https://sites.google.com/cps.edu/waters-art-lab/home

As you walk down Wilson on your way to Lincoln Square---Take a minute to "hang out" (like these Waters' kids did over this summer:)) with our community sea life mural--- created by Class of 2020 in collaboration with one of our favorite local community artists...It was our first Save Our Seas (S.O.S.) Community Action!

And see below at our most recently finished community arts partnership---2024 Cicada Time Capsule & Community Memory Vessel--- created in community partnership with a city-wide non-profit Chicago Lives...https://cpslives.org/ and artist-in-residence Jayne King. We completed our reclaimed plastic water barrel and bottle cap cicada on the very last day of school...to be OPENED in 2028!

Peek into our Secret Garden by the lunchroom to see our community art in action! Thanks to Ms. Berezka and Ms. Rafalowitz for your collaboration on this "timeless" project...

Apollo's Fire is "a fun, lively Grammy-winning baroque ensemble that specializes in classical music, but also enjoys performing world music."

Apollo's Fire will be joining visual art students as we begin to add drum work to our Talking Circle practice. Apollo's Fire will be sharing their Strums & Drums (Mediterranean) performance with Middle School students!

We are so excited to experience live music in the art lab as we look at the variety of ways that each of us can tell our own story...We will be creating a visual artwork based on this authentic sound experience in the classroom.

Thank you to Apollo's Fire for this FREE performance for Waters students!

From CPSArts:

"As a Fine & Performing Arts School with Demonstration Site Status, your school will receive the following:

Badge Certification
Feel free to use this official badge on all school print and virtual documents.

Innovation Grant
Your school will receive a $10,000.00 innovation grant to support the expansion of your arts and arts integration curricula into contemporary and innovative spaces. We encourage you to consider emerging technologies in artistic disciplines and arts integration. We will release further guidance on how to spend these funds as we approach the start of the school year.

Increased Visibility
Your school will become a beacon of inspiration, hosting visits from teachers and administrators at other Fine & Performing Arts Schools who want to learn from your strengths.

Teacher Leadership Opportunities
Your teachers will join a pool of presenters for Fine & Performing Arts Schools professional development, and they will have opportunities to share their successes and experiences with their peers.

Lending Library Early Adopters
Your school will have the opportunity to be an early adopter of the Fine & Performing Arts Schools Lending Library, which will include advanced and specialized art-making equipment. We will issue guidance for how to access this library around the start of the school year."

*This great news and more was cited from The FULL REPORT below. Check it out:)!

Take a look at the multilayered Indigenous weaving and storytelling project honoring NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH featured below. We plan to feature WEAVING & REWEAVING OUR HISTORIES at our all-school art show at the end of THIS November!

Please consider supporting the Art Lab Donor's Choose project to help make this happen for our children. This proposal will provide Waters students with advanced weaving and mixed-media consumable supplies, culturally responsive texts and restorative justice materials to build and enhance all art lab projects this season---K-8! Any and every donation makes a difference!

Otsaliheliga!

I hope everyone had a relaxing and restorative summer with plenty of nature, family and fun! I'm looking forward to a new school year full of unknown potential and glorious community work!

Let's get started!

I am excited to begin our school year developing community norms together (some might call them classroom rules) based on listening to each other. In community---growth and transformation happen as we practice sharing space and taking up space. As artists, we believe in risk-taking and making mistakes to imagine the impossible---in our designs, in our creations and in our communities. As a community together, the impossible is an approachable challenge.

We are the ones we've been waiting for...

We will be working on building community through getting to know each other through conversation, role-playing and games for the first weeks of August and into September. Some of our favorites friends are back---Little Spot and our Slumberkin family--- but we will be also looking at the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and some new friends---Aroha and Milo (of Milo Who Imagines the World:)). Our first few weeks' goal is to remake and re-tool our Art Lab as a safe-space for taking risks and making art that is meaningful and personal to each of us. We will also be practicing our classroom motto---Kindness Matters--- in addition to using the Human Values Collective's weekly community building activities.

