Cleveland Atelier: Kick-off at the Warhol

The Cleveland Atelier has been launched!

Atelier is the visuals arts componenet of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's All-City Arts program. Sponsored by The Human Fund, the program will connect the Greater Cleveland arts community with the most talented high school art students from across the entire Cleveland school district.

Last week RealNEO posted an article about the summer arts intensive program collaboration betweem Cleveland Atelier, ArtHouse, and Passport Project. You can read about it here.

I am re-posting my comment here describing our first group activity: a trip to Pittsburgh to visit the Andy Warhol Museum and the Mattress Factory

Saturday was a great day for the trip to Pittsburgh. Gorgeous weather and a fabulous bus driver made the two hour drive seem so much shorter.

The students on the trip were top-notch, bright kids, and just drank
everything in. One of the girls confided in me that this was her first trip outside of Cleveland. Ever.

The installations at the Mattress Factory were our first stop, and to my surprise, they all "got it". Conceptual art is often difficult for many people to understand, let alone appreciate or, even in some cases, tolerate. As we explored the buildings, walking from room to room, you could hear them talking together;

"This is sooo cool."
"Wow! Look over here!"
"How did they do that?"

Never once did I hear;

"I don't get it" or
"Why would they call this art?"

The seven floors of the Warhol Museum kept us busy for hours. Each one of us wandering off on our own. As a teacher, it was so very gratifying to walk into a gallery room and see our students not only looking at the art, but reading. As a veteran of 27 years of high school field trips, I am accustomed to teenagers dashing through museums, and then finding an out-of-the-way spot to hang out with their friends until the adults finally round them up. This was such a completely different group of kids, mature, focused, interested.
I can't even begin to express how impressed I was.

By late afternoon, when it was time to leave, we had no trouble finding anyone, since they all were in the basement workshop, making art.

Tuesday, the printmaking session of the summer intensive will begin at ArtHouse, and then on Thursday the students will begin working on photography at Passport Project. When the school year begins in August we will begin to grow the Atelier program with our current partners, and continue to explore opportunities to form new partnerships with other arts organizations throughout the city.

Why worry about attracting creative new talent to our city? We have all the resources right here.
We can simply grow our own .