Charlie Greenawalt thinks Piet Modrian inspired his students to improve upon his idea. Greenawalt is the art teacher at the Midtown Academy, a K-8 public charter school in Bolton Hill. During the past semester’s art club, he had his students make collages to be included in the Uniting Diverse Artists art exhibit and silent auction benefit the Midtown Academy that takes place tonight at MICA’s Fox Building.
The auction includes the work from 34 working artists—including Ryan Hoover, Zoe Charlton, Leslie King-Hammond, Gary Kachadourian, Joyce Scott, Jo Smail, and BMoreArt founding editor Cara Ober — and pieces from Midtown students. Greenawalt wanted the student to be proud of what they included.
Greenwalt started teaching about nine years ago after nearly two decades as a profession graphic artist and earning his art education degree at MICA. And he says his professional experience and his own multifaceted interest in a variety of interest informs his teaching. He has the kids make logos for themselves, work in 2D and 3D media, think about realistic and abstract imagery, and weave elements of art history into the instruction. He wants to keep them interested in what they’re doing and foster confidence in what they’re making.
“I think about the experience they’re going to have working on a project, and then the final product – is it something they’re going to feel proud of a good about and want to share with their families,” he continues. For the auction, he tried to think about what the students could realistically make in the time allowed. And, he says the graphic designer in him thought mixed-media collage was the right media. Students started by making a watercolor—”we looked at Rothko’s color mixes just so we could have the idea of a beautiful field of color to work with”—and then, using the art books he finds at the Book Thing, students found imagery to slice into vertical strips to make a design.
You can see their work in the student page of the auction’s web site. Although the work of the lower grades is a bit less confident and sophisticated than the middle schoolers, it’s also immediately apparent that they’re thinking about and interpreting the themes Greenawalt outlined. They’re making creative visual choices. And the results are often disarmingly impressive.
This level of sophistication in primary student artwork isn’t the only thing that makes this auction a different kind of event. Yes: United Diverse Artists is a fundraiser designed to benefit a school. These types of events happen all the time. But Greenawalt says when the idea of an art auction was brought up by the school and its community of supporters over the summer, local artist Tendai Johnson, whose son attends the school, immediately stepped in saying it needed to be more than that.
He raises an interesting point here. Outside of artists who teach, working artists in the city and public school kids don’t interact all that often—artists aren’t consistently going into public school classrooms and students aren’t going to openings. So even though Baltimore has a vast and varied pool of working artists, if you’re not paying attention it’s easy not to know those people exist. And, sure, elementary school kids might not know what they’re going to be doing for the next two hours much less the 10 to 20 years of their lives, but if they never see artists working in their city they might not realize that being an artist could be an option for them.
The Uniting Diverse Artists exhibit and silent auction takes place 5:30-9 p.m. at MICA’s Fox Building Dec. 5. More information here.