As many of you know, the education department at The Cummer sees thousands of students every school year. Students visit the museum for tours and we visit some schools for outreach lessons. Every year we look forward to hosting art festivals for two of our beloved schools, St. Pius V Catholic School and Holy Rosary Catholic School, members of The Guardian Catholic Schools. They make up our Project Augusta Savage program.
Students spend the academic year studying works of art, learning about The Cummer, and creating their own works of art that reflect what they learned. Teachers participate in professional development at The Cummer, learning ways to integrate art into their classroom curricula.
When May comes around, educators are busy preparing for art festival activities to kick off the year. We set up the cafeteria with art stations where students celebrate their love of art by creating works of their own. Our loyal docent corps lends a hand, too. This year, students painted fish using a crayon resist technique and recalled their visit to the St. Johns River. Each class worked together to color Portrait of a Lady by Cornelius van der Voort with oil pastels. Finally, they created a collage using origami paper with patterns like the ones they saw in Beyond Ukiyo-e: Japanese Woodblock Prints and their Influence on Western Art.
Holy Rosary students color and paint their fish
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St. Pius 8th graders show off their Portrait of a Lady
