84th annual exhibition

2012–2013

Each year, The Art Connection (TAC) students spend a great deal of time, 18 Saturdays to be exact, in the museum’s galleries exploring the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions to get inspiration for their own works of art. Students who returned to TAC in October were surprised to discover the newly reinstalled Scaife Galleries. Their reactions were unanimously favorable and appreciative of the new, lively wall colors and arrange-ment of their favorite artworks (“friends”) in the galleries. The influence of each student’s “friend” in the gallery is apparent in the works of art displayed in this year’s annual student exhibition, which presents a selection of artworks created by TAC students in grades five through nine during the 2012–13 school year.

The Scaife Galleries reinstallation prompted some students to think about the galleries and ask questions about the museum itself, such as, “Who makes decisions about what museums should look like?” and “If I could redesign the museum, what changes would I make?” These questions especially resonated with this year’s seventh- and ninth-grade students, who present works of art that are reflective of the museum’s spaces and their own experiences as frequent museum visitors.

Students also gained inspiration from exhibitions such as White Cube, Green Maze: New

Art Landscapes; Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851–

1939; and Cory Arcangel: Masters. Eighth- and ninth-graders had a special opportunity to meet artist Cory Arcangel, whose advice to them was to “make lots of stuff” because “the more stuff you make, the more good stuff you make.” This was great advice for our students who, with the help and guidance of teaching artists, produced an impressive quantity of artworks this year, which is why we have so much great stuff to share with you in the 2012–2013 student exhibition!

I would like to extend special recognition to this year’s exceptional group of ninth- grade students, many of whom have attended The Art Connection for five years. I wish you continued success and creativity in all of your endeavors!

Ashley AndrykovitchAssistant Curator of EducationChildren’s and Family ProgramsCarnegie Museum of Art

We wish to thank the Hear Me project of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, for making it pos-sible to hear the comments of Art Connection students in the exhibition. We also thank the Hulme Charitable Trust, the Scaife Family Foundation Fund, and the Anna Foner Cohen Fund for their generous support of The Art Connection. In addition, we thank Pittsburgh Public Schools and Propel Charter Schools art teachers for recommending students for scholarships.

THE ART CONNECTION

The Art Connection exhibition, 2012

STudENTS

Alexandra Benton

Johnaila Cole

Sonya Coltin

Damien Davila

Rees Edwards

Zeana El-Hajomar

Kurt Engelhardt

Angi Fulton

Sarene Goetz

Brianna Haenel

Michal Hajlasz

Kyra Honeygosky

Arianna Isbell

Paige Jubeck

Hunter Kiedis

Gwen Kottler

Leona Lipowcan

Skylar McCormack

Shria Moturi

Rania Namoro

Daniela Naumov

Oluwatofunmi Olaore

Abbey Parker-Blier

Julie Piasecki

Jeanille Polozoff

Trent Ramsey

Chenoa Morgan

Scotti-Eirene

Sanjita Sigdel

Emma Steckline

Ameila Sterling-Angus

Nathaniel Stuckey

Frankie Tomasic

Kelsey Waite

Chip Ward

Keara Yasko

First year Art Connection students developed drawing, painting, and sculpting techniques as a foundation for the following four years. Each project centered on the theme of art and nature, par-ticularly observation of the natural world and its creative transfor-mation. Inspired by portrait paintings in the museum’s collec-tion, students created multi-layered self-portraits in oil pastels conveying an emotion of their choice They then set their portaits in an environment that- reinforced the emotion. Fifth-graders also created mixed-media wearable artworks after studying the influence of nature in the work of American Indians, ceremonial clothing related to gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, and a ceremonial mask worn in Cameroon. In a project titled Explor-

ing Our Neighborhoods through Landscape, the students viewed landscape paintings from the museum’s collection, and then created multi-layer landscapes with acrylic paint depicting what is important to them in their own neighborhood.

grade 5ART & NATuRE

grade 6HISTORICAL ART

Students in the sixth grade explored artistic techniques from a range of historic periods—from ancient Greece to the Italian Re-naissance to contemporary art. They viewed images of cave paint-ings and other works by early cultures, and made observational sketches of animal specimens from the natural history museum’s collection. They also created their own pigments from natural materials, and made drawings in pastel and charcoal on sandpa-per surfaces. The sixth-graders created human figure sculptures with naturalistic proportions and volume after viewing the ways in which ancient cultures portrayed the human form. They also made gesture drawings of artworks in the collection and their fellow classmates to practice capturing expressive motions. Sixth-grade students also learned the Renaissance technique of chiaroscu-ro—dramatic shifts of light and dark—to convey volume. They cre-ated chiaroscuro self-portraits in pencil and charcoal, considering the effects of light, shadow, and mood. Works such as Albright’s Among those Left and Sargent’s Portrait of a Boy informed their investigations. Inspired by photographic portraits in the collection and the Yours Truly exhibition, the students used digital cameras and portrait studio backdrops and lighting to capture self-portraits depicting a range of moods, poses, and personal stories. Sixth-graders also stretched their own canvases and created still-life paintings inspired by Impressionist works by Manet and Fantin-Latour. In a final project, students learned to create the illusion of depth and three-dimensionality by using one-point perspective. They observed and sketched the visual effects of perspective in artworks and in person, looking out of windows in the museum and the Cathedral of Learning.

