Art Program


Studio-in-a School

Art classes at PS154 are provided by Studio-in-a School (SIAS), a non-profit, visual arts-in-education organization that places professional artists in public schools throughout New York City's five boroughs. You can find out more about Studio-in-a-School by visiting their website at www.studioinaschool.org.


PS 154's Art Program

All art classes are taught by Susan Greenstein, our SIAS artist-in-residence. Classes in the second and fifth grade have art once a week; classes in the other grades have art once every two weeks.

Ms. Greenstein works closely with each of the classroom teachers to develop programs which are sometimes relevant to what is being taught in the classroom and other times focusing on art processes that have to do with art for art's sake. Here's a look at what's going on in each of the grades:

    Kindergarten students explore with tempera paint. They begin with small pieces of cardboard and paint creating lines they stamp with the cardboard to build all sorts of structures.

    1st Grade students make "resists" using oil pastels and watercolors. A resist is created when students apply oil pastels and then cover it with watercolors. The oil pastels repel the watercolors, creating a very interesting surface. The students are asked to think about signs of spring as their theme. They will create a group paper mural using this same theme.

    2nd Grade students draw from life. We visited a few sites looking for signs of spring, and revisited some of them to see how the plants have grown and changed. One day we were lucky enough to study and draw a magnolia tree in bloom.

    3rd Grade students are studying China in their classrooms. We have just begun to work with ink and brushes and painting on rice paper. Students are exploring a variety of strokes they can create with their brushes.

    4th Grade - One class is creating art through math. We had a visitor from a program named Spectrum, where art is created through mathematical principles. She led us through several geometric progressions to create circular images. The other class is starting to work with clay. We will be looking at some native American coil pots and using these as inspiration for coil pots that we create.

    5th Grade students have been working from observation. They are using ink and brush and are doing beautiful drawings of kitchen utensils.


Art Club

Our fourth grade art club is working on self portraits. We started off doing pencil drawings and will soon be using oil pastels so that we can work in color. The children are being asked to include in their portrait some object that has special meaning for them.


Parent and Child Workshops

Within a series of five 2-hour workshops, parents and children worked on very large puppets made out of cardboard structures. The structures were covered with paper mache and then with colored foil paper. We had two parents work on the wooden structures for the bodies of the puppets. The costumes were created by a very dedicated group of teachers and parents. These puppets are 10 feet tall! We also created smaller puppets for smaller hands.

Our theme was the elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. Our debut was on April 22, when we joined the Earth Day parade in Prospect Park with our puppets, accompanied by Michel and young musicians from our school. We also had a second parade starting from the schoolyard and continuing all around the school block so our whole school community could enjoy seeing these puppets.