Last Thursday Feb 9th, we wound down our final session of our Reach To Teach Program for the Fall/Winter School season. We are thrilled to finally be in person with this event again, after almost three years of teaching the program online through the Pandemic. In this session students created a sculptural artwork resembling blown glass inspired by the great glass blowing artist from Seattle Washington, Dale Chihuly. Focusing on the style of his ‘Persian series’ similar to the installation piece that can be viewed in downtown Vancouver, students were asked to design shrink plastic sheets with pattern and colour, before heat shrinking them with a hair dryer or oven. As the plastic warped and shrunk, it started to resemble the natural curled shapes of Chihuly’s pieces. Finally students glued their pieces onto hoops to make a glass blown wreath.
The Celebration of Learning was punctuated by a field trip to the Steveston Post Office operated by the Steveston Historical Society to view the final artworks on display in the ‘Bank Manager’s Office’ space at the front of the building. 30 grade 6/7 students from Mitchell Elementary and Westwind Elementary were brought on buses compliments of The Arts Connection and hosted by the Post Office as they walked through the room viewing their pieces on display. This is the first time in this program’s history that a field trip has been included in the Celebration of Learning. Students were then brought back to the Arts Connection for a sit down buffet lunch, speeches and music.
The delicate and interesting pieces are displayed at the Steveston Post Office until February 28th, please take the time to view them during post office hours.
Reach To Teach is proudly supported by The Community Arts Council of Richmond in partnership with The Arts Connection. Special thanks to the Steveston Historical Society for hosting the installation for this session!
We hope to continue this wonderful outreach program in April, so stay tuned for details of the next session.
