere of inclusion, self-esteem, and doing work that has a meaning related to contemporary environmental issues.
[kopa_blockquote border=”left”]We had just started our unit on Earth’s Resources and the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) when we were introduced to Mr. Shelton. So when he spoke to the class about plastics, my students could make the connection to the danger of pollution and Ron’s artistic message. They continued bringing what we learned at Art House with Ron into our science lessons. Jennifer Spada, Dennison Elementary School 3rd Grade teacher [/kopa_blockquote]
Ideas like recycling, and human resilience in the face of a global problem, build self-confidence and optimism among the students from Dennison Elementary: Dixandel (9 years old): “The one thing I learned in art class is that you can reuse plastic and make something into art”; Angel (9 years old): “Plastic can be hurtful to nature because if the animals eat plastic they can get sick or they can die”; Janiyah (8 years old): “I’ve learned that recycling can help the ocean because some people throw plastic into the ocean and that can hurt animals”, and from Angelo (9 years old): “I learned that you can reuse plastic. I love art because we get to make stuff out of plastic and metal. My favorite part of the class was making the hats”.
“Art House’s Urban Bright support, enrich, and deepen the visual arts curriculum in our schools by providing school-age children with meaningful, hands-on learning experiences with a professional artist. The program focuses on providing services to schools in low-income, underserved communities in Greater Cleveland, Ohio. Over the last decade and a half, arts education has been quietly disappearing from school curriculums across the nation due to budget cuts and shifting priorities; Art House seeks to bridge the gap between the desire for robust arts education programming and the reality of public funding through the Urban Bright Arts-In-Education program.”
Carol Heft is a New York City-based artist and educator. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and her work has been exhibited internationally. She teaches Drawing, Painting, and Art History at several colleges in New York and Pennsylvania, and is represented by the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City.
