Programming Spotlight: Playwriting with the New Victory Theater

 

The talented and charismatic Marisol Rosa-Shapiro and Hassiem Muhammad recently returned to Passages Academy’s Belmont site to reprise their mini-residency centered on playwriting and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in collaboration with Mrs. Ernyey, Belmont’s English Language Arts teacher.  The  artists taught students from Abbott and St. John’s groups about the elements of playwriting and engaged students in creative writing activities that culminated in student-written dialogues performed in our school library today.  Students worked earnestly and had so much fun when it came time to perform!--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Che Guevara’s Face: How a Cuban Photographer’s Image Became a Cultural Icon by Danielle Smith-Llera

How did one image of the revolutionary leader Che Guevara’s face become so popular?  Students who have seen the iconic image - originally a photo by the Cuban photographer Alberto Korda - may be very interested in this picture book-sized volume. 

The author tells the story of Che’s famous photographic portrait in four chapters that draw the reader in by setting the scene in which the original photo was taken-- a memorial service for the 100 killed and 200 wounded by a 1960 explosion in Havana Harbor that destroyed a ship carrying grenades and munitions.

Using historical photographs as well as Korda’s photographic contact sheet from that day,  author Smith-Llera provides context for this shocking and gruesome moment, inviting the reader to imagine the life of a photographer working in Havana at the time.

The author also includes a summary of Cuban history with many historical photographs,  however other than Korda’s,  the images are not credited within the text.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Smith-Llera, Danielle.  Che Guevara’s Face: How a Cuban Photographer’s Image Became a Cultural Icon.  Minnesota: Capstone, 2017.

Famous Ladies Vol. I-III by Alexandra Beguez

Charming illustrations and excellent production make this series a perfect fit for incarcerated and detained youth, and school librarians may wish to order several sets to share with students.  

Each volume is printed on a single sheet of 11 x 17 lightweight cardstock and features fine-lined portraits of six historical female figures, some long since dead and some contemporary heroines.  The only text between the covers is  the names of the women, making the content fun to browse and giving the developing reader plenty of space.  The back covers feature three to four lines of handwritten text summarizing each woman’s accomplishments.

Younger readers may be confused as the descriptions are written in the present tense, however the educator can use this possible confusion to spark an inquiry project.  Highly recommended.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

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Tags: art, women’s history, zines

Programming Spotlight: Pre-theater and Post-Theater Visits from the New Victory Theater

Stepping during a pre-theater visit on 11/6/17.

A gallery walk during a post-theater visit on 11/13/17.

On November 8th we teachers and our administrators took all of our students at Passages Academy--Belmont to the New Victory Theater to see Step Afrika’s The Migration: Reflections On Jacob Lawrence.  The performance blended step, jazz, and African choreography with jazz, African, and gospel music to bring panels from Jacob Lawrence’s essential Migration Series to life for a young audience.  When I asked students what they thought of the show one student, D., responded by telling me the next time I take her to a dance performance, it needs to be longer.  Presumably so that she may enjoy it all the more.

We weren’t able to take pictures inside the theater, but here are a couple of moments we captured of the New Victory’s excellent pre-theater and post-theater workshops provided by teaching artists Chad Beckim and Janet Onyenucheya.  Pre-theater workshops  included step dancing exercises which helped students identify what they would see and appreciate the depth of performers skill and preparation.  Post-theater workshops invited students to engage with Lawrence’s artwork and recreate poses from selected panels, and think about how it feels to experience the poses of the figures from the paintings.  Click here for more photos and more about the interdisciplinary collaboration--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

The Great Migration: An American Story Paintings by Jacob Lawrence

The Great Migration: An American Story is a picture book collecting the sixty panels Lawrence painted over seventy years ago to tell the story of the period in American history which saw huge numbers of African Americans leave the South for northern industrial cities.  The numbered panels are accompanied by short text.  Although the picture book format is frequently shunned by older students afraid of appearing less mature than they are, I have not heard that complaint from a single adolescent student at Belmont where the books were distributed this week.  Highly recommended for young people of all ages, this book begins with a two-page preface authored by the artist himself in 1992 and closes with a poem on the topic of the Great Migration by Walter Dean Myers, and short paragraphs about the artist, the poet, and the art.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Lawrence, Jacob.  The Great Migration: An American Story.  New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993.  Print.

