Cathy Duffy, a teacher at Horace Mann School, leads a double life – teacher by day, and artist after school hours.
With an art show featuring students’ work, she got to combine roles for a little while.
Duffy said the students from each grade got to display their work.
“I wanted to have an exhibit in order for parents and others to see the work the students are doing in class,” she said.
Part of Duffy’s motivation is to keep public attention focused on art.
While art is a valuable part of education, she said it is often forgotten or devalued. By showing off the work kids do, it reminds everybody the important place art has.
Although learning the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic are necessary, so is learning to express ideas in terms that cannot be calculated or found in grammar books.
The exhibit that was put up for a few days at the end of April filled the school auditorium with shape and color as students worked out ideas in a variety of media.
Students from pre-k through eighth grade attempted to find their own expression through various artistic exercises, which stimulate creativity while at the same time teach kids the concepts of form.
Abby Durak, an eighth grader, explored perspective in a “kitchen tabletop checkerboard” work of art.
“It took me a few weeks to do in class,” she said.
Angie Marin, of the fifth grade, was the winner of the Earth Day Calendar Contest this year. Her work featured a painted scene of Newark Bay, complete with container port operations across the bay from Richard A. Rutkowski Park. It showed the impact of pollution on fish and humans, and put a spin on an educational theme of President George W. Bush. Instead of saying, “No child left behind,” she focused on the connection between kids and pollution, entitling her work, “No child left inside.”
“I wanted to create something that was easy to understand,” she said. “I wanted to say that kids shouldn’t stay inside, but should go outside into the environment.”
She said she was inspired by a visit to Stephen Gregg County Park and the trash she saw washing up on shore.
Joseph Nicolette, of the seventh grade, also worked with perspective by creating three-dimensional boxes with the use of lines.
He said he likes art and has done other pieces before.
Many of the kids were assigned tasks in each class, especially in the lower grades. They worked off models that began the creative process.
Throughout the room, parents paused before various works to study the intense use of color and shape.
“It’s important for people to see what their kids are doing here,” Duffy said.