My Service Learning Experience - Day 1

Yesterday, Thursday October 6th, I met Brad Zenz, the Director of Education in the lobby at the Ella Sharp Museum of Art and History at 3225 Fourth St., Jackson, MI .  This is where I will be completing my service learning assignment.  Brad led me back to his office, which is a large room consisting of three desks/divided work areas surrounded by bookshelves filled with books, wall racks with large hanging portfolios, and works of art that are either going to be displayed in the gallery or have recently been taken off display, (I think).

Brad got me logged in on a computer first thing, then discussed with me some of his up coming projects.  Brad teaches community art classes, and has received a grant to offer Saturday art classes once a month to children who are within the preschool to 6th grade age range and their parents.  He is planning the next five activities that will allow participants to create projects that coincide with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines Day, and the season of Spring.  He has tentatively planned projects for these occasions, but has not actually created the projects to plan for instruction and materials.  He also advertises in the Jackson Citizen Patriot, the local newspaper and the Salesman an advertisement publication.  He asked me to prepare press releases for these events, based on previous press releases that he had on file in the computer, and to create the "demo" of the Halloween project "Creepy Crawlers".

Brad and I walked over to the art classroom and looked through the art supplies to find items suitable for constructing the demo.  After pulling out several bins filled with different items like foam cut outs, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and pom-poms, we came up with a concept and I offered to create it so Brad could get back to his office and take care of his other responsibilities.  He agreed but first went outside to spray paint a foam ball for the body of our creepy crawler, and I proceeded to gather the supplies needed to make a spider marionette. 

I completed the project, straightened up the room and returned to the office area.  Brad was very pleased with the spider mock-up and we discussed minor changes to simplify the process.   I went back to the computer and worked on finishing the press releases advertising the Saturday art classes and Brad stepped out to attend a couple of meetings. 

I spent four hours there on my first day, and I'm rather pleased with the work I completed.  I think this will prove to be a valuable experience.  Brad mentioned some ideas he has for sharing art with seniors in the retirement facilities in the community and I'm very interested in assisting him in anyway that I can with this endeavor; seniors are one of the populations I am interested in working with in my future counseling and art therapy practice.