Students learn to smash for a special project
By Greg Lacour
Special Correspondent
Posted: Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010 - Charlotte Observer
Tom Thoune, perhaps Charlotte's most accomplished sculptor, spent part of his Wednesday morning last week showing schoolchildren the proper way to break things.
The right way, it turned out, was to place the ceramic mug or bowl or saucer between pieces of cardboard on the floor, then pop it with a sledgehammer hard enough to break it into five or six pieces but not enough to turn it into powder. And certainly not hard enough for the hammer to rebound into the kids' faces.
Thoune delivered these instructions to a group of about 20 eager second-graders from St. Patrick Catholic School who'd gathered in a basement workshop at the McColl Center for Visual Art. "You guys are probably not even listening to me," he chided, "because you really wanna break stuff."
Which they did. "Tom's great with this age group," said Devlin McNeil, the McColl Center's director of education and outreach. "The first group was kindergartners, and once word got back to the school that they got to smash things, it was on."
The mass smashing was part of a three-week educational program, funded by an Arts & Science Council grant, to teach St. Patrick students about art while providing the school with a sculpture for its butterfly garden.
In fact, the 5 1/2-foot-tall sculpture will be in the shape of a butterfly. Thoune will put it together in the next two or three months. But the students got to provide the raw materials - china, glass, ceramics - and help produce the clay that'll hold the pieces together over a metal frame.
The McColl Center has worked with St. Patrick before, last year arranging for students to produce a mural on canvas at the school. But this year, "we really wanted to make it a richer experience, instead of artists coming and working with them in the classroom," McNeil said.
So about 400 K-5 students got to work on the sculpture and tour the center, which has work spaces for nine artists in residence. "All our artists, and everything we do is about connection with the community, and in the last few years, we've had a strong educational tie-in, going to schools," she said. "We just feel like artists are catalysts for cultural advancement and cultural change, and the more we can bring people into the center and artists out to the community - that's what we're about."
Thoune saw it as a chance not only to work with children but to practice a mosaic technique he learned last year, when he spent the fall studying at a mosaic institute in Ravenna, Italy, on another ASC grant. He learned the Byzantine style, which uses broken pieces of glass and pottery composed into a final shape.
He said he was happy for the chance to teach young students. "This is a great age, because they're not worried about what's cool and what's not cool," he said. "They dive in, and they absorb what you're telling them."
Even the kids who aren't especially interested in art gained something from the experience, said the second-graders' teacher, Anne Perin. But kids who enjoyed art already may have gained the most. Sofia Rohlman, 7, said she enjoys painting, both at school and home.
"I felt kind of good" working on the sculpture, she said. "I felt like an artist when I did it."
And what did she learn?
"Art is anything you want."