Programming Spotlight: Malcolm X & Julius Caesar

New Victory Teaching Artists Janet Onyenuchea and Chad Beckim pose with students after a pre-theater workshop.  Photo credit: Jessica Fenster-Sparber

To get students ready to see X: Or, Betty Shabazz vs. The Nation in repertory with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, placement advisory classes have been reading Myers’ Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary for the last two and a half weeks. Part of a larger interdisciplinary collaboration with Social Studies and Art teachers, and heavily supported by Belmont's speech and reading specialists, placement students at Belmont have approached the historical figure and his context with a variety of lenses.  Last Monday, songwriter Janet Onyenuchea and playwright Chad Beckim deepened the unit of study further when they visited Belmont to conduct pre-theater workshops with all placement groups in their roles as teaching artists with the New Victory Theater.  Chad and Janet engaged students’ growing base of knowledge of Malcolm X’s life and death and then invited students to create tableaux and portraying a variety of roles relating to the play they are rescheduled to attend at the end of the week.  We can’t wait! --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Programming Spotlight: Muhammad Ali at the New York Historical Society

George Kalinsky
Muhammad Ali training at Madison Square Garden, 1967
Chromogenic print from original scanned film
Courtesy George Kalinsky

Ali, who had a soft spot for children, took a break from a workout to banter with a young fan. Kalinsky recalled this young admirer announcing, “I am the greatest for a moment.”

Students residing in the three group homes visited the New York Historical Society this afternoon for a private tour of the two Muhammad Ali-themed exhibits currently on display.  Students learned about the timeline  of Ali's fights, watched historical footage of the athlete, activist and humanitarian, and examined photographs like the one above in a beautifully arranged gallery at the Manhattan institution.  Many thanks to Literacy for Incarcerated Teens for providing the funding that made this trip possible, along with purchasing gift copies of The Greatest: Muhammad Ali by Walter Dean Myers for all participating students.  The image above, by George Kalinsky, can be viewed at the museum as well as by clicking on the museum's website gallery here. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Programming Spotlight: Bookmarks and Greeting Cards

 Holidays can be difficult when one is separated from loved ones.  With that in mind, we librarians have been collaborating with colleagues to offer crafting programs.  These programs give students the opportunity to utilize library resources and art supplies to make custom bookmarks and greeting cards. Said C. (17), earlier this morning while crafting five original bookmarks, "I think, out of all of the activities, this is really dooooooope!"  D. (15), is pictured above copying inspirational quotes out of a library book, for subsequent use on her bookmarks.

We wish you all happy holidays and hope you find your fair share of what's good to read in 2015!  We'll see you in January.

Love, Passages Academy Libraries

DC Comics: The Ultimate Character Guide

Can you tell the difference between The Green Lantern and The Green Arrow, or Mister Terrific and Mister Mxyzptlk?  You may be in need of DC Comics: The Ultimate Character Guide.  This handy volume is extremely popular at our Belmont site where teens and adults alike are eager to expand their DC comics lexicon.  Prefaced by the shortest of introductions and a table of contents, over 200 heroes and villains from “the DC Universe” are listed and then presented in alphabetical order, beginning with Adam Strange and ending with Zoom.  Each character or group receives its own page.  Layout consistently features the character’s name, a one to three sentence summary of the character, vital stats (real name, occupation, height, weight, base, allies and foes), and boxed text describing the character’s powers.  The best-loved element are the accompanying illustrations, although they are only credited in the back as part of a mass “artists credits,” which is, in fact, the only backmatter.  Perfect for comic book fans, developing readers, and developing schema, this book may also be of interest to educators looking for a hi-lo non-fiction text for an introductory lesson on features of informational text and the sub-genre of visually busy non-fiction that DK practically invented. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Snider, Brandon T.   DC Comics: The Ultimate Character Guide.  New York:  DK Publishing, 2011.  Print.

Graffiti School: A Student Guide With Teacher’s Manual by Chris Ganter

Acknowledging in his introduction that the graffiti scene is split into two groups:  illegal sprayers and legal sprayers, and noting that the legal sprayers need experience and ideas to create the detailed pieces worthy of a legal wall, author Chris Ganter has written the missing “how-to” book for the less experienced writer.  With the care of a teacher, Ganter covers graffiti’s relationship to society, its history, the hip-hop context, terminology, and related media before jumping into directions for designing graffiti.  These chapters are separated out into a) designing and b) dealing with spray paint.  The last chapter of the book is devoted to teachers, suggesting approaches to planning a graffiti unit and including a sample lesson plan, exercises, and corresponding “solutions.”  Back matter contains a smattering of sample alphabets (for more of these, see Walde’s Graffiti Alphabets), a European-oriented timeline of graffiti’s evolution beginning in 1970, a glossary, a bibliography for further reading, photo credits and an index.  Strongly recommended for independent use, as well as art educators.  Highly popular with Passages students at Belmont.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Ganter, Chris.  Graffiti School: A Student Guide with Teacher’s Manual.  New York: Thames & Hudson, 2013.  Print.

