Irish students bring art to nature center

By Gary Raham
Correspondent

Second grade students ooh'd and ah'd and sparks flew as Fort Collins sculptor Leonard Pettus turned a hunk of metal into a graceful bird at his studio/work area within walking distance of Irish Elementary School.

Students were learning how art is made courtesy of Serimus Operating Foundation, which sponsored Irish's "Art in the Sky" program. "We wanted to give children, who might not otherwise have the opportunity, a chance to develop and explore their own creativity through art," said Kirsten Bump, program director at the foundation. "They become creative thinkers--a skill which is transferable to every area of their lives."

The students received a bonus on this warm, spring day. Wildlife artist Heather Bartman, who lives just down the path from Pettus, treated her junior admirers to a view of a bird painting in progress. Her realistic style contrasted nicely with Pettus' more abstract, three-dimensional approach to art.

"Both artists that we visited told the children that the first step of their creative process involved informal sketching of ideas," said art teacher Stephie Morton. She, along with classroom teacher Jeannie Craft, helped the students make their own sketches of the art they saw in preparation for planning an "art installation" at their own school nature center.

Young Dante Hernandez said, "It was really cool. The artists make a lot of stuff like birds, and birds are my favorite animals. I would like to see sculptures of eagles and birds and all kinds of animals in our nature center."

Several days later, teachers and students marched down the path to the cluster of pines that serves as the nature center. They sat in a semicircle around Morton as she showed them pictures of how other artists had used local materials to enhance the space around them. Students sketched, generated ideas and began to plan what they would create from their imaginations.

"When the children were given pen and paper and asked to envision and draw an original concept for an Andy Goldsworth-like installation in the nature center, there was no hesitation because they were all confident in the worth of their own ideas and understood the purpose of the task," said Morton.

Pettus, a self-taught artist whose sculptures have lately graced the sets of movies and Hollywood sitcoms, likes to tell children to "just make art out of whatever you've got." The Irish students planned to do just that, working with pinecones, stones, sticks and other natural items available within the nature center.

On April 20, the artists were invited to the school to see the result: a circular network of decorated twigs that evoke the feel of a spider web--or a Native American dream catcher, whose delicate web work was designed by plains tribes to trap bad dreams while letting the good ones pass through. The Irish students have named their installation an idea catcher. With the exposure they've had to local artists and the practice they've had using their own imaginations, young Irish students should be able to find ideas aplenty with every visit to the nature center.