We will be creating community mixed-media and found object collages as we look at the powerful symbol of CIRCLES in Indigenous art forms of the Americas and the most awe-inspiring circle-maker---Mother Nature in our first art project. We will be uniting our Circle Practice as a form of Restorative Justice learning and the Circle of Life. All students will be working on a field day study of Mother Nature in Waters' gardens in this work. We are partnering with Room 105 to create a tactile community mural for Preschoolers to touch and feel a part of our Circle of Friends. What fun!

We are going to prototype Visual Journals this year as a choice-based self portrait. We will be creating SELF PORTRAIT books/journals based on our Circle Practice discussions and Big Thinks (Famous Quote Responses) in all classes that have a double session of art throughout the semester. This practice will be in addition to our other studio work. Our journal prompts will be adapted from Meera Lee Patel's Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration.

I'm so enthusiastic about both process and product in this new experience!

Thank you for your support!

With Kindness,

Mrs. Vecchioni

Talking Circles can be found in Indigenous practice all around the world. In many places, this is sacred practice and in others it is a form of cross-cultural community-based restorative justice that focuses on proactive relationship building. Many consider the Lakota the traditional leaders of Talking Circle practice in America.

We are very humble and grateful to share a classroom adaptation of this ancient way of building community, as developed in my Peace Circle & Restorative Justice learning with the Chicago Teachers Union this summer. Our classroom practice looks at many ways Circles are used in communities throughout the world as a form of group healing, as well as a teaching method to elevating student voice and experience. We will look at the symbols found in the Peace & Unity flag of my Indigenous ancestors, Kanienʼkehá꞉ka or Mohawk, of the Mohawk River Valley, New York (see below), and see how these images connect to us as a community of friends in school.

We will be working on Visual Journals in Art Lab each Day 2 (D2) of our weekly studio art calendar. We will be utilizing literacy arts and visual self portrait journals to expand choice-based materials exploration and multimedia storytelling, 1st grade-8th grade.

Topics students will explore are identity, core values, positive self talk and conflict resolution. Our Talking Circle, Restorative Justice and multimedia storytelling practice will be our introduction to our self-exploration journals. Students will build, layer, design and destroy their pages as much as they like in this process-based art making experience. These one-of-a-kind self-portraits will become a mixed media practice of executive functioning and creative project management skills--- as well as powerful personal artistic statements.

We will be looking at the companion book to Aroha's Way this month called Aroha's Choice. In this read aloud we learn how we can change and/or rethink our neural pathways to create more affirming self-talk when needed. We will be using Aroha's Choice as one of our Big Think texts for our D2 Self Portrait Visual Journals.

We are an ensemble of parents, students, teachers and staff that are excited about fine arts programming---exhibits, performances, showcases, arts festivals and literary salon events. We need your ideas and enthusiastic spirit to help us give Waters kids the BEST arts education we can...

We build community together and have a lot of FUN:)!

ALL ARE WELCOME!

Our first meeting will be Wednesday, September 4, 2024, 3:00-4:00PM in the Art Lab (Room 219)

Thank you for your time, support and energy:)!

ALL STUDENT Wavemaker Art Clubs will begin on THURSDAYS in OCTOBER:)!

I will be sending sign-up flyers home to interested students. Please reach out if you have any questions or would like to volunteer:)!

Wavemaker Art Clubs include:

• MS Arts Leadership Team (6-8)

• Literary Salon & Library Arts (1-8)

• Wavemakers Arts Advocacy (1-5)

• Grrl Scout Troupe #27333 (1-5)
  

CRITTER CLUB will be each Wednesday this year! We maintain and play with Art Lab animals and their habitats while building community of ALL KINDS...This club is open to 4-6 graders only--- due to the delicate nature of the work. We LOVE sharing with younger peers throughout the school year though...

Our Classroom Ethos Read Aloud to discuss and create COMMUNITY NORMS. We will also be using this text with our D2 Self Portrait Journals.