Artists And A Sense Of Place
This residency took place at Airline Park Academy for Advanced Studies, a New Orleans public school, through the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s Artist and Sense of Place Residency. I worked for 3 weeks with all the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th graders to produce work based on the concept of imagining microorganisms in the swamps of Louisiana as if their eyes were microscopes peering in, at the same time exploring drawing and watercolor painting skills. The residency culminated in a show of the student work at the Ogden Museum, pictured below.
It was important to me to introduce the concept of microorganisms as a vital and as-of-yet not fully understood part of the natural world and that from which all life came from, and as such, our most distance ancestors. Microorganisms are one of our new frontiers and we don’t know who our future scientists and/or conservationists will be, so introducing ideas and information about nature through art is fundamental.