HARWICH HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS OF THE ARTS, Inc.
|
|
The following appeared in the Cape Cod Chronicle supplement that highlighted Lower Cape Non-Profit Groups
Harwich High School Friends of the Arts
by Courtney Alex
HARWICH --- Harwich High School music teacher Rose Richards worked at various schools in her life and always dreamed about having a parent group help her with trips and outside opportunities in the arts department. That dream came true about six years ago when Harwich High School Friends of the Arts was formed (HHSFOTA).
Richards says the program is still in its infancy, but the organization has grown from a small group of parents, teachers, students and community members to an established 501 C(3) non-profit according to former president Bev Kelsey.
Kelsey and member JoAnne Brown say the whole organization started when federal funds supporting the after school pottery program disappeared. Parents, teachers, students and community members banded together to find new ways to support the program.
Kelsey said HHSFOTA is best described as "booster for the arts." From the birth of the group starting with nothing, a group, of teachers, parents and community members gathered at Ay! Caramba in fall 2003 and has now grown in both its core membership of about 15 and in its financial support.
Richards is proud of the group's accomplishments. One of the greatest accomplishments, she said, is the department's mobile Apple computer lab, a movable cart with 10 Mac laptops and a printer. They were also the first wing to go wireless.
The group also funds busses to shows and the Arts College Fair in Boston. They were also responsible for the alumni show held in January.
"This coming year is our fifth one," said Richards in an e-mail interview. "It's an awesome and joyous celebration of a significant part of the Harwich High School population's education after they have graduated."
They also give out scholarships to seniors graduating from the high school who are looking to pursue a career in the fine arts field.
More benefits include "advocacy and community awareness of the value of arts education," said Richards.
"We have an unusual situation in Harwich that the music, drama and art teachers are powerhouses that work and play well together and we are an 'arts department,' not separated entities," said Richards. Richards gave the example that most people from her choir do the drama productions and several band students do visual art.
The money they receive is put toward after-school programs, expense items for teachers, scholarships and non-funded items for the high school arts program. A gala at the Wequassett Inn on Oct. 24 raised nearly $10,000.
Kelsey and Brown are very thankful for the continuous help they receive from the community and are very proud of the students in Harwich.
"Harwich High School art programs have produced many talented students and have provided a pathway to the future for our young people," said Kelsey.
For more information visit www.hhsfota.org or e-mail info@hhsfota.org. Send donations to PO Box 775, Harwich, 02645.
Arts Education touted in Cape Cod Times My View Reader Column, October 10, 2007
Heather Blume's gallery show , Harwich Oracle, September 26, 2007
Invest in the Arts, an editorial in the Cape Cod Times, September 8, 2007
Artist Heather Blume Brings Harwich Students to 4C’s Gallery, Cape Cod Chronicle, August 30, 2007
Plaques honor top-rated student musicians, Harwich Oracle, August 7, 2007
*****************************************************************
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
— Pablo Picasso
Last January, this quote by Picasso was displayed at the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod's exhibit "When We Were Younger" at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, where the contemporary work of more than 40 Cape Cod artists was exhibited alongside work they created when they were younger.
While the exhibit explored the evolution of creativity throughout each artist's life, encouraging students to pursue their own creative visions, it also marked the creation of Cape Cod's first regional arts education task force. Established by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, the task force is a collaborative network of arts educators and arts leaders whose collective vision is to help arts educators share resources, help the community set regional goals, and help students of all ages access the full menu of creative learning opportunities.
An ambitious project? Yes. But as a recent Cape Cod Times editorial reminded us, arts education is at a crossroads. Fortunately, local, regional and statewide efforts are under way that will help make the road a little smoother, a little wider, and a little more clearly marked.
Evidence continues to mount confirming the correlation between arts education and student performance in reading, math and social skills. Students in arts-rich schools surpass their peers in spatial reasoning, problem solving, and key components of creative thinking, such as originality, elaboration and flexibility, as reported in "Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development," a study published by the Arts Education Partnership in 2002.
The recent report by Heland, Winner, et al, in "Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education" that suggests that arts education teaches skills not taught elsewhere, such as the ability to self evaluate and learn from mistakes, actually complements rather than contradicts these previous studies.
What virtually all arts education research underscores is the central importance of arts education in arming students with the skills needed to thrive both as workers in a new economy and as human beings in a new millennium. Creativity, flexibility, and problem solving; collaboration, empathy, and tolerance; these are the true and lasting fruits of a strong and integrated arts curriculum.
A unique strength of our region is the abundance of working artists who call Cape Cod home. Many of these artists are actively engaged in collaborative projects with cultural organizations and schools that harness their artistic skills in valuable teaching and mentoring opportunities for local students.
