Dear Friends, I hope you are enjoying a very good start to this new year! I am really excited to introduce my bran new blog and website— all rolled into one. Please follow me over to the completely redesigned ZwackArt site (now hosted by WordPress). It allows me to have a great format where you can browse around and see portfolios of different projects organized by category as well as catch up on the very latest. Thanks for your interest. I look forward to hearing from you, Annemarie Zwack
Over the years I have been making and collecting tiles. And my Dad has been a collector of tiles too. Now, as the downstairs of our barn studio, rounds the corner into the final stretch of getting winterized, seems to be the time we have been saving our tiles for. Pulling out the boxes of ceramic treasure I quickly became mesmerized in laying them out in wild geometric jazz rhythms. Rusty, my husband, measured out the spaces so that they matched the hearth and a designated entry space where visitors can kick off wet boots and shoes. I'll keep you posted as I set and grout them and show you how it turns out.
Just getting back into updating here and I wanted to post images of the finished paintings done by students at Elmira Alternatives High School who were working on the Freedom Writers project with their teacher Christine Welch. (There's one more of Ricardo's work that I need to reload. Stay tuned 'cus it's really good.)
Ms. Culligan's second graders finished up the year with some very cool artistic achievements under their belts. As you may remember they were working with story teller Regi Carpenter on creating a story of their own and telling it in a dynamic way. The story they made up was about how the skunk got it's stripe. They developed a cast of animal and insect characters and a plot that unfolds in and near a neighborhood grocery store. Students also made visual representations of the story with clay tiles. They glazed the tiles and their art teacher, Athena Negros, fired them, had the outdoor wall prepared, and purchased all the necessary supplies for installation of a outdoor mosaic. On June 2nd the whole school and many parents gathered to enjoy the story of "How the Skunk Got it's Stripe" in the school auditorium. Students used small props of their own making and choreographed movements as well as words to tell the story. Afterward there was a party! That week and the next Ms. Negros, Ms. Culligan, and Jill Browne, the Challenge Enrichment Specialist, who had been instrumental in the entire project, and I set the tiles and grouted them on a brick wall next to one entrance to the school. It came out beautifully! Ms. Browne plans to have a booklet installed just inside the school that contains the story the students made so that anyone can reference it. There is also the intention that this will be an ongoing project and that mosaics will continue to make their way around the beautiful building that is Ben Franklin Elementary School.
I am so happy to show you the Watershed Wall completed Many months of planning and many hours of work by many, many people went into making this dream a reality. Finally on June 4th, the Friday afternoon of Ithaca Festival, just as planned, we had a ribbon cutting ceremony and the work was unveiled. Here is Jennifer Engle, one of my all time favorite Ithacans, with "the ribbon". Jennifer is a member of the Fine Arts Booster Group and Ithaca Public Education Initiative that helped sponsor this project. Here is mayor Carolyn Peterson cutting the ribbon. There was a really nice crowd gathered to see the work and celebrate. Some people could identify marks they made or elements they helped with. Here are some of the district art teachers who were instrumental in planning the project and helping their students make the tiles. Ten different schools were involved in making tiles, and 2 other schools worked on supporting research about the creaks and the lake! Here's how I was feeling after the ceremony:
Congratulations Van Etten third graders! From paper making with recycled paper scraps, to learning book making techniques, to learning about Haiku with poet Alice Mishka and writing their own poetry, students at Van Etten Elementary school have acquired all the skills to make beautiful hand made books. And that's just what they did last week! Four classes of third graders glued their haiku poems, that they had typed out on a variety of colored papers, in a font of their choice, onto the watercolor paintings that they had made to accompany their words. I guided them in folding an accordion style book and they then attached the hand made paper book covers that they had made a couple months back. There will be a celebration of their work next week at school where parents and community members will be invited to see the results of this year long project that has tied together a school wide recycling effort with the creativity of visual art and the descriptive beauty of words. Many thanks to art teacher, Deb Youngling, who helped coordinate this cross disciplinary learning, all of the third grade classroom teachers, principal, Missy Jewell, who has been extremely supportive of using the arts to express core curriculum, and to Art House and the Corning Elmira Community Foundation for their financial support.
This week and last I have been working with Ms. Welch's English class at the Alternative High School in Elmira, NY. They have been studying the Freedom Writer's Diary this year, learning about the Holocaust and writing poetry about it and about their own lives. Ms. Welch asked me to come in and help the students develop a visual element for this project. I suggested the idea of painting in acrylic on canvas. There may be an opportunity for students to read their poetry and the canvases could create a backdrop; a wall of imagery behind the speaker that relates to what they are talking about. The work will also be separate and portable. There may be opportunities for showing their work in a gallery-type setting, or for bringing it to other schools to share their accomplishments. Students already had the poem they wanted to work with chosen when I arrived and I led a drawing workshop where they sketched their ideas to scale. The next time, I helped as students transferred their sketches onto canvas in paint. Yesterday, I set the goal of covering the canvas in paint. Tomorrow, our last day together, I plan to help them with details and finishing up. Ms. Welch and Ms. Lake, who assists in the class, are leading by their example and both making paintings based on poetry they have written. I have been so impresses by the students' work! I have really enjoyed this experience and would love to work with Ms. Welch and her students again. Thank you, Elmira Alternatives School!
I live in the woods and I come to work at my studio barn. Upstairs above the chicken co-op, above the garden, I keep my art materials, and I come to make things. I also go out into my community and make food for and art with other people. I go to schools and help students learn to make and through making art. And I cook local organic vegetarian meals at a retreat center. I grow a lot of the vegetables I eat and I like to work with local farmers when I cook professionally.
