LITERACY NIGHT: SCIENCE EDITION at San Gabriel Avenue Elementary School, South Gate, CA

Mural at San Gabriel Avenue School Literacy Night: Science Edition

Last week on Friday, I was the guest of honor at the San Gabriel Avenue Elementary School in South Gate, California for their annual literacy night, this year focusing on science. Children and their families filled the school playground, exploring various booths with science exhibits, turning in their raffle tickets for free books, competing in the champion pinewood derby races, listening to music, and enjoying pizza and other snacks on picnic blankets and lawn chairs.

With fourth grade teacher Mr. De Santos

I had a table for my books behind the stage area where I displayed my books. As a backdrop there was a wonderful mural depicting scientists learning about caterpillars and butterflies just as the children do in my book, Butterflies in Room 6. The kindergarten classes at San Gabriel were also learning about butterflies and on another table their butterflies were on exhibit, sitting next to the incubator where they were hatching eggs. I enjoyed the chance to talk with children and their parents as they came to my table to look at and buy my books, peer through my magnifying glass, and get a closeup look at my ostrich egg.

View from my table of the crowd and DJ

At the end of the afternoon the San Gabriel Mighty Angels Dance Team performed to music and then I did a presentation, talking about my books and life as a writer. The final event was a drawing for prizes.

With teachers Lauren Cantu (left) and Cindy Taylor (right)

The whole afternoon was a wonderful celebration of literacy, with a special emphasis on science. I thank kindergarten teacher Cindia Curiel-Taylor for inviting me and the San Gabriel PTA for sponsoring my visit. Cindy did a great job of organizing and directing the activities and was helped by other teachers at the school. In the spirit of the day, all were wearing white scientific lab coats. I wore my butterfly t-shirt: "Soar into Reading with science books for kids!"

Jackson Pollock’s MURAL at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California

Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California

Recently, I went to see Jackson Pollock’s painting, Mural, on exhibit at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  The Getty has spent the past year restoring the painting, now more than seventy years old, and has brought it back to its full glory. It is a stunning work–alive with swirling colors on a giant canvas.  Along with the painting, which occupies one room, the exhibit also explains the history of the work and the technical and artistic process of restoring it.

In 1943, art dealer Peggy Guggenheim commissioned Jackson Pollack–a relatively unknown artist at the time–  to make a painting for the hallway of her New York apartment.  It was to be a mural–wall sized–but painted on canvas. The finished painting stood 8 feet high and was nearly 20 feet wide.  It was the largest free-standing oil painting of the modern era.  But what was even more remarkable were the colors and shapes that swirled across the canvas.  No one had ever painted anything like it before.  Jackson Pollock went on to create his famous “drip” paintings, but it was Mural that marked the beginning of his prominence as a painter and the beginning of the era of large scale abstract expressionist paintings.

It’s not easy to find homes for paintings as large as Mural and in 1951 Peggy Guggenheim gave Mural to the University of Iowa Department of Art.  A photo in the book produced by the Getty about the painting shows it hanging in one of the painting studios at the university.  The photo is dated 1952.  Fifteen years later I was a graduate student in art at the University of Iowa, but I don’t recall ever seeing the painting.

You can view MURAL at the Getty until June 1, 2014.  After that it will travel to Sioux City, Iowa, and then go on a world tour to Vienna, London, and other cities.  The University of Iowa is currently planning to build a new art museum.  When it is finished, the Pollock painting will be installed there.

A Mural as a Class Project: Miwok Village Life

Mural of Miwok Village by Third Grade Students

Most students in third grade learn about Native Americans.  In my brother’s third grade class in Novato, California, located in Marin County just north of San Francisco, the children learned about the Miwoks, a tribe indigenous to their area. Their studies culminated in books that each child wrote and illustrated, telling about the life of a traditional Miwok family. (I had a chance to see the books in progress on a class visit.) The students also made a mural depicting Miwok life.  Everyone in the class participated in painting the background of the mural, using brushes and sponges to create the local hills and landscape.  Then each student drew animals, birds, people, chopas (dwellings) and other elements and glued them to the background.  The result is a beautiful and detailed depiction of a Miwok village. By working together the students created a piece of art much more complex than each could have done alone and enjoyed the satisfaction of a joint project.