TRICIA TOONE | artist & teacher

Scarecrows at Frenchtown Pumpkin Festival

The Language Arts Teacher and I collaborated to have the middle school students create scarecrows for the first annual Frenchtown Pumpkin Festival.

In groups, students depicted characters from the books they are were reading in Language Arts. For instance, 7th grade recently read My Side of the Mountain. They wrote character descriptions for "Sam" and "Frightful". From there, they drew sketches, planned construction and materials, then constructed their "scarecrows".

Materials were open ended, but they mostly used paper mache, paint, found objects, clothing, etc. All paper mache was coated with a thin coat of either polyurethane or spar varnish. They worked for about 40-80 minutes per day for one week.

We crossed our fingers and hoped they would withstand the weather for a week to make it till the festival. We had horrible fall weather for most of the week! Heavy wind and rain! At this point, they've been out for three weeks and are all mostly intact! Unfortunately, "Frightful" (below) has lost his wings. (Lasted fairly long, though, considering those wings are quite heavy. The wet paper could only hold up so long.)

We all had a ton of fun and the town really enjoyed having the sculptures around. I'm hoping this will become an annual tradition.

     
  

Raku Firing at Frenchtown School

John Fulwood of Kissimmee River Pottery came to Frenchtown School to raku fire the ceramic work of grades 5-8. Despite the rainy day, I have to admit I personally had fun spending the day outside huddled around the kiln with John, and his assistant Marion. John brought a canopy for the students to stand under, although most decided it was more important to get an up-close look at the action than to be comfy and dry.

For most of the students of Frenchtown School, this was their first experience with ceramics. From raw clay to the raku firing, it was fun to appreciate the wonder of the ceramic process with them. I hope to have John back again next year!

Thank you Frenchtown PTA and Board of Education for making it possible!

Skele Guitar Painting Complete

Skele guitar body is ready to go. I've worked on lightening it up overall and making the texture a bit more gritty...as a pirate guitar should be. Once fully dry and varnished, Rick will assemble the custom built neck, electronics, and decorative pieces.

The guitar will come complete with a removable rum flask that fits in the guitar body made by tinsmith Carl Giordano. I think "His Noodliness" would be delighted.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

- Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson asks important questions about the purpose of education and the 

role of creativity. He describes how we may be educating children out of their creative 

capacities because we reinforce a fear of making mistakes.

New Group Portrait

I just finished this portrait of four sisters. This portrait was commissioned as a surprise gift from family members. So the it ended up being a tough one because it was done completely from photographs and I have never met the women being painted. I usually like to work at least in part from life. Photographs just don't do justice to real life. I know there are a lot of artists out there who comfortably work entirely from photographs and it's typical that they never meet their subjects. 

As I worked on this project, it almost seemed like I did know these girls. Perhaps staring at their images long enough, I constructed imaginary personalities in my mind. Either way, it was a fun painting to do. I think I'm going to miss them when they're gone.

Hunterdon Art Museum Young Artists Showcase

Frenchtown Elementary School participated in the Young Artists Showcase at Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ. It was an excellent show and we will be sure to participate next year. Congratulations to the young artists from Frenchtown, Holland Township, and Delaware Township whose work was selected to be in the exhibit.

Hunterdon Art Museum is a great local resource for those who live in Hunterdon or surrounding counties. The museum also offers adult and child classes throughout the year. I'm excited to attend the Life Drawing Marathon on Saturday, March 24. 

Here's some photos from the Young Artists Showcase.

There was a good turnout, despite the snowstorm we had that day.

A visitor admires this Frenchtown student's spraypaint peice. The 7th grader had been researching this technique on his own and made many attempts after school and at home. His hard work has quite an impact.