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A popular cliché suggests variety is the spice of life. This year, with the help of Waterworks Visual Arts Center, local students found out why that can be true.
At the end of last year, as part of its educational outreach program, Waterworks, with help from the Robertson Foundation, The Impact Fund and the North Carolina Arts Council, piqued the interest of staff and students of North Rowan High School with a project called “The Spice of Life.”The project was designed to encourage students to explore cultural diversity through art projects.
“We wanted to find a way to integrate the students’ personal, family, national and international history … show them that Rowan County is more culturally diverse than they think,”said WVAC executive director Denny Mecham.
Mecham got help from artist Karen Parker, who was part of the gallery’s winter exhibition “Philos.” Parker wanted to introduce“the concept of exploring the universal through the specific.
“High-school students, in particular, are at a stage of intellectual and emotional development where understanding one’s self takes the utmost priority,”Parker said in a written proposal.
The students were given a survey to complete, the results gathered to demonstrate the many different ethnicities represented among them. Though many of the students were born in the United States, their ancestry originated in France, Greece, Germany, India, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, Mexico, Liberia, Spain and Venezuela, among others.
Students explored themselves and demonstrated their cultural extraction by decorating a life-sized plywood cutout that they decorated with calligraphy, embellishments and pictures.
When approaching family traditions inherited from their culture, they decorated chairs, which Parker described as “the link between the artists and their families,” that sat around a common table — a tangible expression, Mecham said, of the symbolic feast of cultural diversity.
Finally, they recognized their cultural heritage by researching family, Internet and library sources. The finished products were on display at Waterworks and will be installed at the school in public places.
While North students learned about themselves through the “Spice” project, students from Henderson Independent School took a different approach.
Next week, “The Way I See It”will replace “The Spice of Life”in the Young People’s Gallery. Rowan-Salisbury Schools, the North Carolina Arts Council and the Robertson Foundation helped put on this exhibit, which displays photographs digitally manipulated by the students and punctuated by autobiographical statements. This was a particularly special project, as Henderson students face emotional and social challenges.
Since the students would use computers to create their photos, Mecham looked to Ron Lilly and Tammy Glass of Cyber Technology Center for assistance.
“On the first day we told the students what we did and that we were there because Denny and Waterworks was provided a grant to help allow them to express themselves, that we were merely there as a conduit but the project was up to them,” Glass said. “A lot of them were shocked that we were there. Some of them even asked, ‘Why is she doing this for us?’ I told them, ‘Denny cares about you and knows you might not get these opportunities often.’”
“It took a while to get the program off the ground because their resources were limited,”said Glass, who worked with Dr. Carol Meeks. “They didn’t have up-to-date computers. It’s unfortunate that this population doesn’t have the resources it needs. They could use support from the community.”
Finally they were able to secure enough computers with adequate Internet access and art-making programs like Corel. Still, many of the children were uncomfortable with computers and had to be taught how to use the Internet.
But it didn’t take long for them to get the hang of their goal, which was to express how they see the world in the form of 8-by-10 hangable art.
“Some were bizarre, some were really cute, some used celebrities. One was a very good writer and used it with his work,” Glass said.
Mecham said the students weren’t the only ones learning about themselves. Because this is the first year Waterworks has taken on a project like this, the staff has learned more about what a public art institution can do to help enhance the experience of public education.
“The notion of what art is is a lot broader than it used to be,”Mecham said. “Now there is the opportunity for those who wouldn’t be considered art students to create work. Art education should engage students and show them the possibilities of their own creative spirit and, in return, they show you things you never thought.”
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“The Way I See It” will be at Waterworks Visual Arts Center through Sept. 2. Call (704)636-1882.
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