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Hello,
I was talking to a classroom teacher last week. She had spoken to Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio about a new school program I'm offering, "From Books into Art" and asked them to have me call her to discuss coming to her school. Although school wasn't starting for more than a week, this teacher was in the classroom setting up. She wasn't alone. Teachers around the country are doing the same thing. Unpacking boxes. Filling supply shelves. Focusing on lesson plans. And art teachers have the additional consideration of providing a safe space for their students to create in. Classroom safety is akin to studio safety, both using similar materials in an enclosed indoor space. It's identical in another important way: The artist spends long hours in the studio as does the art teacher in the classroom. And that's when safety issues become even more important. I've pointed out many times during my teacher workshop "Everything You wanted to Know About Clay, Glazes and Kilns, but Didn't Know Who to Ask", that if the teacher is safe in the classroom, the students will be too. The students spend perhaps a class period per week in the art room while the teacher spends all day, five days a week there. So it's a matter of self protection for the teacher.
The ceramic field has special considerations regarding classroom safety. It seems to boil down to potentially hazardous materials and the atmosphere within the classroom. You notice that I didn't mention the fear of the kiln burning down the school. It's never happened. Kilns are designed to keep heat in, not let it out to cause fire. But art teachers are tempting fate when they store flammable materials like paper and fabric near the kiln. Kilns do let out fumes, however, that need to be vented outdoors. The new vents that draw fumes downward and out through the equivalent of a dryer hose seem to work best. 
Moist clays and glazes often state that they art non toxic and that's generally true while they remain moist. Once they dry and create dust however, it's a different matter for they can cause breathing problems with long term exposure as well as asthma attacks more immediately. Having done a web search on art room safety I see that sweeping floors is not recommended. In my studio I use a special filter for my shop vac that filters particles as small as .3 microns. It's made from Gore-Tex (!) and seems to eliminate the fine dust that ceramic materials produce.
During my artist-in-residencies, the art teacher will sometimes show me bags of dry glazes and other ceramic materials that have been donated by a community member or from a ceramic studio that has gone out business. Perhaps these materials have languished in a supply cupboard in the school for years. The question is always the same: Is this stuff safe? The bags usually have little information on them and were produced in an era when safety considerations were not as prominent in peoples minds. Without further information about these glazes and materials I tell the art teachers to assume that they are toxic. This unfortunately places the responsibility for safe disposal of these materials on the art teacher.
I found the web site http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/teach/art_hazards.html a place to start.
The pictures on today's post were taken during tile decoration in Joan Zacharias' classroom for the mural "Portals of Learning", at Granger Elementary School in Medina County, Ohio.
George
Hi everyone,
As I'm sure you've gathered, mosaics are a particular passion of mine. Recently I completed a mosaic with students at Cleveland Heights High School and currently I'm working on a mosaic fireplace surround for the master bedroom of a home in a Chicago suburb. It was a particular joy last Fall to attend an exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute titled "The Roman World." I was in the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek presenting a professional development workshop to art teachers there. Central to the exhibit were a group of late Roman mosaics taken from the Hammam Lif site in present day Tunisia. The mosaics once comprised part of the floor of a synagogue and are some of the finest examples of the art from the era when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling. Pictured above and to the right is the section titled "The Tree of Paradise." The mosaics were discovered by accident in the 19th century by a French Army Captain who had ordered his soldiers to clear space for a garden behind his house. One of his officers created a plan of the site during its excavation. Some time later the Brooklyn Museum of Art (see the preceding
post to this blog) acquired the mosaics. They remain on tour and I felt very fortunate to see them in Dayton last year. The Dayton Art Institute is an example of the many fine museums that can be found throughout my home state of Ohio.
George Woideck
Hi there,
My wife Gail and I returned from New York City last week and I've had time to reflect on the three museums we visited there and the differences between them. New York is a city of museums and galleries, and people often travel to the city just to see art. I thought I'd share some recent experiences.
One of our favorite viewing experiences is the Onassis Cultural Center across from Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan. It's funded by part of the Onassis fortune and it displays art with a Greek theme, from ancient to modern. Thanks to that funding the Center has free admission and is able to bring top quality art and artifacts to the U.S. in beautifully displayed exhibitions. Currently there is "From The Land of The Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 B.C." I've seen many of these pieces in museums in Hania and Iraklion Crete and it's a joy to see them here. The exhibit runs through September 13, 2008. Visit the gift shop and taverna upstairs from the Center. Their website is: onassisusa.org.
The Brooklyn Museum is one of New York's best kept secrets. Just a short subway ride from Manhattan it's also a bargain: General admission is $8 with special prices for seniors and children. The quality of the art at the Brooklyn is often as good as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's just a smaller museum. Perfect for people who don't want to be overwhelmed by massive crowds. Sort of like the Cleveland Museum 0f Art in size. I was in one of the Brooklyn's beautiful Egyptian galleries and there were only two other people in there with me. My wife Gail and I rate museums by the offerings in their cafes and the Brooklyn's cafe rates high for quality and value.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's greatest as well as richest museums. The Temple of Dendur, the Greek and Roman collections, the Impressionist art and so much more make this a marvelous viewing experience. With our New York granddaughters we're reading "From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" (about the adventures of a sister and brother who run away from home to live in the Met) and we've had fun finding the locations in the museum that were mentioned in the book. The Met charges $20 admission but I'll let you in on a little secret: Since the museum (a private institution) sits on public land (Central Park) the $20 is only a "suggested" entrance fee. You can pay as much or as little as you want. I'm glad that I didn't pay full admission on my last visit because a number of the museum's galleries were temporarily closed because of "staffing problems." This included most of the art from India and Korea on a busy Sunday afternoon in the Summer. Quite a shock and disappointment that made a visit to one of our great museums much less enjoyable.
