Kirby Ferguson = Good Stuff.

We started by cutting bottles into the shape of flowers.

Then spray painted each bottle all kinds of different colors

Made sure not to forget to be a little goofy. Too serious = not as much fun.

We used string to tie all the bottles together and were amazed how well the finished Chandelier turned out! The Art’s council was able to sell if for some change at their yearly fundraiser, which left us proud that we can help support the arts in our community.

ReMade tells the story of makers and hackerspaces within the DIY movement…and it looks amazing. More info on the movement at Electromagnate.

Today was a super good day. This morning I got to participate in a summit at the Holland Area Arts Council for art educators along the lakeshore. Man, there are so many brilliant / passionate educators living within 50 miles of each other it’s amazing; it also makes me super jealous because my our high school art teacher (graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago) was replaced with a study hall supervisor just as I was freed up to take electives. Meh.

Anyways, Nick Rabkin (who was both intelligent and personable) was the keynote speaker and had some really interesting things to share on the role of art/creativity in student development. His talk spanned almost two hundred years of rationale for including the arts in public education (in the 1800′s it was argued that by teaching music communities could increase the quality of singing in church) and ended with recent studies in cognitive linguistics. Along the way he pointed to the above video of Dan Meyer, a New York math teacher developing an algebra curriculum that helps kids formulate problems in addition to solving them. Inspiring.

It reminded me of a conversation I had last year with Mrs. Propst. After talking through various processes we concluded that art making was nothing more than continuous creative problem solving; acknowledging, exploring, understanding and proposing solutions to the infinite array of problems one confronts when making something of this world. One of the things I loved about having the opportunity to study both art and mathematics was the concrete, abstract and theoretical problems each field forces one to confront. I write all of this to say that as we push forward into the third year (yikes!) of Ambrose we’re going to take a page from Mr. Meyer’s re-written math book and integrate more creative problem solving into our after school art & design program. This route seems most appropriate because regardless of what field we, and our students, enter and exit throughout life there will always need of a toolkit that enables us to ask the right questions.

My friend John Rumery (GR based barbecue guru and champion of all things Grilladelic) just passed on an inspiring NY Times article about the role creativity is playing in rejuvenation of Detroit. Oh. My. Gosh. If the internet hasn’t fine tuned your link-clicking skills this would be an excellent time to introduce yourself to the simple pleasure of digitally submerging yourself in the amazing things people are doing in our state. Read the article. Click to your heart’s content. Learn about awesome stuff like The Heidelberg Project, Design 99 and the Power House. Detroitus no more! Get inspired!

PS. Does anybody know of an old, abandoned, centrally located house we could have? Jonathan? Jeannette?

“There’s the easy way, then there’s the Mast Brother’s way.”

Ready yourselves; we’ve recruited a talented team of volunteers and this summer we’re offering four creative intensives for students entering grades 9-13 (recent high school seniors are invited). Every camp runs Tuesday to Friday from 9:00am – 3:00pm and includes the following: