During the summer months, the CCA collaborates with the Sumter County Board of Education to provide arts education for 5th-8th graders at Kinterbish and York West End Junior High schools. The summer portion of the 21st Century program focuses on the work and legacy of Alabama artists. Students study art history and art making techniques while also their critical thinking, creative problem solving, collaboration, and communication skills. At the end of the program, students, teachers, friends, family, and community members gather for a celebration and exhibition of students’ work in the CCA gallery.
2016 : Thornton Dial
Sumter County students spent six weeks during the summer of 2016 creating art in the style of artist Thornton Dial, the nationally renowned self-taught artist was born just up the road in Emelle, AL. Dial’s work became popular in the 1990’s and can now be found in the collections of museums across the country. He loaded his canvases and sculptures with color and texture creating complex, large-scale artworks. He used a myriad of found objects such as fabric, wood, dolls, and matress springs to create paintings, sculpture, and assemblages that told his story and shared his experience of being a black man in the south and in America.
After learning about Dial and his work, students began summer classes by exploring color, texture, and abstraction through collage, drawing, and painting exercises. Each student then created their own assemblage paintings by layering everyday found objects such as beads, straws, yarn, fabric, and bottle caps and then painting their wooden “canvases.” Dial used his own experiences to inform and influence his work and students were asked to do the same.
Every piece created was utterly unique. Some students focused on structure, engineering elaborate popsicle stick, cardboard, and bead constructions that defied gravity. Many focused on color— some pieces were bright and contrasting while others revelled in subtle gradients. Some students created many minimal or geometric pieces while others spent their time on fewer, more time intensive pieces, imitating Dials prolific approach by adding layer after layer of glue, paint, and found materials.
Glue guns and paint at hand, they used their bottomless imaginations, energy, individuality, and creativity to create their pieces. These bold and colorful works also acted as a fitting tribute to Dial, who died early this year in Bessemer, AL at the age of 87.
2015: Gee’s Bend Quilts
During the summer of 2015 students focused on ideas relating to shape, pattern, color and community through the work of the quilters of Gee’s Bend. They used techniques related to murals, painting, and quilting as an opportunity to practice technical and critical-thinking skills related to visual art.
In preparation for their final painting project, students first created quilt-inspired collages–pulling colors and shapes from their own environments and imaginations to create their designs. Each student created their own individual painting which also acted as a smaller element of a larger work–making the project about both individual expression and collaboration. To aid them in their process, students studied art history, vocabulary, concepts, and skills related to Gee’s Bend, quilting, design, and making creative and collaborative work. The result was a varied, colorful, and organic patchwork of original and thoughtful artwork from each student and the class a whole.
Thanks to the 21st Century Summer Enrichment Program, the Sumter County Board of Education, Kinterbish Jr. High School, York West End Jr. High School, Sumter Central High School and all of the teachers, parents, and students who made this work a success!