Before I Die by Candy Chang

What do you want to do before you die?  

Candy Chang contextualizes this question in New Orleans after the storm, the wake of tremendous personal loss, and the Stoics’ suggestion that to contemplate death is to restore perspective and make life meaningful. Chang introduces her book with this context, and then goes on to describe her project to paint an abandoned house in her neighborhood with chalkboard paint and stencil it with a grid of the sentence, “Before I die I want to ________________.”  Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public.  This book shares highlights via text and photographs of Chang’s New Orleans installation, and then goes on to show images and quotes as the community art installation found new life in new environs.  Artists and community members in Jerusalem, Germany, South Africa, Thailand, and more created similar projects to similar effect.  The book also includes “remixes,” stats, and directions for making this kind of wall project.  This book can inspire students to talk about public art, to think about the questions worth asking, and to reflect on what they hope to accomplish, as well as evoke responses to the aspirations from around the world contained within the covers. The design of the book uses pulled quotes against solid color rectangles alongside colorful images of text, rendering it accessible for emerging readers as well as their more sophisticated peers.  Recommended for independent reading, inquiry, and art educators. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Chang, Candy.  Before I Die.  New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013.  Print.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

“All art is theft.” - Pablo Picasso

This provocative quote opens this intriguing tome of creative advice, wherein Kleon goes on to  expound on his ten essential secrets to unleashing your creative potential in whatever way you can.  Organized like an exploded PowerPoint presentation, each tip is scrawled across a two-page spread, and then elucidated via cartoons, photos, graphic organizers, black-out poetry, and quotes from creative types ranging from John Cleese to Gustave Flaubert.  With advice like, “quit picking fights and go make something,” and “start copying,” Steal Like an Artist is sure to stoke the creative fires in many a frustrated creator.  Included are a list of next steps to take, recommended reading, and deleted scenes of advice that did not make the cut. --Regan Schwartz

Kleon, Austin.  Steal Like an Artist:10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative.  New York: Workman Publishing, 2012.  Print.

Pavement Chalk Artist: The three dimensional drawings of Julian Beever by Julian Beever

There is nothing quite like 3D pavement art - those mind bending works of street art that, from just the right perspective, appear to leap off the sidewalk.  In Pavement Chalk Artist, Julian Beever showcases over fifty of his own creations - often including himself and passersby in a creative, and often very amusing, tableau.  Each photograph is accompanied by a brief description of the project, often including a bit of art instruction.  In addition to the luscious, full-color photographs, the book contains a biographical introduction and a brief description of Beever’s anamorphic drawing technique.  This is a captivating book of creative art, as well an in-depth look at one man’s artistic journey.  Students pore over the pictures, often expressing disbelief at what they are seeing and eagerness to try it for themselves.  Pavement Chalk Artist is would make excellent supplementary non-fiction reading for a unit on perspective or for a unit on media and advertising, as that is how Beever generates much of his sidewalk art income.--Regan Schwartz

Beever, Julian.  Pavement Chalk Artist: The three dimensional drawings of Julian Beever. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2010. Print

Illustrations from the Inside by The Beat Within

It only takes a pencil and paper to create artwork that moves, inspires, and wows. Nothing flashy here -- just some really talented, locked-up teenagers who have shared their art with The Beat Within, a group that describe themselves as a program that “provide[s] incarcerated youth with consistent opportunity to share their ideas and life experiences in a safe space that encourages literacy [and] self-expression...” Aside from the introduction, which is written in a scholarly and academic tone, and clearly not directed towards incarcerated youth, this book has huge appeal for our students. They pore over the art on every page; all pencil drawings which are generally in a style they recognize and of the quality they aspire to in their own work. Our students are impressed by the skill represented in this book, but not too intimidated to continue drawing; rather, the art inspires them to practice more. Unfortunately, Illustrations from the Inside is only available in hardcover, which means it can only be made available for our students in non-secure detention. --Anja Kennedy

Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics by Stan Lee

Know how to draw? Tired of the same old tips? Well, you’re in luck! Unlike other drawing books out there, Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics doesn’t drill the same old basic skills. In fact, there are only a few dedicated pages to teaching the reader how to draw characters from scratch. Instead, this book takes a more advanced approach by discussing points of view, lighting, shading, custom creating and many more areas of drawing that have made Marvel characters so recognizable and their comics so exciting to read. Because the book spends the majority of the time addressing more advanced techniques, the information might go over the heads of newer artists. This book is recommended for those artists who are ready for a level or two up from trace-and-draw style books. -- Claudio Leon

Programming Spotlight: Our first MoMA field trip of the school year!

