I Love ART Night - Pleasant Ridge

The first-ever "I Love ART Night" hosted at Pleasant Ridge Elementary
on February 9th was a HUGE success! All classes had projects on
display in the halls that were created by students and the lobbies
were filled with artists for whom art is either a career or a major
part of life!

"Art Night" was the brain-child of PTA member Jeanette Brenner who
worried about the future of art due to looming budget cuts. Jeanette
approached Christine Marsh, PR art teacher, with the idea and Art
Night was born! It was quickly decided that Art Night would show how
art is an integral part of our daily lives. Showing the relationship
between art and real life were the following artists and
crafts-people:

Architect Keith Fineberg
Mark and Sue Schalk of Two Branch Ranch Alpacas
The Great Lakes Lace Group.
Cassiana Ebert, Culinary Artist
Doug Bacon, Head of SAS Buildings and Grounds & Watercolorist
Photographer Heidi McClelland
Valerie Mann, multi media artist
Rachel Stern, Painter
Mike Brooks, Automobile Sculptor for General Motors
Janice Martin, Saline Middle School Art Teacher & Painter
Christine Marsh, Pleasant Ridge Art Teacher and mixed-metals artist

In addition to the hands-on offerings by many artists in the lobby,
there was a 68 foot long "peace flag" made by Valerie Mann with
student-designed hands. The art room was also open and the students
had many choices for make-n-take projects while being helped and
monitored by high school art club volunteers.

Thanks to all who had a part in making the first Art Night such a
wonderful event for our Pleasant Ridge families!

--
Christine Marsh-Leutgeb
Pleasant Ridge Art Teacher

The Visual Arts: So much more than you see!

It's that time of year again, when students have to make decisions about selecting courses at the middle school and high school. So here are 10 reasons why an arts education is important in the lives of our children!

10 LESSONS

the ARTS TEACH by Elliot Eisner, Art Education Researcher and Scholar

1 The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2 The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3 The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4 The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5 The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6 The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7 The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8 The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9 The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10 The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

“To Bee or Not To Bee” SMS Art Student’s Community Project

At Saline Middle School, the bees have invaded! Some art students have generously taken on a project to support the Foundation for Saline Area School’s efforts to raise funds for the Literacy Strategic Grant.

The three yard signs which are in the recognizable shape of the "Saline Hornet", were painted in different styles-Matisse and Kandinsky in particular.The students selected these famous artists because of their use of color, shape, and line. You will also notice that one bee was painted in the traditional "blue and gold" Saline colors. The students would’ve made the famous artists proud ! The bees capture the artist’s styles perfectly, and the other art students like them as well. On February 11^th there will be a silent auction for each of the bees. The art students that participated in the painting of the bees include:

Kyra R., Sansara D., Elaina V., Becky R. Jenna J. . Emily B. and Vic B.

Written by: Jenna Jansa, Elaina Veasey, and Becky Redfern, 8^th grade