As we celebrate MAKING, Collaborating and Women's History Month, let's flashback to 2010's STEAM choice-based textile studios as a real word example of the power of Maker mindset, arts integration and performance-based assessment!

Check out who you know...Ms. Beza (PreK/Room 105) and Mrs. Vecchioni (with short hair in her old classroom---Room 305!) worked on this project together. Ms. Alicia (RAS Staff Leader 2016-2019) and Ms. Claire's (Room 215) daughters (Waters Alumni) are students. Ms. Patty (CAPE/Room 311) is our Guest Artist!

What kind of MAKER are YOU? Please join us for an hour or two...

Do you bake? Do you build? Do you quilt? Do you dance? Are you an engineer? An architect? Do you garden? Do you use data to make predictions? Do you make music? Do you conduct experiments? Are you a teacher? A bricklayer? Are you a storyteller? Are you a Changemaker? What kind of MAKER are YOU?

What is your hobby, career, passion, profession or vocation? Please share your talents!

Maker Week is a community-driven celebration of design thinking, innovation and everyday creativity in a traditional Career Day format. A variety of parents, grandparents, community members and local business owners have shared with K-8th grade students over the years.

Maker Week has been great fun for students and adults to share learning. It is also an authentic demonstration of how fine and performing arts skills prepare our students for success in college and career-readiness.

Volunteers have shared how to make pickles, practice yoga, sew a garden flower sachet, design a blueprint, build a wooden picture frame and choreograph a short hip-hop routine. Formats for sharing have included hands-on demonstration, video, Google Slides, hands-on activities with students and site visits to local businesses.

Please complete the form to find out more about Maker Week. We look forward to collaborating with you!

Maker Week Survey

Thank you for supporting the arts,

LSC Fine Arts Subcommittee

Recycling naturally...Xenobia Bailey, Bisa Butler, Della Wells and the Gee's Bend Quilters are our textile construction guides...We will be gathering---facts, materials and STEAM as we prepare for upcoming Eco-Art Fest Fun and MAKER WEEK experiences!

Uthando has been a long-standing partnership for us. If you didn't watch our 2010 video documentation above---check it out:)! Retro filming and flashback fun...

In addition, in 2018, Della Wells, internationally recognized folk artist, partnered with Mrs. Vecchioni, Intuit Gallery for Outsider Artists and Waters Fine Arts, to create culturally-responsive dolls to send to Kwa-zulu Natal. We enjoyed continuing our partnership with Uthando, growing our global outreach and practicing positive changemaking.

Throughout March, we will explore a variety of textile constructions---sewing, weaving, braiding, looming and knotting--- in this shape-to-form geometry exercise. Our goal will be a PreK texture mural to accompany our city block poetry for our Literary Salon. What fun:)!

Please donate, save and share: any leftover cardboard pizza circles, cardboard cereal boxes, yarn, raffia, masking tape, glue sticks, hand wipes or Sharpie markers for us to use in the art lab. We will be busy and creating and making quite a mess! Thanks in advance:))!

With Kindness,

Mrs. Vecchioni

The Princess, Bisa Butler (2018)

Jackie Ormes' dolls and Della Wells sculptures will inform a collaborative installation of the Mighty Women of Bronzeville for our All-School exhibit in May.

Ms. Bailey's most natural of all shapes...spirals in nature as theme for spring...weaving, looming and crocheting will be studio options...

Gee's Bend quilters reclaimed the fabrics of Sears and Roebuck's for many years. These corduroys and blue jeans created a new more abstract quilt aesthetic that was developed in isolation in their island community.

We will look at a Quilting Bee as a community art-making experience and will quilt together our OOAK stories in a variety of ways...:))If you would like to help us---please email me at alvecchioni@cps.edu. Thanks in advance!

Bisa Butler's global patterns transcend time and space...Her fabric multi-layered images of Bronzeville residents inspire our textile exploration studies.

We look forward to experimenting with a variety narrative applique techniques. We will reference Bisa Butler's textiles as storyteller artworks that talk to our past and future by engaging a variety of perspectives in dialogue today.

Email: alvecchioni@cps.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/cps.edu/waters-art-lab/home
Location: Waters Fine Arts | 4540 N CAMPBELL | CHICAGO
Phone: 7735345090