Standout programs in this field include the Provincetown Art Association and Museum's Student Curating program, the Cape Cod Museum of Art's Schools to Career program, the Harwich Junior Theatre's Theater in Schools program, and The Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra's Composing Kids program; many of which have been supported through an Arts Foundation of Cape Cod grant.
The struggle to quantify and measure the success of creative learning in our schools is hardly limited to our region — it is a concern across the commonwealth. The Creative Index bill (HB393) is currently under review by the House Committee on Education. This bill would establish measurable, quantitative standards for creative learning opportunities in schools, and would provide evaluative benchmarks to educators, administrators, and parents. If passed, this index could prove a valuable tool in assessing how Cape Cod schools measure up, both in comparison with each other and with other regions.
The state of arts education has been precarious for some time, as shifting budgetary priorities continue to compartmentalize and marginalize what should be integrated and central — developing and sustaining the nimble, creative artist mind that Picasso believed we all share. The Arts Foundation of Cape Cod is a resource for those interested in following, examining, and supporting the various initiatives that will affect the future of arts education on Cape Cod and beyond.
Lisa Hergenrother is executive director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod (www.artsfoundation.org).
******************************************************************
Dreams and reality merge in ‘Continuity’
Stephanie Foster
West Barnstable - Heather Blume has been an artist since she was old enough to start rearranging the world around her. Although she draws and paints, she finds the tactile world of sculpture suits her. With “Continuity,” her current show at the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College, she combines them all. And even went a step further. Blume also created a sound track to play in the background.
“If I could bottle smells I’d have done that too,” says the Cape Cod native who lives in Harwich.
As a child, her mother, who was an artist, gave her great freedom. She played in the woods while her mother painted and made a connection with nature at an early age. Today, nature is an important part of her life.
“I feel one with it,” she says.
Blume tries to communicate and explore that connection with the natural world through her work. The soundtrack is not merely a tape of birds singing. She recorded the sounds as she collected materials from the woods for her show. The leaves rustle, the branches crackle, the wind whistles through the branches. There is even the lonely song of peepers. Through sound, she captures the essence of what people are seeing at the same time. The show combines audio with visual.
“People don’t realize the different levels that operate in being creative. When I was taping, the sounds gave me a heightened awareness of how I was experiencing the material.”
She wants others to feel it too. Blume has created a world inhabited by beings that resemble humanity yet they are distant from us, closer to the earth and in a different time and place — humans evolving from wise old trees with twiggy fingers. The tones are subdued and quiet, the colors of the earth in late fall and winter. There is a thoughtful somber air to the settings, almost a sadness. She relieve it with touches of pale green and signs that spring and metamorphose is ahead.
To help her audience understand “Continuity,” she put together a short glossary of art terms that range from installation art (art that uses mixed mediums in order to affect the way people experience a particular space) to synthesis (the fusion of separate elements or substances to form a coherent whole.)
“People have busy lives. They don’t have time to smell the roses and think about how they got there. I want people to have a better understanding of what goes into art. You can’t expect people to walk up to ‘Continuity’ and understand it. Education helps.”
Her sculptural work is arranged in both small scale and life-size vignette. The figures are woodland muses and they form the narrative of her mythical art. It’s like a dream world that the mind accepts without question. She describes it as “Something almost recognized, or once known but now forgotten.” She is trying to reawaken that sensitivity in the viewer, draw them into her world. She believes the boundary between self and nature is not as defined as we think.
“The self is hard to contain in a body but it’s easier to think of ourselves that way.” She quotes Zeno 335 B.C.:
The feels the show represents Blume’s artistic philosophy.
“The woodland muses are all female and aspects of my alter self. I don’t want to be too heavy or profound. Some artists have a more philosophical bent. I’m one. I like to delve into the meaning and tell a story,” she says. “Stories are the glue to help each other know where we are going as a species. I like connecting the dots and finding meaning in the pathways. I consider myself an artist in the true sense. It’s a visual language for me.”
Blume began the installation last November by collecting branches and creating structures, which are part of the background,. She also sketched her ideas. But it wasn’t until January, that she started creating her muses.
“The muse is an inner voice that comes to me and speaks in a symbolic way about the meaning of my life and existence.”
Blume is continuing a narrative she started years ago with acrobats, mermaids and figures juxtapositioned within walls with observation points. The walls represented the subconscious; the peep holes clarity. In this show the walls are screens made of rice paper, wax and wood.
“I find a theme that connects them all. Therefore continuity,” Blume says.
This is the biggest show she has ever mounted and Blume hopes to take it to other colleges and reach more people.