George Woideck
Hi everyone,
A goal of creating this blog was to was to write a weekly series of posts of interest to art teachers on the themes of tile, mosaic and clay. Over the years, while being an artist-in-residence , teachers have often expressed to me a feeling of isolation within their schools. There may may be four math teachers, and four science teachers in their school but they may be the only art teacher there. I've also been surprised to discover that within many school districts, art teachers do not get together to develop a sense of community and shared purpose within their discipline. It often seems to occur only during district-wide or county-wide art exhibitions of student work. So I've seen this blog as a chance to share information, ideas and thoughts related to art and particularly my field of ceramics with teachers in an informal setting.
During my years of association with the Teacher Resource Center of the Education Department of the Cleveland Museum of Art I designed and presented hands-on workshops for teachers of art. I often asked participants to suggest ideas for future workshops. Many of my best workshops came from ideas from those teachers. One of my most popular workshops each Fall was entitled "All You Wanted to Know About Clay, Glazes and Kilns, But Didn't Know Who to Ask." It turns out that art teachers have lots of questions about the ceramic field. We began the session by covering a blackboard with topics to discuss while doing an innovative clay project. Often the answers to teachers' questions were found within the experience of other workshop participants and I felt I was acting just as a moderator. As many of you know but may not want to admit, the start of the school year is only a month off. I thought that I would take this opportunity to solicit questions about clay, glazes and kilns that you would like me to address in posts nearer to the start of school. Remember, I'm a ceramic artist, so please confine your questions to that area of art. I hope we can have lively discussion.
Best wishes,
George
Hi everyone,
We're in New York this week celebrating the birth of a new grandson. When visiting here we always take advantage of the city's great art and museum scene. Public art is everywhere. One of the most significant outdoor installations is a mosaic covered, linear sculpture that surrounds three sides of Grant's Tomb (gee, I wonder who's buried there?) in Riverside Park at West 122nd Street. Created in 1975 by artist Pedro Silva, to commemorate the US Bicentennial, it tells the history of New York City in dozens of colorful linked scenes. The piece is in the style of Barcelona artist and architect Antonio Gaudi who popularized the technique of broken tile mosaic. Although the piece does not fit with the Classical edifice of Grant's Tomb, it's one of the most delightful outdoor installations of public art anywhere.
Broken tile mosaics have had a bit of a revival in recent years. The technique of smashing dishes and tiles and reassembling the pieces is covered in many how-to books on mosaics. People's results have been uneven, however, and often fail when installed in outdoor settings. I'll be covering broken tile mosaics in depth in a future post of this blog.
George
Hi everyone,
The big news in visual arts in Cleveland is the partial reopening of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The upper floor of the 1916 building was opened to the public on Sunday June 29. This includes the redesigned Garden Court with balcony (pictured to the left), the Armor Court and the galleries that ring the perimeter of the building. The focus is primarily on traditional European and American painting and decorative arts and the armor, of course. Although this represents a small fraction of the Museum's gallery space and collections it's the beginning of a process that will last to 2012.
I visited the Museum on a rainy Wednesday, several days after the reopening of the 1916 building, and found the galleries packed with people, particularly families with children. This was significant because the crowd pleasing art of the impressionists and expressionists is not currently on display. I think it represents a hunger for our museum to up an running again. Most people seemed pleased by the result. Comments I heard were primarily focused on the redesign of the Garden Court and the subsequent removal of the plants and particularly the wishing well from that gallery. The jury seems to be out on that issue. More changes are coming of course.
I hope everyone in the Northern Ohio area, and further afield too, takes the opportunity to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art this Summer. Please let me know your thoughts.
George
Hi,
In the the last post I mentioned how much more I'm aware of tessellations in our world. In part I can thank that new awareness to Al DeGennaro, math teacher at the Mosaic School of Cleveland Heights High School. Al and history teacher John Stephens invited me to create a mosaic/tile mural outside the Mosaic School office. You read about it at http://heightsobserver.org/read/1/3/putting-the-pieces-together.
When I returned home after installing the project I took a closer look at a group of miniature gift boxes we have on display in our living room. They were a gift from a party guest. Each stack of four boxes is only four inches high and the gift wrap for each stack had a different theme. Upon closer examination I realized that one theme was the tessellations of artist M. C. Escher. It's picture on the right. A delightful discovery. I'm not sure if the artist who created the miniature boxes printed the images on the wrapping paper or if the the paper is commercially available. Perhaps you have other examples of tessellations you'd like to share.
George
Hello,
