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Art After School program has broadened student creativity for over a decade

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Instructor Maureen Wild watches the second and third grade group in the Art After School program create mobiles in the style of glass artist Dale Chihuly. Students are using Sharpie markers to draw designs on plastic cups, which Wild will then heat. Hanging as a mobile in their melted state, the art will resemble glass. (Photos by Audrey Posten)

Evelyn Jones shows off both the Mona Lisa and mobile she made in the Art After School program, offered by the McGregor-Marquette Center for the Arts. This year’s projects are all based around the theme History of Art—ranging from cave paintings to modern art.

By Audrey Posten, Times-Register

 

For over a decade, the McGregor-Marquette Center for the Arts has offered a wintertime Art After School program for students in the MFL MarMac area, allowing participants to create a variety of unique projects.

 

Maureen Wild has taught classes for 10 of the program’s 11 years, watching it grow from 15 students across grades kindergarten through sixth to quadruple that number.

 

“We still have lots of kids coming. It got as big as the art center can hold,” she said. This year, classes moved from the art center in downtown McGregor to the cafeteria at the MFL MarMac McGregor Center. 

 

“The relationship between the school and us is wonderful, and it’s wonderful they do the extra bussing,” Wild added. “We could not have this without the school’s cooperation and participation and support.”

 

Students—split into three age groups—attend the program once per week over an eight-week period from late January to mid March. It’s capped off with an art show, held this year on Friday, March 18, that displays all the young artists’ work.

 

Participants create six projects during that span, each centered around one of three themes Wild has developed during her Art After School tenure. That includes History of Art, Art Around the World and Methods and Mediums.

 

“The first year, I decided to do History of Art because I thought I could bring in all kinds of different art styles,” Wild shared. “Then I didn’t want to do that again the next year, so I thought of Art Around the World. I could do art from everywhere in the world, which turned out great too. Then, there were a lot of art things I didn’t think of as in either of those categories, so I decided to do Methods and Mediums. I could do any art I wanted to do.”

 

The 2022 theme is History of Art. The first project was cave painting.

 

After all, “you can’t start any earlier in history than cave paintings,” Wild noted.

 

Focus then shifted to Renaissance art and Impressionism.

 

“It goes all the way to today and modern art,” Wild quipped.

 

Projects have included Degas ballerinas, made with pipe cleaners and skirts of painted coffee filters, as well as Mona Lisas, Greek pillars drawn with chalk on black paper and Roman urns, where kids selected the shape of an urn and drew designs on it.

 

“The littler kids did pointillism and now we’re getting into more modern,” Wild said. “We have Mondrian, who does different colored shapes and things, and kids are also doing a mobile in the style of Chihuly.”

 

For this last project, students use Sharpie markers to draw designs on plastic cups, which Wild will then heat. Hanging as a mobile in their melted state, the art will resemble the work created by American glass artist Dale Chihuly.

 

“In History of Art, I try to base it on a certain artist so that, in the show, people understand what that project is trying to look like. I can pick an artist and maybe just one thing they did,” Wild explained.

 

“Other years, I’ve done Pablo Picasso . [Austrian painter] Gustav Klimt was a fun one because you’ve got the picture and then the different patterns he does, and then you can use glitter,” she added.

 

Wild tries to develop new projects each time a theme comes around again, but carries over some.

 

“I do some of the same—the ones I know the kids really like because they saw an older brother or sister do it and can’t wait until they are in the class,” she said.

 

Wild pulls ideas from art books as well as the internet. Sometimes, she worries a project might be too difficult, but the students always surprise her.

 

“They start working on it and it just turns out so great,” she said.

 

Art After School is beneficial for students because it broadens their creativity outside the school day.

 

“They are here by choice. They are kids who really want to do art,” Wild said.

 

Admittedly picky, Wild also pushes the students creatively.

 

“I spend a lot of time trying to make them do a little better than they think they can do. Like I’ll look at their cups and go, ‘I would like to see this a little more colored in,’” she shared. 

 

That effort pays off when the kids see their work displayed at the art show.

 

“When they go to the art show and see what they did, and their parents see what they did, they are so proud of themselves because I pushed them a little bit more,” Wild said. “I want them to realize they can actually do these pretty amazing things—and they do. I think that’s important because that’s one of the goals of the art center, to really encourage artists, even young artists, to really do great work.”

 

This year, for the first time, the art show will not be held at the art center itself. Unlike in the early days of the Art After School program, the retail gallery known as The Left Bank is now open year-round, meaning the space typically allotted to student work is already filled. 

 

While it’s unfortunate kids and their families won’t get to experience that atmosphere, Wild has come up with a good alternative. The show will be held at 240 Main St., in the green building where she plans to open a tea shop. She’s confident attendance will be just as high, and invites the public to stop by from 4 to 6 p.m. this Friday.

 

“Our art show has always been, in the last several years, the biggest show we have. The most people come for that,” she said. “And I love it. I love when the kids come in with all their family and they’re like, ‘Come over here. Here’s mine.’”

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