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A Festivity Symposium for teachers and artists: June 15 – 17, 2023 Chicago, Illinois, NEIU
Under Symposium Information, please see the Philosophical Approach
History of the Studio for Possibility, Northeastern Illinois University
The Studio for Possibility originated with the Chicago Teachers’ Center at NEIU. I worked with Arts at the Center from the Lake View Arts Project (LEAP) through an Annenberg grant extension of LEAP and two Arts in Education grants with the US Department of Education.
Recently, I met with Jackie Murphy from LEAP and remembered this extraordinary effort to pair working artists and classroom teachers to co-design and co-teach arts integration classroom projects. These were my years as an external evaluator for these projects at the Chicago Teachers’ Center.
Here are three articles from “What Do We Really Know About The Role of the Artist Teacher?” a Teacher Created Exhibition: May 22 -26, 2014, by Arts at the Center of Teaching and Learning
The Studio for Possibility
The Studio for Possibility emerged from the last Arts in Education grant. It is a free-standing program for working artists, teaching artists, and classroom teachers in a storefront at 3412 Bryn Maur Avenue in Chicago.
A retired Chicago Public Schools teacher, Kate, described the Studio for Possibility.
The Studio is a place where we come together and have no “work” to be done. It is outside the competition of the not-for-profit world. No deliverables, yet we are participants with artists in explorations of ways to experience ourselves and one another.
Here is the program description of my workshop in the Festivity Symposium for teachers and artists.
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM Workshop (A) | Botanical Art, Eco-dying and Foraging as Pathways to Non-human Correspondences
Featuring Resident Artist, Cynthia Gehrie
Duration: 3 hours
Location: NEIU Fine Arts Building FA 203
Join the artist by considering What is it like to be a plant in the city?
We will walk around the streets and NEIU campus, take photos, and make notes. The workshop opens with a meditation on Not Knowing, Curiosity, and space in-Between (Side by Side.)
Beyond art making, let us explore art being. Let us approach the non-human world with artistic sensing, a knowing that emerges with awe and shared connection. Art involves exploring, expressing, envisioning, integrating, interweaving, surprising, revealing, and healing. A process that actively engages imagining, which humans are using to re-grow relationships between human and non-human beings toward wholeness. Art becomes a verb in being.
I begin with plants because they are the most vulnerable, yet they support the full weight of the animal kingdom. They exist above and below ground – a metaphor for discovery. Their being is interwoven in ways we are only beginning to discover. From the microscopic to the bioregional, they are an opening where we might fully engage our human beings.
A participant’s description of my description of the workshop the day before she participated
Dear Cynthia, What I heard you say is that upon being introduced to these objects from nature you are encouraging us first to enter a dialogue with them, appreciate them as forms or natural “beings.” Then we would go to the art supplies and interact with them through these materials. In fact, asking them to converse. Throught this activtywe access our sensibility or interiority towards the way we work with them. For example, will the participant 9artist) print, string, draw or build with them?
Relationships.
Humans are nature and this will impact our human connections.
Amy Hanks
Opening Meditation – This is how the workshop begins.
Advance to Documentation of the Workshop, starting with the opening medication.