“This is just like art class, only without the school!”-6th grade participant

The Asset Model in Practice: Emphasizing Children’s Abilities and

Experiences at the Asarese-Matters After School Art Program

Alice Pennisi, Art Education Department • Candace Keegan, Art Education Department Maureen McCarthy, graduate student, art education • Rick Blane, graduate student, art education

FUNDED BY GRANTS FROM:The Research FoundationThe Office of College & Community PartnershipsSister Susan Bowles & The Sisters of St. Mary Of Numar

Our program began in spring 2009 with a focus on drawing activities developed from the children’s individual interests. We noticed that many of them were particularly excited over artwork that included animals and imaginary creatures. For this term, we are focusing on that interest, as it can be understood on many levels: psychological, biological, societal, and imaginary. The children who come to our after school art program span many grade levels, from early childhood to adolescence, and this topic seems to engage and challenge them all.

Participants have been inspired by an ominous Charles Burchfield landscape to paint their own formidable

environments; created observation drawings of hybrid creatures based on animal figurines, and painted a group mural of an imaginary world chocked full of any number of animals. Recently they explored gargoyles, both in photographs and three-dimensional

reproductions, to then create their own clay beings, some playful and others destructive.

Monsters: Imaginary & Real