2007 Poster

Art Aware Newsletter #11 (2006/07) Art Aware 1701 South 4th Street Camden, NJ 08014 (856) 365-0831 artaware@hotmail.com The Lion King, Japan and China

Art Aware classes in 2006 and 2007 were highlighted with themes from China and Japan.

In anticipation of a trip to Asia which Director, Barbara Pfeiffer took with a group of educators for sixteen days in April, 2007, elementary school classes had the experience of doing what Chinese and Japanese painters have been doing, in stylized form, for centuries: drawing trees.

Art Aware initiated and collected for display and study the drawings of skeletal, deciduous, winter trees of approximately 500 students at Davis Elementary School in Camden.

In 2006, Art Aware sponsored trips to see the Broadway production of Julie Taymor's "Lion King" in Philadelphia. The influence of the Japanese art of mask making could be seen in the show. It paved the way for 2007 classes studying the mask-like, live expressions of the actors in Kabuki Theatre.

Also in 2006, in collaboration with the American Association of University Women, Camden Country Branch, Ms. Pfeiffer coordinated trips to the Kimmel Center, one of which was to see "The Chinese Zodiac" and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Learning about Chinese instruments would be a precurser to learning about Chinese styles of paintings which would be shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 in the exhibition of "Japanese Masters of the Brush."

Painting, music and poetry are all combined in the ancient arts of the East and will be increasingly combined in Art Aware classes in 2008 as the world prepares for all the publicity which will be generated by China's Olympics debut.

Art Aware's website has also been expanded to include a global perspective of elementary school art education.

Through the 2006 and 2007 Art Aware Posters of Camden students' work, Ms. Pfeiffer introduced Camden's elementary schools to three elementary schools in Tokyo, Japan and created links on Art Aware's website to those elementary schools as well as to schools in New York and Philadelphia with which Art Aware has connections.

Ms. Pfeiffer's teaching experiences in Tokyo and Hawaii have greatly influenced the direction Art Aware has taken in Camden and Philadelphia during the past twenty years.

Bringing reproductions of artwork from around the world from ancient to modern into elementary school classrooms expands the horizons of inner city children. Working with art teachers from many different schools and with institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Art Aware is able to help students feel they are a part of an ever widening global perspective.

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Posted May 19, 2007

http://www.artaware.org/artnews2007.htm