The blog is set up backwards, start with the bottom entries and work your way through.  

Summary

I am working to implement a multi-generational experience through the visual arts.  I teach art to the kindergarten students at my school.  Their service learning project, as deemed by the service learning director, is the elderly.  This usually consists of collecting personal care items and bagging them for distribution, a visit from a few elders to watch the kinders sing, and maybe a visit of the kindergarteners to a nearby care facility.  The interaction between the generations is very limited, and not sustained over any period of time.  The benefits to both generations seems minimal to me.

As I was reading about the various projects undertaken in an effort to combine the generations, I started to think about our kinders and how I could add more depth to their service learning as well as a meaningful and respectful experience for some elders.  Can I get together with a nearby facility and have some fairly mobile and talkative people come to my school for five concurrent art classes with the same class of kindergarten students? Maybe even a small group that enjoy the visual art therapy or sessions where they live. During this period of constant contact, the elders could tell stories from their own experiences – what was their childhood like, their parents, their cars, their toys, etc.  My students could draw what their elder person is describing.  I am still thinking of how to combine this, what the elders would create, and how to end it.  Possibly a mural or some sort of art exhibit at the care facility?  This is only in the beginning stages.

Last week, I proposed this idea to the Head of Lower School.  To say that she is onboard is an understatement.  She is so excited for the increased interaction between our students and the older generation.  I will begin looking for a facility to work with, and try this out in the 2015-16 school year!  I hope to see a benefit for all parties involved.

4th work

This last work has not been fired as of this posting.  Some parts my not be ready, and I do not want any more breakage in the kiln...

These two go together, with the taller, younger woman looking back over the hunched over older woman.  Only underglaze has been applied, the washes will be applied after the bisque firing to create more contrast within each piece.

3rd project

A book made out of clay, very impractical, but fun to make.  I read a poem, and this just seemed to fit with some images in my head.  Wrinkles, a CAT scan,

an empty egg symbolizing loneliness, arthritis, and being a burden to younger generations.  Those are on the right hand page, with the poem on the back of four of the pages.

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.

Is it to feel our strength -
Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion -none.

It is -last stage of all -
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Matthew Arnold

2nd work

 Wrinkles.  I guess they are a bad thing as we do everything we can to get rid of them.  I am afraid of plastic surgery (the surgery, the cost), but, like other women, stand in front of the mirror and pull on my skin to see any improvement surgery would make.  There is a lot of room, believe me.  This lady decided to skip the doctor and take things into her own hands, or clothespins.  

Same materials and processes as the 1st work.


With clothespins added.

1st work

As I was thinking about aging, I started thinking about the outward appearance.  The wrinkles, the sagging skin, graying hair.  I made this bust, which had a little breakage during firing.  This is Low-Fire Terra Cotta clay with grog, fired in an electric kiln.  Engobes and underglazes were applied before bisque firing.  Two different washes were applied, and underglaze added again before the second firing.  I replaced her check after the second firing.

Getting older, into

I am afraid of getting older.  Both my maternal grandfather and my mother had Alzheimer’s disease.  Watching them slowly lose their memory and then their physical capabilities was hard. But, not only am I afraid of the disease; I do not want to be forgotten and overlooked.

The elderly in our society are not valued like in other cultures.  We send them to nursing homes, out of view.  Our media sells youth. Commercials tell us to look younger through cosmetic surgery and lotions.  Becoming old is not wanted. Our elders remind us of our own mortality.   

An older woman garners less respect and attention than an elder male.  She goes unnoticed at the grocery store or bank.  According to a 2011 Canadian survey reported in the Toronto Sun, more elderly women than men report routinely being ignored or assumed incompetent.

I do not want to look or act old.  I do not want to be dismissed.  Nor do I want plastic surgery!