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Caption: This is a digital story of the Park Avenue Armory Judgment Day Art Residency with 9th, 10th and 11th grade students at the International High School at Prospect Heights and their Classroom Art Teacher
Ms. Katherine Mahoney
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Caption: Artist Armory Corps Teaching Artist Hawley Hussey and Teaching Assistant Amo Ortiz are thankful to the IHSPH staff and students for welcoming them into this great adventure!
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Caption: Day One: the students were asked to write their names on heavy duty Kraft paper with simple but elegant writing tools. This helped us get warmed up for our Visual Art Residency and to get to know each other.
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Caption: With multiple languages spoken in the classroom we found ways to communicate very quickly! We used art, student translators and we used our phones when needed!
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Caption: Next we encouraged students to tell us more about themselves by adding more drawings and writing to their names.
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Caption: The students exhibited a stunningly high level focus and craftsmanship. Judgment Day is a complex theatrical piece. Our goal was that each part of the artwork made during the residency would be utilized to build a site specific installation at the Park Avenue Armory.
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Caption: The students are introduced to new mediums every day to elaborate on their individual and collective drawings.
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Caption: When we introduced transparent vellum the work took on a new vision and complexity! The students loved it!
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Caption: Next step: Collage!
Notice Yaya in the background has broken off from his group to really scale up his concept!
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Caption: At this point in the residency we built a small maquette of what our final installation could look like. Our plan was to utilize all of the student work to build every section of our final work! This is why we used all paper. The final piece would be complex but lightweight.
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Caption: We took a day off from everything we had been doing to think about nature and in particular trees! Trees had a large presence in the Judgment Day set and we wanted to make a nod to their powerful presence. When the students witnessed the show they had the imprint of the importance of the trees in the theatrical set.
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Caption: We used water colors, sumi ink brushes and rice paper scrolls. Our vision was that all of these light weight paintings would be clustered together so they would move gently as people walked through our final set up!
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Caption: Everyone fell
In love with these materials. The elegant rice paper received the watercolor and showed through on both sides.
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Caption: Listen as one student me helps me with translating ideas to the student artist who is in the painting zone!
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Caption: Everyone loved painting so much they asked to break out their early residency work with their names to add more color. The paint worked well on the Kraft paper too!
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Caption: The students took the nature theme into independent study. The results were spectacular.
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Caption: All independent explorations were encouraged. The patterns and textures would serve the larger installation!
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Caption: A new material was introduced to take our tree ideas even larger! Chalk board contact paper! More students took off with independent design ideas!
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Caption: One of the most exciting aspects of this art residency was watching the students innovate with the materials provided!
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Caption: Students shared fond memories of nature in their homelands.
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Caption: We were thrilled when the contact paper easily attached to our Kraft paper which was to serve as the base for our construction of the final work.
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Caption: At this point the students asked for new sheets of Kraft paper to add free form designs of city and of nature with a free choice of art materials. We had created a solid working art studio together!
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Caption: Although the classes were only one hour everyone got right to it every time we met! Look at all of these independent projects! Every day was really a high level art studio experience!
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Caption: The students began to create expressions of nature from the rice paper scrolls to large sheets of Kraft paper. The level of student skill was an unexpected outcome for our process!
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Caption: The students continuously mentored, assisted and taught each other!
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Caption: The more students shared the stories of their names and their personal images the more we understood every individual.
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Caption: Each day the students selected what part of our installation they wanted to work on. It was high level independent studio practice.
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Caption: A key element in Judgment Day was a small town full of gossip and stereotyping. We asked the students to work in groups to create a frozen tableau of a scene expressing these Themes.
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Caption: The students innovated this part of the project in ways we never expected!
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Caption: Our Armory colleague Shar helped us remove everything from the background and printed the photos on transparent paper. We were ready for the next step!
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Caption: In a dynamic move the students took paint markers to animate the tableaus! The outcome was incredible.
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Caption: The installation plan was taking shape! Names and nature on the outside and these intense backlit tableaus on the inside!
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Caption: We built another small maquette to show the students what the final installation could become.
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Caption: Our last step was to visualize our pathways to Brooklyn!
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Caption: In the end we could not install our final work because of The “Rona” and all it did to shut down NYC. The work we did is imprinted for all of us and we send congratulations to the amazing students at International High School at Prospect Heights.
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Caption: Hawley installed some of the work in her backyard to honor the students!
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Caption: Thanks to Ms. Katherine and the IHSPH staff for supporting this huge undertaking! It was magical!
Story by Hawley Hussey May 2020