Recently I was invited by the Beacon Heights Elementary School in Salt Lake City to be an Artist in Residency for the 2nd grade classes.
We did three glass projects together, two that the kids will take home, and large permanent art glass panels that will be installed in the lobby of the school.
The Residency focused on the link between the school garden and art. The first project was art glass, the kids all made a suncatcher and a garden themed piece that will be incorporated into the installation.
The second project of the residency was creating small hanging panels with what I call a Modified Fossil Vitra technique. Instead of the traditional Fossil Vitra technique, we sandwich all of the organic materials and frits between layers of recycled window glass (float) and then burn out the organics during the fusing cycle, which leaves an ash ‘fossil’ behind.
For the Beacon Heights project, we used actual materials from the school garden. Using a bucket of soil from the garden, filtered and then fired to burn out the small organic materials, some play sand, leaves and two colors of glass frit, the kids made garden theme designs.
This is a great project for kids because there are no set parameters and they get very creative very quickly. Here is the introduction portion of the project, where I’m explaining the idea to the kids.
Here are some photos of kids doing the project and the projects ready to be fired.
The final task for the Artist in Residency is completing the group projects and preparing them for installation.