Art: 'It's not a mistake, it's an opportunity'

by THELMA MORRIS

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Prospect School's fourth graders bounce into Kathy Hilton's weekly art class, donning over-sized T-shirts as painters' smocks. Today they will paint skies.

The group gathers around as Hilton demonstrates how to wet the heavy construction paper; with broad brush strokes she covers it with blue paint.

"Work quickly before the paint dries," she cautions. With a couple of scrunched up toilet paper sheets she blots up some of the blue paint and voila -- fluffy white clouds.

"Cumulus!" someone calls out.

Back at their tables, the artists go to work painting their skies, adding brown for darker ones, daubing up paint to reveal white clouds. The skies complete, they shift the papers onto drying racks. Next week they will draw, cut out and color balloons to paste on their sky.

"Small balloons slant toward the top of the picture....perspective, you know," says one girl, who has obviously peeked at Hilton's lesson plan.

Then it's back to work on their Matisse Project -- construction sheets filled with a collage of colorful squares, circles and waves, shaped solely by scissors. The 20th century painter, they've learned, used the same technique in constructing some of his abstract masterpieces.

Hilton has taught art in the Oberlin schools for 10 years, and art at Prospect for the past three. She has a BS in art education from Kent, and a master's in education from Ashland, along with several teaching and reading certificates.

"Some days I get to use them all," she smiles, printing new words and art concepts on the board.

Hilton shows off two bulletin boards in the first floor hallway which showcase third and fourth grade art projects. The third grade features pastel landscapes, painted from photos. Some are impressionistic, some more natural, but all have a foreground, middle ground and a background.

The fourth grade board, titled "Positive Shapes, Negative Space," features sheets of heavy paper, filled with dramatic black and white cutouts.

"Simple shapes make dramatic space," Hilton notes.

Hilton wants her students to be proud of their finished work, whether hanging on the walls at Prospect or eventually in the young artists' homes.

"In the spring the students choose the art works they want to put in the art show. I show them how to mat their work, using many of the theories involved in picture framing," Hilton says, adding, "Craftsmanship is as important as creativity."

And, no matter how her students' works of art come out, it's the learning process that counts. She points to a poster on the classroom wall which says in bright letters: "In Art.....It's not a mistake, it's an opportunity."