“I made a monumental effort. No one has seen me very much in the last year. It’s what it takes. It is a turning point in my career,” Blume says. “I started making the sculptures in January and haven’t stopped. This was the hour to move forward and change.”
If you go:
What: “Continuity”, a mixed media installation by Heather Blume, artist in residence
Where: Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College, Route 132, West Barnstable
When: Through Oct. 5
As the new school year opens, the teaching of the arts — music, art, drama, dance — is at a crossroads, say education researchers. Arts education has been pushed to the margins, but now the pendulum is beginning to swing back.
This ought to be of special interest on Cape Cod. We're an "arts destination," as one expert puts it — a hotbed of visual and performing arts, with many fine musicians, working artists and active theaters. We ought to be among the leaders in arts education.
Are we? We don't know. Every school district has its own program and its own standards. Local data are missing and so are national standards.
Consequently, no one knows how marginalized the arts have become. In some schools, all the choruses and bands and classes of a robust program continue; in other schools, they've dwindled.
Of one thing you can be sure: a lot of children are being left behind when it comes to arts education.
A great many schools — 44 percent in one national survey — have cut back enormously to meet the mandates of the No Child Left Behind law on reading and mathematics. The law calls arts a "core subject," but only reading and math are tested, and that's where the time and money goes. Of course, it's the "frills" that get cut.
But a gathering body of research indicates that arts education is no frill. Many studies have shown a correlation between study in the arts and high academic performance. Many a potential drop-out is held in school by the art room; many a garage band is born in the music room.
However, "correlation is not causation," two Boston researchers, Ellen Winner and Lois Heland, argue in a Boston Globe piece last Sunday and in a new book. Arts education can stand on its own merits, they say, because it teaches skills not taught elsewhere.
Their close observation of art classes in several Boston-area schools, for example, revealed that students were learning persistence, close observation, innovation, creativity, exploration, self-expression and self-evaluation. Where else do you get all that?
Music students, for their part, learn proportion, pattern, ratio — not to mention teamwork — as the trombone player who blares out a beat early quickly learns.
There is much rhetoric from education leaders about these values, and some hopeful signs. California has allocated $500 million to bring school arts equipment up to date and $105 million a year for continuing education. Denver voters approved a bond issue to place certified arts teachers in all elementary schools. Arkansas requires at least 40 minutes of art and/or music instruction by certified teachers every week in elementary schools. California and Minnesota require a year of arts studies for admission to state colleges.
This is good, but fragmentary. The American economy is shifting, it's often noted, from the engineering mode to the creative mode. All our children, not some, must learn the value of creativity.
Artist Heather Blume Brings Harwich Students to 4C’s Gallery
by Jennifer Sexton
Harwich sculptor Heather Blume will exhibit her work and demonstrate her process to students from Harwich High School as the autumn semester artist-in-residence at Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College.
The show, entitled “Continuity”, will feature Blume’s lyrically expressive figurative works, created largely from found and organic materials such as branches, wax, hemp and other natural fibers. It runs from September 5th to October 5th. Blume is the seventeenth artist to be featured since the artist-in-residence program began over twelve years ago. Blume teaches as a member of the adjunct faculty at 4Cs, and the exhibit will be her first at Higgins Gallery.
The purpose of the artist-in-residence program is to invite a local artist, often one who works in an unusual medium, to venture out of the familiarity of their studio and into the Higgins Gallery space to work, demonstrate, and accomplish a certain amount of work during the month of residency. The program enables the artist to both exhibit work and meet with students and other members of the community. The inclusive intent of the program helps demystify the creative process while throwing open the doors to the sometimes intimidating world of fine art.
Blume is enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with the students of Harwich High School and their teacher, Liane Biron.
“I feel this is a great opportunity to reach these young aspiring artists,” says Blume. “Liane is delightful, and I have such high regard for her as an art instructor. This is a real opportunity to connect with the community of Harwich as well. It’s an exhibit about this region. It’s about helping people from the community come to works of art and feel that they can have opinions about that show, not just be dictated to about what my statement is. If no one helps or gives them a hand, how are they going to relate? Thank goodness we have these wonderful art teachers in these high schools. Without art education in the schools, it just widens the gap.”
Blume’s work is unique in its wild beauty as it unites raw, playful, seemingly naturally-occurring materials with an obvious mastery of the human form and all of the precision and confidence one would expect from this classically trained sculptor. One might wish figures as delicate yet commanding as these to be cast in bronze, yet here they are in all of their wax and fiber glory, fragile and easily returned to their found organic origins. Blume calls the exhibition ‘Continuity’, because it unites the arc of her work as it has progressed from an initial show in 1996, with figures Blume calls muses.
