Art Opens A Dialogue Between Artist & Students

By Shannon Hicks

What started as a senior project for one Newtown High School Art Portfolio student may turn into a continuing dialogue between the students and faculty of the Newtown public school system.

Diane Dutchick, one of the art faculty members at NHS, offers a senior class that helps students prepare portfolios for practical use, primarily art school applications. There are several challenging projects for the one-semester course.

One of the class requirements is to have ten works framed and matted, and then put on view somewhere in the community. When Gwen Eissman was faced with this challenge, she found herself looking back at her roots.

She approached Sandy Hook School art teacher Leslie Gunn, a former instructor of the high school senior, and inquired about the possibility of hanging a show at SHS. Mrs Gunn agreed immediately, and the presentation of works of art by Gwen has been welcomed and discussed by fifth grade art students from the moment the show was hung in January.

“When I was looking for a place to set this up, I remembered Mrs Gunn and how she was always very receptive to ideas and very supportive,” Gwen said of her former “Gifted Art” teacher. “She was especially supportive with my idea of talking to the kids.”

Gwen answered questions from the elementary school students while she was hanging her show, and plans to have a formal question-and-answer session with them before the works come down.

The collection of 11 pieces now on view offers Mrs Gunn’s fifth graders (and anyone who ventures into the art room to look at the exhibit) a number of opportunities. It allows them to see the level they might hope to reach in terms of their own work a few years down the road. It also allows them the opportunity to speak with an older artist, which they took advantage of while Gwen was hanging her show.

The collection was to stay up until February 23, but the student response at the elementary school has been so strong that the show will remain for a few more weeks.

The show includes four self-portraits, all from different perspectives. One piece was done in black and white, another is a depiction of herself as a member of the opposite sex, and another is a straightforward self-portrait. The fourth offering is the one with which she had the most difficulty. This is a self-portrait from the view of looking at a mirror that had been placed on the floor.

“The students are absolutely fascinated by these different perspectives,” Leslie Gunn said this week.

Gwen, however, couldn’t have finished that fourth piece soon enough.

“That one was really hard,” she admitted recently. “It was hard to get the right proportions: the huge feet and the small head.” Difficult as the assignment may have been, the resulting artwork is fantastic. Because of the position of the mirror on the floor, many who find themselves looking at the drawing feel as if they are actually looking up at someone who is standing above them. The viewer feels as if he or she is in fact standing below ground, looking up through a manhole, perhaps.

Another pair of works could not have been more perfect for the presentation at Sandy Hook School. Gwen has two pairs of drawings, one of a spray cleaner bottle and one of a student lamp, that compare composition and value by having the objects depicted in black and white and color.

“These works in particular have been studied by the fifth graders because they were presented with the same challenge,” Mrs Gunn said. “This was perfect because the students could look back here while they were working on their pieces and they could see how she solved the problem.” One of the biggest difficulties of composition and value works is that artists are usually challenged to create shadowed areas without using black.

“Kids tend to think of shadows as black areas, and that was one of the rules: They could not use black in the color works,” Mrs Gunn explained.

The younger art students are also beginning to work with acrylic paints, and there is an acrylic landscape on view as well.

“They can see the application of color, without it becoming flat, in this finished work,” Leslie Gunn pointed out, referring to an autumnal scene with a large tree. “We’re making a lot of references to that piece right now: how did she get the tree trunk? where did she use brushes and where did she use sponges? They have a lot of questions, and having this work available is helping them find some of their answers.”

Gwen admits she may not be off to art school immediately, but she does think the AP class has helped toward a possible career goal.

“It isn’t definite, but I’m thinking about art therapy,” she said, adding that another of her senior projects has concerned art therapy. “I would like to be a therapist of some kind who can work art into my therapy,” she explained.

“That was also one of the reasons why I liked the idea of having the show at the school. I wanted it to be in a place that would have a lot of kids, especially ones in the age group I’m interested in helping,” she continued.

Leslie Gunn sees the art show as a “good connection. It was a good opportunity to show students what’s ahead if they continue to apply themselves to art,” she said. “The students thought it was cool that she chose their school, out of all the places she could have approached, and they love having it here.”

Mrs Gunn said that between the discussions with Gwen while she was hanging the show and the upcoming sit-down program with the students, “[this art show] has been good for everyone.

“I’d like to see more exchanges like this — maybe more works by older students being shown to the younger students, or younger students talking with the older students, or even having different age groups work on the same problems and then let everyone see how they all approached the same task.

“It would be nice to do this on an ongoing basis,” said the art teacher. “Maybe this has opened some doors.”