Pop-up to feature student, teacher artwork
Fifteen Houston ISD art teachers and their students will showcase their work in an exhibition hosted by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston this month that explores children’s perspectives on some of the most pressing issues to young people today.
The exhibition, titled “State of Disruption,” aims to “confront the challenges and complexities of the nation’s current education system” through more than 140 works by students and teachers, CAMH said. It opens at 6 p.m. May 10 and runs through May 26 at POST Houston’s X Atrium.
The 15 HISD teachers who are contributing pieces alongside their students make up the third cohort of CAMH’s Teacher Advisory Group, which has been meeting for the last year to advise the museum on future educational initiatives and incorporate museum program into their art classes. The teachers represent schools across Houston, from arts-focused magnet schools to those in state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System, which has been criticized by some community members who believe it deemphasizes the arts.
Hector Garcia, an art teacher at South Early College High School in south Houston, said the program has helped him fill in the gaps in his own art education and allowed him to improve as a teacher.
“I was looking for additional support in working with modern and contemporary art, because as an art teacher and artist myself, that’s where I lag,” Garcia said. “I would tell my students, ‘This is where I struggle. It’s not just you, and we’re going to get through this together,’ so knowing that there was an opportunity to learn more about it and be able to provide that to my students, I couldn’t pass that up.”
Though the exhibition’s theme, disruption in public education, has no shortage of inspiration from HISD’s first year under state-appointed leadership, Garcia said he didn’t ask the students in his photography club to set out with any specific directive. Still, as his seven students began submitting their photos, he recognized themes emerging — landscape and urban photography that doesn’t necessarily reflect their day-to-day surroundings of home and school.
Garcia’s students bubbled with excitement as they studied their framed prints for the first time in Garcia’s classroom last week, examining the photos and discussing their process.
“It was just a one-time thing. I try to catch it now more often, but I’ve never had it happen again,” said sophomore Genesis Valier of her photo of a bank of clouds exploding in orange during a sunset. “Sometimes when I can’t get a picture of something I really want, I think maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
Other artworks deal more explicitly with the upheaval at HISD. Stevie Jost, a student at Lamar High School, wrote that her mixed media piece, which is titled “Policy” and features statements from students and others superimposed onto a picture of Jost, was a direct response to the “the stress that the new rules implemented by the school district has caused (her).”
“I truly felt that something needed to be said about the new regulations being administered by the districts and their effects, and I hope to be able to reach at least a few people who can help make changes for the better,” Jost wrote.
At the Arabic Immersion Magnet School in Montrose, art teacher Justin Larson asked his seventh and eighth graders to consider disruption for an installation that features video art, paintings and large papier mâché dinosaurs that act as a surface on which students can create their own work. What, after all, is more disruptive to a dinosaur than a giant meteor that crashes down to earth and wipes out the species?
Arabic Immersion students said they drew from a number of inspirations in what they consider to be disruptive to their daily lives — children dying in Palestine, mental health and the influence of technology were just a few examples they noted.
“Art is something I do to take things out of my mind. I try to show my emotions in my artwork, and that’s a really big thing for me and it helps me clear my mind a lot,” said seventh grader Layla Luna. “I do it when I’m feeling stressed and have something on my mind I can’t talk about. Instead, I just put it into my artwork.”