March 28, 2024
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Artists teach, inspire Cushing kindergartners

CUSHING – Professional artists are teaching their talents to local kindergartners in a joint effort for a community art exhibit to be on display this weekend.

The Cushing Historical Society for three years has been running Arts in the Barn, a program for local artists to exhibit their work for a weekend. This year’s program is being held 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and tomorrow at the society’s barn on Hathorne Point Road.

Cushing Community School teacher Beth Vickery and her 18 kindergarten pupils have been striving since February to host visiting artists in the classroom as preparation for the show, after a parent had suggested the class put on a display and arranged for the children to use the barn the first weekend in June.

“The exhibit is not just for Cushing artists, but for any artist, and the historical society asks artists to make a donation to cover the costs of using the space,” Vickery said.

The community school, a kindergarten-fourth grade facility with 75 pupils, is part of SAD 50, based in Thomaston, with member towns Cushing, St. George and Thomaston.

Parent Judith Zizza, who had relocated to Cushing from Florida, saw that Arts in the Barn was looking for artists and approached Vickery about the kindergarten children exhibiting their work.

“She’s the one who had the idea of doing the art display, and started the ball rolling,” Vickery said.

Vickery and the children wrote to local artists asking them to give the class 15- to 20-minute presentations.

“The children are eager to see the art you produce and the tools you use in your work,” she wrote in her letter to the artists. “It would also be fascinating to see a piece of work in progress.”

Vickery also said she would follow up in the classroom with special art times using materials or techniques inspired by the visiting artists. Nearly all of the artists responded, she said.

A kindergarten teacher for 15 years, Vickery and her associate, educational technician Kristi Niederman, show the children how to use computers almost daily, on programs that teach art and design, geometry, and reading and writing.

Poems the children wrote to express their feelings for one another and the work they saw will be on display in an anthology over the weekend, Vickery said.

More than 10 years ago, Vickery and Niederman successfully applied for a $20,000 National Semiconductor grant to purchase the computers on which the pupils used graphic organizers to present each artist’s visit.

Every visiting artist has a reporting team of the pupils, who make up an outline of each visit and a plan to make up a report. All the reports will appear on the classroom’s Web site, available at MSAD50.org by clicking first on Cushing School and then on kindergarten special projects.

Visiting artists included oil and pastel painter Ann Guild, potter Daniel Seigel, photorealist painter David Vickery, watercolorist and illustrator Joie Willimetz, and ink and gesture artist Alan Magee.

Nature artist John Paul Caponigro took the students to his studio, and the class scheduled a visit to the studio of sculptor Vic Goldsmith.

Other visitors who joined the class are wood sculptor Patrick Cardon, outdoors painter David Crowley, fiber artist Katharine Cobey, glass artist Fred Berg, abstract painter Alan Clark, digital portrait photographer George Hoyt, and jewelry designer Jan Muddle.

Painter Anne Stein-Aaron is the coordinator of the project.


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