Home > News > Students Gear Up for Public Display of

Students Gear Up for Public Display of

The Buffalo News
By: Tom Buckham
10/22/02

Vehicles rolled off the assembly line Monday on the West Side just as they once had at Buffalo's Pierce-Arrow and Thomas Flyer plants - though on a far more modest scale.

The assemblers, fourth- and fifth-graders working intently in a corner of the school library, were producing pull-toys snipped from construction paper and mounted on tires cut from sponges, with paper carousel animals in the driver's seats.

The exercise heralded an effort to connect Western New York's next big art project, "Art on Wheels: Artists Recycle, Reuse and Reinvent in 2003," with classrooms throughout the region.  Lesson plans have been developed for Buffalo and surrounding school districts that will incorporate major themes from "Art on Wheels," which will turn dozens of old cars and other discarded materials into art objects celebrating the area's historical ties to the automotive industry.  

The 'art cars' and wheel-themed sculptures will go on display at about 60 Buffalo-Niagara region cultural venues next May in what organizers say will be the region's largest cultural tourism initiative.  

While artists are creating their works, the "Art on Wheels - Newspapers in Education Program" will support instruction in art as expression, recycling, materials reuse and local cultural heritage and history in elementary, middle, and high school programs across the region.

Lesson plans drawn up by 50 educators are being made available to schools free of charge by a partnership consisting of The Buffalo News Newspapers in Education Program, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, the Materials Reuse Project and the Buffalo Teachers Center.  Te expect to distribute the plans to 750 schools by mid-November.  

At School 45, Buffalo's most ethnically diverse elementary school, the "nationality settlement map," which comes with the lesson plan and tells the story of local immigration patterns, is likely to attract a lot of interest from students.

"Art on Wheels" organizers decided to create an educational component for the public art exhibition after learning that many teachers wanted to include elements of the last such project, "Herd About Buffalo," into their lesson plans.

Visitors will learn about the area's history and the importance of materials reuse as they follow the "arts trail" from site to site during "Art on Wheels," which will run from May to October, and it made sense to re-create those same "teachable moments" in the classroom, said Wendy Attea Huntington, "Art on Wheels" project director.

Each teacher taking part in the program will receive a teaching guide, supplemental materials and a Friday subscription to The News for each child in the class.

The program also will offer field trips, workshops and lessons in environmentalism, social studies and history "in very creative and cost-effective ways," says Pat Jensen, an "Art on Wheels" organizer and director of the Materials Reuse Project, which supplies secondhand items to schools for conversion into education aids.

In addition to the school lesson plans, a series of "Trailblazers" informational announcements focusing on "Art on Wheels" heritage sites will appear each week in the Gusto section of The News.

To learn more about the Art on Wheels - Newspapers in Education program," call cindy Sterner at 847-3477 or send her an email message at csterner@buff-news.com.