STudENTSAdam AmentAshley CerminaraNoor El-HajomarLouise FinnstromKassidy GarofaloMolly GossAnaeja HalliburtonLaila HayesBrayon HigginsSean IgnaskyColleen MaleckiMya MarzanBrianna MathewsLani OwensMaelyn ReedRobyn RussellRachel SadehZachary SmolarHalle SokolMia StantonLyndsey ThompsonRuby TidrickLily TolchinMackenzie TroskyMara Jane Van ThielEmily WeseskyAndrew Winston

Rachael Kate Yanalitis

STudENTS

Charysma Adams

Matthew Bakalarski

Melina Bushmen

Abegail Calub

Teddy Caplan

Briana Carder

Clayton Colwell

Margaret Donley

Isabelle Fisher

Olivia Green

Aisia Johnson

Sophia Kachur

Angelena Lowman

Miranda Marinch

Noor Metwalli

Gabriel Newman

Allyson Piasecki

Ashley Rayzer

Ashante Stephens-Hoye

Alaina Stewart

Ellie Urich

Jesse Weyand

Serena Zets

grade 7ART & EVERYdAY LIFE

Seventh-graders explored the role of art in our daily lives. They began by studying positive and negative space. Students gained inspiration from works of art by Rachel Whiteread and Robert Indiana before conducting space experiments of their own. They also examined text in art by viewing works in the collection by artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Christopher Wool and fo-cusing on the artists’ use of positive and negative space, color, composition, and shapes. The students then created typograph-ical self-portraits using ink and watercolor paint. After visiting the exhibition White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes, stu-dents were inspired to try their hand at architectural photogra-phy. Their photos became the basis for a second project, which challenged them to rethink museum spaces and to design new architectural installations. They created an artist proposal using their original photography, ink, and paint. Seventh-graders con-sidered the relationships between form, function, and concept, through a Conceptual Book project. They discussed the prolif-eration of printed material in our lives from books to advertise-ments to digital text and imagery. They first practiced extensive observational drawing, focusing on lines, shapes, and patterns that they saw in art and in nature. Collections in Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems and Dinosaurs in their Time inspired their silk-screen print designs. Furniture in the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Galleries strengthened the students’ understanding of design for everyday life. Their culminating project—transforming cast-off chairs into expressive works of art—built on all of the lessons and techniques investigated throughout the year.

Eighth-graders explored the relationships between an artwork, its place of origin, and the moment in time when it was cre-ated. Artworks in the collection served as the point of depar-ture for conversations about the social, cultural, and historical contexts of art. In an Artifact Embroidery project, students investigated the historic role of samplers, and then made embroidered drawings depicting their own time and place. They referenced Mary Sampson’s Sampler from the collection, and the natural history museum’s Empowering Women exhibit. They viewed the museum’s Portable Altar and Reliquary from the European Middle Ages, and Jeff Wall’s staged scene in Tran Duc Van. Then, considering their own culture, they created three-dimensional dioramas that represented personal places where they could reflect and find peace. Eighth-graders forged a personal relationship with an artwork—their “friend in the gallery” —in the collection. Studying portraiture, they created self-portraits based on their collection “friend”. The stu-dents created clay-reliefs that told detailed personal stories, informed by memory and inspired by works in the collection. They explored the Oh Snap! project to observe people’s routine and extraordinary activities through the eyes of different photographers. They then represented their own everyday lives in symbolic linoleum block prints; after investigating color rela-tionships in artworks, they printed their linocuts in black-and-white, color on color, and over a collaged image.

