Following the holidays, we jumped back into our after school visual art program with Augustina's "personal pattern" lesson. Due to the fact that we only get students for an hour each week, we opted to use colored pencils and markers instead of paint. 

Tracy helps one student trace her designs.

One of our students works on cutting out her shapes.

Student begins to outline and color in her design.

Student uses crayon to begin adding color to her design.

One of our regular students practices drawing Sonic the Hedgehog.

Personal Patterns with Augustina Droze

As part of our partnership with Global Voices and Young Audiences of WNY, we have had the opportunity to work with a few teaching artists in local public schools. Augustina Droze is a mural artist, and created a variety of workshops leading up to a mural she will be creating at the Lorigo building on the West Side. The first workshop had students from P.S. 45 creating "Personal Patterns." They filled in sentences about themselves to come up with ideas for personal symbols (for example, 'I am bright. An example of something bright is a sun'). They used their personal symbols to create patterns, and finished their designs with paint.

Students work on their patterns.

A student puts the finishing details on her pattern.

Augustina supervises students at work.

Augustina demonstrates how to add marker outlines.

Student artwork.

Student artwork.

Student artwork.

Peace, Love & Grant Street

"Peace, Love, & Grant Street" was a holiday shopping and celebration event designed to encourage people to shop, eat, and explore the Grant-Ferry business district. Businesses were open until 8:00pm and featured festive decorations, live music, holiday specials, and other fun activities. A trolley was hired to transport shoppers throughout the district.

At the Community Academic Center we had a number of different art making activities including personal patterns, a puzzle turned map of the West Side incorporating fingerprints and words, snowflakes, a wreath made out of decorated hands and index cards with pictures and descriptions of why "I love the West Side...".

Tracy and the girls work on their hand designs.

Some of the girls create puzzle ornaments 

after putting their prints on the map.

Dr. Truesdell reads a book to some of our visitors.

A plethora of snowflakes on one of our walls.

A group working on their hand designs.

Peace, Love & Grant Street Wreath