Cambria Heights Elementary School

I had a wonderful residency with Holly Stanek, a fantastic and energetic art teacher at Cambria Heights Elementary School. Rick and I went to the slag piles at Youghigheny Glass about a month ago and scrounged up lots of glass for the mosaic pieces. My core group consisted of 24 selected fifth grade students. They were divided into teams of four and each team worked in a drawing/template to be laid under the glass to help guide them in their design.

Students learned how to cut and place glass as well as teamwork and the dynamics of a good design. The only negative in this residency was that time was super tight. I only had the opportunity to see them for about 30 minutes a day. However, we did take an afternoon and worked like crazy artists for 2.5 hours after school. Holly and I provided them with much deserved healthy snacks and the kids did an amazing job.

The completed works, once hung at the school will be posted in the next two weeks on the blog. The sense of pride and accomplishment for the students was really wonderful to see and to be a part of their work was also an honor.

Holly Stanek is one of the finest art teacher's I have ever worked with at this time. She is friendly and energetic with the students and provides an excellent art program serving 650 students each week. The watercolor project also shown here is the work of second grade students......really unbelievable pieces coming from the artistic minds of such young people.

Come join us at the High School for their Christmas concert so you can see what an excellent job their music department provides also......THE ARTS are ALIVE despite budget cuts and constraints!