“They evolved on their own and sort of came up and told me what I was going to do,” says Blume. “These are woodland muses, and I have really gone all out to try to use organic, recycled materials. I’ve got branches, I’ve got pieces dipped in wax—using found materials is fun. It’s like finding hidden treasure.”
Blume feels that her work really began in childhood, at play in the woods and wild areas of her youth here on Cape Cod. She continues to draw inspiration from the natural surroundings that made such an impression on her as a child.
“My parents would open the door and I would go outside and play in the woods all day. And that has everything to do with this show. What I did as a child was gather stuff in the woods and make little houses out of it, little dwellings. I could do this all day, and no one said to me, ‘you’re an artist’. I just played. I think that’s a key element to creating art. That’s why once I got a masters degree in classical sculpture I felt totally free to do whatever I wanted with that underpinning and structural knowledge. Nature ultimately has been the inspiration, not only because it’s beautiful, but because the underpinnings of nature are all about structure. Natural science is something I’ve used to support this whole show.”
Harwich High School art teacher Liane Biron, a teacher for 28 years and owner of the Cove Gallery in Wellfleet for 18 years, is enthusiastic about the opportunity for her students as well as about Blume’s work.
“It’s inventive,” says Biron. “I like the figurative aspect, yet it’s not traditional. It’s kind of magical. This is Harwich High School’s first involvement with the artist-in-residence program. We’ll be bringing about 18 students in the 10 th through 12 th grades to 4Cs to work with Heather, and then they’ll come back and work on sculpture in the classroom. It can be intimidating. Harwich High School has a really strong fine and performing arts program. We really embrace the arts as a high school. The kids are used to working with each other and very confident when relating to artists. I think that’s where we come from in our philosophy. We include parents and the community and work closely together.”
There will be an opening reception for Heather Blume’s mixed-media installation on Friday, September 14 th from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at Tilden Arts Center/Higgins Art Gallery. The public is welcome, and refreshments will be served. The reception will feature musician Jennifer Young, a songwriter and figure model for Blume’s work who will perform original compositions inspired by Blume’s woodland muses. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Two one-hour artist talks are scheduled that are open to the public as well. Heather Blume will speak on Monday, September 17th from 1 to 2 p.m., and at an evening talk on Wednesday, September 19th from 6 to 7 p.m. Both will take place at Tilden Arts Center/Higgins Art Gallery.
During the month of residency, Heather Blume will be available at Higgins Art Gallery at varying hours. Please call (508) 362-2131 ext 4484 to inquire about her availability or for more information.
For more information about the Heather Blume Sculpture Studio in Harwich Port, call (508) 430-1945 or visit www.heatherblume.com To learn more about Harwich High School’s fine and performing arts students, visit www.hhsfota.orgww
From the Harwich Oracle, August 7, 2007
Amanda Kosloski holds one of the All-State plaques that will be displayed at Harwich High School.
After three years of research by Harwich High School Friends of the Arts members Walt and Cindy Kosloski, two plaques featuring the names of Harwich High School students who achieved Massachusetts Music Educators All-State honors have been delivered to the high school where they will be hung in the main lobby.
The idea for the project was conceived when their daughter, Amanda, was an All-State flutist in the spring of 2004. They said they were struck by the magnitude of this achievement when they attended the All-State performance at Symphony Hall, where Amanda was one of a select group of 18 flutists accepted from all Massachusetts schools statewide.
The road to All-State status begins with auditioning for one's District Music Festival, of which there are four in Massachusetts. Harwich is in the Southeast District, which includes all of Cape Cod and most everything south of Boston including Brockton, New Bedford and Fall River. Once accepted at the district level and with high enough scores, one is recommended for an All-State audition. This involves learning another piece of music and another trip to an off-Cape location. The All-State participants are chosen based on the final scores of this audition. The competition’s finale is a concert at Symphony Hall in Boston.
“When I finally located the All-State Programs there were a lot of years missing. No one, apparently, ever kept an archive,” said Cindy Kosloskis, So they requested help from the public through local newspapers and displayed the plaques during high school performances in hopes that previous All-State students would come forward. The project is a work in progress and the names of any omitted All-Staters would be greatly appreciated. The list can be seen at the web site of the Harwich High School Friends of the Arts under
Kudos Korner and names can be submitted to
.
Harwich High School Friends of the Arts is a non-profit, independent organization of parents, educators, students and friends working to support, encourage and enhance the Arts education programs of Harwich High School through donations of funds, equipment and scholarships. During the coming school year, the group plans to collect the names of Art students who were Globe Scholastic Art Award winners with the goal of displaying them on similar plaques.