The main outreach of the Santa Rosa Art Association, Inc. is providing Santa Rosa County teachers of any discipline with grant money to use art in their curriculum. The grant applications are sent out in September with a November deadline and awarded in December. The recipients are asked to present their use of the grant funds at the Association's April meeting.
This year five grants were awarded to teachers in Santa Rosa County. The theme for this year's project was ‘Imagine.’ Mrs. Debbie Wood at Holley-Navarre Middle School used pastels purchased with the grant for her American History class as they researched, organized and collaborated on her project, ‘Across the Decades in American History.’
Margie Ingram, art teacher at Central High School purchased clay, glazes and brushes to create 3-D creatures to illustrate stories they wrote after reading Maurice Sendak's ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’
Julie Bragg, art teacher at Sims Middle School purchased supplies and 250 students ‘Imagine Florida without our Animal Friends.’ The students learned the diversity of Florida wild life and their importance to the ecosystem and created mono-prints of the animal each chose.
Kathleen Tracy at Pace High School took her students to First City Art Center to learn pottery throwing and glass blowing.
Lyn Cacace, from Gulf Breeze High School, attended the April meeting of the SRAA, Inc. to present the project she did with fellow art teacher Kelly Strozer. She brought a large poster with pictures and some of the actual alebrijes, brightly colored Oaxacan-Mexican folk art sculptures of whimsical and fantastical creatures, that the students had created. The students had to research their history, then decide one they would like to create, learn the intricacies of working with clay, paint the imaginary animal, glaze and fire it, and write a summary of their whole process. The three Spanish teachers also participated in the project.
Anyone interested in helping to continue this program can contact Marianne Richardson @ m2009br@gmail.com or 995-7056 or visit www.santarosaartassociation.com.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Santa Rosa Art Association helps SRC teachers