Art doesn’t just imitate life, it’s part of it, according to Lincoln-Way High School art teacher Julie McGuire and artist-in-residence Jeanette May.
May, a Chicago artist, spent some time in February and March working with McGuire’s photography students, courtesy of a grant from the Arts in Education program of the Illinois Arts Council.
“It just gives the kids a new perspective,” said McGuire, who applied for the $2,010 grant from the program that finances campus stays by artists in a variety of fields, including visual arts, theater and dance.
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On campus visits “I get to be an example,” May said, showing students that the visual arts are a career field.
“And I get to do the fun stuff,” she added, as students moving in and out of darkrooms embellished their photos with graphics and text.
Student projects–self-portraits for first-year students and pictorial narratives for the more advanced–are designed to spur a creative approach, she said.
“Hopefully, they started to think about multiple images,” she said.
To create their own photo book, students had to think about narrating in images rather than words, she said. “They need to think about the order you see images in, the successions.”
Photographers can take initiative and “really construct something rather than wander about looking for the photographic moment to happen,” according to May, who has taught photography and drawing at Columbia College and was a visiting artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago last year.
Students found their assignments “pretty cool,” in the words of Mike Hornback, a senior from Frankfort, whose self-portrait was embellished with lines from “The Road Not Taken,” a Robert Frost poem about life choices.
Melinda Evans, a junior from Mokena, used felt-tipped marker to surround her portrait with angel imagery, including a floating halo.
“I love angels,” said Evans.
Andrea Pintar, a senior from Mokena, was intent on assembling a book to serve as a visual record of a recent trip to St. Louis, using photos, logos and images of landmarks.
Matt Kyzner, a senior from Mokena, found his book inspiration closer to home, focusing on a local 24-hour restaurant. “That’s where we hang out,” he said.