Kids' art brings poems to life - Harlem School of the Arts students

Students at the Harlem School of the Arts illustrate a "found" book by Langston Hughes--and show you how they worked their magic.

Here is a test: Which of the following verses was written by Langston Hughes?

a. Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.

b. What use Is a goose Except to quackle? If a goose can't quackle She's out of whackle

The answer is: Both! But until two years ago, few knew that Hughes had written wonderful, silly alphabet poems for children about a goose, an ape, a rabbit, and other beasties. That's when the never-published collection of poems was discovered among Langston Hughes's papers at Yale University's rare book library. Nancy Toff, the Oxford University Press children's book editor who discovered the manuscript--called The Sweet and Sour Animal Book--was thrilled. She knew right away that she wanted to publish it, and she thought it would be fun to have children illustrate each poem. This is where a lucky, talented group of students at Harlem School of the Arts came into the picture.

Nancy, who is also a flutist, was visiting the school one day to help with a music program when she saw a photograph of three-dimensional masks the students had made. She was floored by their beauty, and went straight to the art department. Faster than you can say A, B, C, she "commissioned" the mostly first-, second-, and third-grade art students to create an animal for each poem/letter of the alphabet (two appear on page 76).

"Nancy brought the poems to us, and we made poster-sized photocopies of them and hung them in the art room," says David Brean, chairman of the art department at the Harlem School, located near where Hughes once lived. "Students were free to illustrate whichever poem appealed to them. Usually they chose animals they liked and knew something about, though no one knew what an ibis was!" David says.

The student illustrators were also given carte blanche to choose which materials they wanted to use. Nancy feels that this creative license is why the final results are so remarkable.

Your Students Can Make A Menagerie

Invite your students to write their own alphabet animal poems and then create sculptures to match. If you think the sculptures on page 76 look too hard to make, think again! All the sculptures in The Sweet and Sour Animal Book are made from accessible materials like clay, paper, cardboard, and poster paint. To inspire you and your students, here is how Dimitri Juste made his terrific turtle.

TAILORING THE TURTLE

Using a photograph of a real turtle as his model, Dimitri shaped a lump of clay into a turtle likeness by pinching out a head, legs, and a tail. He then scored the turtle's back. When the clay was dry, Dimitri painted the turtle with tempera paints. Later, he applied a coat of acrylic gloss varnish.

A note about the clay: Dimitri used Bone-Ware Moist Clay (available through Dick Blick catalog, [800] 447-8192) because it doesn't require a kiln, and yet after a few days of air-drying, achieves a kiln-fired look and durability.

I IS FOR IBIS--BUT WHAT IS IT?

"What in the world does an ibis look like?" young sculptor Brandon Quaye asked himself as he began his project. The only illustration he could track down was of a squat Egyptian ibis--it sure didn't look like the "long-legged wading-bird" Langston Hughes described!

Nevertheless, Brandon used the illustration to help him draw his own ibis. Then, for the body, he cut out two pieces of egg-shaped corrugated cardboard. He used more cardboard to make an S-shaped neck, a head, the eyes, the wings, legs, and feet. As you can see from the photo on page 76, the legs are strips of cardboard folded in half, so it's easier to keep the sculpture standing.

Before stapling all the parts together, Brandon laid them out on a table to make sure he had the ibis's proportions right. Once the bird was standing on its own two feet, Brandon painted it vivid colors.

WENDY MURRAY is a senior associate editor at Instructor.

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