grade 8

STudENTS

Aubrey Adkins

Maria Albert

Adam Assad

Noah Bakalarski

Mikal J. Burns-Terney

Ian Bush

Sasha Coltin

Kristina Garand

Luke Gerben Kaspar

Patrick Grundy

Joseph Hrubetz

Madyline Jagielski

Destiny Johnson

Gracie Kon

Kelly McCulloch-Beatty

Sara Nill

Justin Novakowski

Clare O’Neill

Megan Paez

Nick Reichert

Kimberly Szemanski

Brianna Zink

ART REFLECTS TIME & PLACE

STudENTS

Harry Amplas

Saul Bezner

Julia Biertempfel

LaReese Crawford

Ian Helbling

Jordan Jubeck

Jamar Kerney

Natalya Marinch

Daria Och

Mary Clare O’Connor

LaShawn Parks

Codie Piotrowski

Aaron Smolar

Nathan Wallace

Rachel Woodhall

Ninth-grade emerging artists learned to ask personally meaningful

questions that served as catalysts for creative self-expression. They began by making collaborative gesture drawings., Taking inspira-tion from the exhibition Whistler and Rebellion in the Art World and Raymond Simboli’s Pinkerton Riot from the collection, they sketched their classmates in charcoal and pastels, swapping drawings at three-minute intervals. They created gestural paintings after explor-ing color theory and expressive mark-making in works such as Franz Kline’s Siegfried and Georg Baselitz’s The Mocking. Students were visited by contemporary artist Cory Arcangel, who led them through the exhibition Cory Arcangel: Masters, speaking about his artistic practice. Arcangel applies a hacker’s sensibility to a wide range of work, incorporating everything from video games and YouTube clips to Hollywood films and underground music. The ninth-graders also explored communication through popular imagery, language, and appropriation, creating performance pieces and collages. For their video projects, they captured various elements from their physical environment to cultural imagery, reflecting on everyday experiences and fantasies. For a Life Casting and Found Object Sculptures proj-ect, students used materials such as plaster and alginate to create realistic representations of their hands. They displayed found and/or sculpted objects with their hands to communicate aspects of their individual identities.

EMERGING ARTISTSgrade 9

FACuLTYGRAdE 5Jenna Gallant graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in art history. She has been a practicing mixed-media artist in Pittsburgh since 2006. As an art educator in both the Philadelphia area and Pittsburgh for five years, Jenna has had the opportunity to teach many young artists. She feels privileged to be a part of The Art Connection legacy.

GRAdE 6Katelynd Gibbons has worked in children’s and family programs at Carnegie Museum of Art since 2007 and has been a teaching artist at the museum since 2010. In addition to teach-ing, she spends her time doing research, writing, and painting. Katelynd graduated from Penn State University with a BA in art history and a minor in anthropology, and is currently pursuing her MA in social sciences with a focus in history at Edinboro University.

GRAdE 7Kara Skylling received her BFA in fiber art from Temple University in 2007. Working in draw-ing, painting, and fiber art, her work explores pattern and process found in our natural and built environments. Since 2011, she has been the director of the Brew House Association’s Distillery Residency program, a studio residency program that builds an educational bridge between obtaining a fine arts education and establishing a career as an independent artist. Kara is also part of a team of organizers who coordinate Handmade Arcade, Pittsburgh’s first and largest independent craft fair.

GRAdE 8Katie Koffler holds a BFA in fiber and material studies and minor in ceramics from Cleveland Institute of Art. Her interest in teaching began by serving two terms of AmeriCorps in Cleve-land. Since 2007, Katie has worked collaboratively with fellow artist Emily Acita Croft to cre-ate and exhibit handmade jewelry as Birds of a Feather. She also draws, paints on wood, and embroiders, often focusing on the subject of “home.”

GRAdE 9Laurie Barnes is an MFA candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She earned her BFA from California University of Pennsylvania in 2010, and has exhibited locally and internation-ally in recent years. Her artistic practice reflects on contemporary women’s identities and the social/political conditions which contribute to gender inequality. She recently received a Graduate Professional Development grant from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and will be participating in Alloy Pittsburgh’s 2013 Artist Residency program at the Carrie Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Swissvale, Pennsylvania.

The Art Connection is a program of the Education Department, overseen by:Ashley Andrykovitch, Assistant curator of education, Children’s and Family ProgramsJuliet Pusateri, program coordinator and lead educator, Children’s and Family ProgramsMarilyn M. Russell, curator of education

www.hear-me.ne t

General support for the museum’s exhibition program is provided by The Heinz Endowments and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Carnegie Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Turning up the volume on kids’ voices in Southwestern PA

Hear Me, a project of the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, brings together children, creative expression, technology, and youth-serving organiza- tions to empower kids of all ages and backgrounds to document and share their experiences with adults and with one another, helping inform our region’s education, youth policy, and programs.

Hear Me and the Children’s Studio at Carnegie Museum of Art created an educational partnership to record and amplify the voices of young artists and art lovers, finding out what they think and feel about making and experiencing art in the museum.