Re Use Center

We finally moved into our new class space in late October. Michelle, another parent and teacher at The Living School and I spent a day setting up and organizing our grand new studio! This is very exciting considering storage of our art supplies last year was in the bathroom.

Keri Piehl, the education director at SCRAP ( http://scrapaction.org/ ) came in to help us set up our Re-Use Center. The parents and students have been saving up items for us to re-purpose into art that would otherwise wind up in the trash. Keri also brought some interesting things from SCRAP's inventory to share with us. Included in these items were milk cartons, plastic Easter eggs, red plastic netting that held fruit, odd plastic bits, plastic 2 liter bottles, upholstery strips, etc...

All of the stuff we'd collected was completely disorganized and look well, basically like a bunch of garbage. Keri led the kids in letting them decide the best way to organize it. A few people made suggestions of how we could do this: by size, material, etc...Finally, after a democratic vote they all agreed to sort it out by color.

The kids divided into groups and were in charge of certain colors. It was an organized chaos and there was a lot of mad activity as people went through boxes and piles. It was interesting to hear them discuss what an object's true color was. In some eyes an object was green, in others it was yellow.

Finally, all of our junk was starting to look really pretty. This was seeming to me like a wonderful way to organize just about anything. Color plays such an important role in aesthetics. And it was helping my brain make sense of the jumbled objects.

Once everything had a home, the children made labels to put on the boxes and bins. Some of the bins we had correlated with the objects in them. And they used matching colored pens to make the labels.

I am sure that there are many ways to sort out these objects that are destined to become art. I really had nothing to do with how it all came together as the kids were the ones how led the project. But I am quite pleased with the outcome, being the one who manages the supplies and spends time in the studio. Crayons, paints, paper and other art supplies in a store are organized by order of color and so why shouldn't these supplies? If I was a blue milk jug lid or a purple plastic Easter Egg, I'd be feeling pretty fancy about now.