Classic art by fragments; teacher has great idea
Published: September 26, 2005
“That one’s mine,” said Tyler Curtis, 8, as he strained to point to a 5-inch square near the top of the painting.
Curtis’ square was brown and gold with a line of white going through. Looking at it alone, one would assume it was a piece of abstract art.
But it’s a vital part of a greater whole.
“I wish I got a harder one,” he said, “but we didn’t know what it was when we did them.”
Curtis’ square is one of 320 hanging on a corridor wall near the art room that helps to form an abstract. Pieced together, the squares create a rendition of the famous 1930 painting “American Gothic,” by Grant Wood.
The muted greens and browns and vibrant reds hang together to form a unique take on the farmer with a pitchfork, his unmarried daughter standing next to him.
Every student in the school painted a square using a tiny piece of a print of the painting as a template. The students didn’t know they were working together to form a large, 6-foot-by-8-foot picture.
The squares the children copied were no bigger than the width of a pinkie finger down to its first joint.
“Mine’s all brown with a blue line and a skin color line on it,” said Morgan Dowling, 8.
Genevieve Keller, the art teacher at Windsor Elementary School, came up with the idea last spring.
“I just thought it would be cool if the school could do something all together,” said Keller, of Whitefield. “And people are already saying we should do another one,” she said.
After every student had painted a square, Keller collected them and compared them with a copy of the painting, on which she had drawn a grid. Then she arranged the children’s squares to match her grid and tacked them onto a large, black piece of paper.
“It took about six hours to put together,” Keller said. “And once that was done, we had a schoolwide competition for the kids to figure out what painting it was, who did it and in what year.”
There was also a bonus question, in which students had to figure out who had actually seen the original painting.
Molly King, 11, Sam King, 9, and Amber Bridges, 12, were the lucky three who figured out just what the children had painted.
“We went online to figure out what it was,” Molly said. “We knew the name and just had to figure out who did it,” she said.
“From there, we just asked around to find out who went to Chicago,” Sam said. Eventually, they learned that another of the school’s teachers had traveled there and seen the painting.
Keller is thinking about moving the painting to the cafeteria so children and staff can enjoy the artwork during their lunch times.
But there’s one thing students and staff agree on: The artwork is like nothing they’ve ever seen or done before.
“I think it’s very beautiful,” said Stephanie Doe, 8, “because all of our school did it and we did it all on our own, with Mrs. Keller’s help.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: