Lisa Packer, Visual Arts (grades 6-8)
John Kontier, Language Arts (grade 7)
This collaboration between Visual Arts and Language Arts culminated in a performance with the Social Theater Group at the year’s end. This group of students produces, writes and performs skits related to social issues relevant to the middle school environment. A core group of Visual and Language Arts students visited The Andy Warhol Museum to explore Warhol’s collaborative endeavors. They focused on Warhol’s paintings with Jean Michel Basquiat, his interactive sculptures with engineer Billy Klüver and his writings with Pat Hackett. These three collaborations informed and inspired the core group as they returned to their school to facilitate the planning and execution of the performance with a previously established collaborative of “cluster” groups. These cluster groups created the written scripts, the collaborative mural backdrops and the interactive dance component of the performance. While at the museum, students also created a collaborative mural inspired by the Pop Art of Warhol and the Graffiti Art of Jean Michel Basquiat.
Prior to their visit to the museum, this core group developed a list of “middle school issues” and researched appropriate pop images, graffiti words and symbols to bring to the museum to use as source material for their collaborative mural.