Arts Every Day is happy to book end the school year with our annual student exhibition at the Walters Art Museum! Arts Every Day’s annual exhibit showcases how teachers integrate visual arts, music, dance, theater, and media across grade levels and subject matter such as Math, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. The exhibition will display over 100 pieces of arts integrated work created by students across Baltimore City.
We will be holding a reception for the exhibit on Thursday, April 19th from 5-7pm. The event is free and open to the public.
RSVPEvery year Arts Every Day selects a piece of art to appear as the cover image for the exhibit. This year, we chose “Highway”, one of the murals created from a group felting project by 7th and 8th grade students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle School. AED Arts Integration Coach, Sherrie Norwitz, talks about the math through felting residency:
“Highway” by Thomas Jefferson Middle School Students: Jalen B., Freddie D.,Taylor G., Kimora G , Maurie H., Prince L., Deandre M., Ty’shawn M., James T., Jordan R., Greg W., Trania W., Tranay W.
Each year, Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle School provides an arts integrated residency for our 7th and 8th grade students. This year we were delighted to have Katherine Dilworth, felting artist, as our residency artist. Our middle school math teacher, Mr. Brown, was our collaborating teacher for the residency. This January residency included five days of workshops for four classes each day, plus a Family Arts Integration Night.
During our residency, students learned about the cultural history of felting along with shaping and needle techniques. These techniques were used to create individual elements of larger, multi-paneled scenes that will be hung in our middle school hallway as one of our school-wide legacy art pieces.
The math focus for the mural included geometry, measurement and data – areas selected to help support points of need for our middle school students. This residency offered the opportunity to help make tangible those occasions in everyday life that require the use of math. Our seven panels included a construction scene, flea market, highway, skateboarding park, the installation of a mural, and a football stadium.
To create these scenes students sketched and cut individual elements for inclusion in the mural. They then worked collaboratively on the scenes, making decisions about the interactions of the elements and working on additional background details. Companion and follow-up math activities with Mr. Brown included students creating math problems that reflected the math used in their panels. These math problems included the areas of money, miles per gallon, speed and distance, and measurement.
Our mural was unveiled at our Family Arts Integration Night. Seeing the panels spread out created quite a showcase of student work and creativity! While enjoying pizza, families learned about our AI program and listened as Ms. Dilworth, Mr. Brown and the students described the artistic process during the residency. Students also provided highlights of their own personal contributions to the mural. Families were then given the opportunity to create their own felting piece to take home. Much creativity was shown by all participants and the positive feelings experienced by all attending our Family AI Night was an integral component to the overall success of our residency!
You can see “Highway” and over 100 student art pieces at Arts Every Day’s annual student art exhibit from April 18th-22nd at the Walters Art Museum’s Sculpture Court. Arts Every Day Schools will also be featured musical guests during the Walters Art Museum’s first Community Youth Art Celebration on April 21st from 12-1pm.