Our community partnership with the Museum of Modern Art is off to another exciting year of programming. Yesterday, some very appreciative students (and staff!) from Passages Academy--Summit went on a VIP tour through the galleries of MoMA on their only day of the week closed to the public, led by the ever-inspiring museum educator Lauren Adelman. We stood in front of van Gogh's Starry Night and other famous works of art; all of us feeling very special when we had the art all to ourselves. After the tour, Ms. Adelman facilitated an art-making workshop where students created sculptural pieces inspired by art that we saw in the Talk to Me exhibition. One student perfectly summed it all up at the end, singing "Today was a wavy day." --Anja Kennedy

Back in the Days by Jamel Shabazz

Get ready to enter a time warp as you open this book and step into New York City in the 1980s. Photographer Shabazz, who grew up in Brooklyn, knows how to capture the life of the streets: kids hanging out, couples and friends posing, and graffiti on the walls dare the viewer to challenge their authenticity. These pictures are so real, they could have been taken today -- but the older subway cars and the fashion give it away. These were the days of Sergio Valente jeans, Cazal glasses, and Puma and Adidas sneakers. In portrait after portrait, the subjects know they look good, and they work it for the camera, crossing their arms and sticking out their hips. My personal favorites are the ones showcasing matching outfits shared by friends, lovers and entire crews. DYFJ staff members almost always get a kick out of this book as they re-live the clothes of the eighties and talk to the students about how New York City used to look. This book is highly engaging and a real stress-free read.

Shabazz, Jamel. Back in the Days. New York: powerHouse Books, 2001.

Vincent van Gogh by Valerie Bodden

He experienced life as an outcast, he shot himself, he died in relative obscurity, and one of his paintings recently sold for almost $82 million dollars. Hard not to be interested in this guy. Perhaps this is why Lauren Adelman, outreach educator at the Museum of Modern Art, chose to start her session in Bridges’ library last week with Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, a highlight of MoMA’s permanent collection. Whatever the reason, students were quickly captivated by the art-looking she facilitated and were subsequently eager to pore over this volume on van Gogh from the Xtraordinary Artists series. A short 48 pages with 25 full-color reproductions and studies of van Gogh’s art, this book is approachable and full of information to start students on an inquiry project. The author has thoughtfully included several excerpts from van Gogh’s numerous letters so that the reader can encounter the painter in his own (albeit translated) words. Endnotes contain a one-page timeline, a one-page glossary, an index and a bibliography.

Click here to read Tupac’s Starry Night. Connection made by Passages’ student Avian M.


Bodden, Valerie. Vincent van Gogh. Mankato: Creative Education, 2009.

Guest Blog Post: Jeff Wall by Peter Galassi

My visits to Passages classrooms usually progress along the following lines: Firstly, we start with an introduction, discussing our own artistic interests and backgrounds. About half the students say they aren’t artistic at all or interested in any sort of art making and, even when we expand upon our definition of what art is (culinary arts, martial arts, graffiti, tattooing, etc.), there are still a number of teens who don’t want to admit to any feelings on the subject at all. No problem, it’s understandable: Art is subjective, and emotional, and demands that those who create it lay their feelings on the table for others to possibly reject. It’s scary. After that, we start looking at art and the teens start opening up, even if only slightly. It’s easier to have an opinion on someone else’s work than to talk about ourselves, so the discussion begins to flow. We talk about Frida Kahlo’s thick eyebrows, Picasso’s pregnant looking girlfriend, and how super painfully skinny Andrew Wyeth’s Christina looks from the back. At the very end of all this, I like to pull out my reproduction of Jeff Wall’s After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2000). The image depicts an African-American man, an actor posing as the narrator of Ellison’s book, sitting in his cluttered basement apartment, listening to a record as he cleans a dish. Above him, thousands of light bulbs shine down against his back. What’s he thinking? Why is he there? Why does his room look like it does?
I love the mixture of the mundane and the fantastical in Jeff Wall’s work. If each picture tells a story, then Jeff Wall’s stories are mystery novels. You recognize the world that his subjects inhabit as our own, and yet they feel like nothing you have seen and nowhere you have ever been before. Jeff Wall’s photography book is a great prompt for creative writing projects, discussions, art making and more. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all Passages Academy educators. -- Calder Zwicky

--Calder Zwicky is the Associate Educator, Teen and Community Programs at the Museum of Modern Art. He has been working within Juvenile Detention Centers and running art making workshops with Passages Academy students since 2007.

Galassi, Peter. Jeff Wall. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2007.