The program provides two hours of art time every Thursday. Artists are given a theme for a 10-week period and show students how to create their vision.
On the 11th meeting, they have an art show at a museum. The program lasts all semester in three 10-week sessions with three artists and three themes.
The first theme was “The Art of Vision,” so students were making camera obscuras — darkened rooms with a pinhole of light that projects images from outside onto the room’s inner walls — out of recycled cardboard boxes.
“It’s a walk-in camera,” said artist and photographer Uliuses Daiz, who was teaching the class.
Each theme the students explore is provided by the sponsoring museum and has a social justice slant to it. Students are required to keep a journal of their work and their thoughts on the process.
This was the first Burbank class The HeArt Project has worked with.
Students have been working on exercises dealing with light and darkness. Last week, they blocked out sunlight from the classroom and traced shadows made from flashlights, then painted them.
“I showed my mom mine,” Logan said.
“She framed it. It’s like right there in the living room.”
Students were encouraged to make their work uniquely their own, and Daiz was answering most questions with “It’s up to you guys.”
“We’re different from an art classroom,” said Raudel Lopez, the workshop’s coordinator. “Since we are working artists, we address the situation in a different way.”
Providing autonomy to teenagers who get so little of it in a disciplinary setting is one of the program’s goals, Lopez said.
Students can also participate in after-school programs in visual and performing arts on their campus while participating in the classroom workshops, said Suzy Foster, development and communications director for The HeArt Project.
Those students who work consistently in the in-class and after-school programs will also have a chance to be awarded with a summer scholarship to the Otis College of Art and Design, Art Center College of Design or UCLA, Foster said.
