As I was standing there, marking the many differences between an actual painting and a slide lecture, a tall, elderly man came out of a set of doors to my left, and joined me in looking. I looked at him briefly, and then the painting. And then back at him, because he was looking unexpectedly familiar.
"Excuse me, but are you Cy Twombly?" I asked.
"Yes," came the reply.
Read Meeting Cy Twombly Changed My Life by Greg Allen.
The committee worked to boost the aspirations of students, 69 percent of whom qualify for free lunches because of their families’ low incomes. Teachers were urged to make sure students heard the phrase, “When you go to college ...” in every class, every day.
4,100 Students Prove ‘Small Is Better’ Rule Wrong (NY Times)
Read: Looking Past the Children's Menu by Susan Dominus
NY Times 5/24/10 via South Willard
The Learning Community Playground
At The Learning Community, a charter school in Central Falls, Rhode Island, students spent recess on an old parking lot until a fourth grader wrote to Lowe's asking for help. They sent $110,000. The new playground was designed by Laurencia Strauss... as "part playground, part park, part sculpture" to provide space for both active play and quiet reflection.
via Playscapes (one of my favorite blogs)
See also: The Experimental Playground Project
Footage from a performance by Fang Island for the kindergarten and first grade classes of CVS Highlander Charter School in Providence, RI.
Seven year old Enzo's meat research found a temporary, public home in San Diego. The small installation included salamis, different cuts of meat, sausages, frankfurters, hams, a leg of lamb, a tongue, tripe, one goat and two pigs heads, and a side of beef. A few are his sister's designs and many of the cured meats were hand labeled by Enzo. Enzo and his folks are looking for a new location to install South Park Quality Meats.
Previously: Enzo's Meat Research
Barack Obama's father left the family when Barack was just two, returning only once (seen here). Obama wrote about this visit in his memoir, remembering the basketball his father gave him, the African records they danced to, the Dave Brubeck concert they attended. Obama, then 10, never saw his father again.
The long-awaited puzzles and blocks from Kid O are available now. Continuing the tradition of Community and Creative Playthings, the Kid O lineup is designed right and well made.
kidonyc.com
The City and Country blocks are re-made based on the original Caroline Pratt design and licensed from City & Country School, which was founded by Pratt in 1914. In three sets (Foundation, Addition and Extension) for $56.00 each. The puzzles are sweet, especially the fractions (ships mid October) and arranging sets — and nicely priced at $15–20 each. I'd like one of everything.
kid o
123 W. 10th St.
New York, NY
Same old story: Jean Touitou (owner and designer of A.P.C.) didn't like the options for his daughter's preschool — so he started his own.
Ateliers de la Petite Enfance (A.P.E.) opened in January with 25 students. The student to teacher ratio is about 1 to 6. Tuition is "expensive by French standards" at $16,000 per year. A satellite space around the corner opens this spring as the A.P.E.'s art workshop and mini theater for concerts and plays. A partner at M/M enrolled his own kid and is now working on a "visual toolbox" for the school. Jessica Ogden is a part-time art teacher. The school was designed by A.P.C.'s architect, Laurent Deroo, who installed plywood closet doors that double as a climbing wall, little Aalto chairs and that rad black folding wall thing. The school is Touitou's way to "build something solid that might last longer than fashion."
From W, April 2008: "Even if you grow up to be an accountant, it's better to be surrounded by beautiful furniture than by ugly furniture." / "This is a nursery school, so you can't just put in a concrete floor because it looks good." / "Montessori has kept a lot of shrinks in business."
Apple; brick; cell; door; egg; fire; gravestone; house; iron; jam; kite; leaf; mound; novel; oak; pear; quiver; rock; skull; twine; urn; vase; wagon; xylophone; yacht; zither.
From Joe McLaren's flickr. Click here to see more of his stuff.
Previously on Stork Bites Man: My favorite ABC book
Jordi Ferreiro designs and leads workshops for kids to make art in and about space. He sets them free with rolls of colored tape, the same he uses in his own work. About his workshop at the Centre d'art La Panera in Lleida, near Barcelona, Jordi says:
"The kids was freaking out because they never have ABSOLUTLEY FREEDOM for drawing in the space, without paper and with the 3D possibility. They starting making really small rubbertape drawing, and later was have been constructing houses, spiderwebs... really really cool!"
He's just as excited about his next workshop "A Floating Exhibition" where "the parents and kids must work in [with] balloons and when they are finished, we leave it away in the sky, like a museum in the sky..."
More photos from the workshops on Jordi's flickr and website.
