New Teaching Artist, Welcome!

Hello families! We welcome Mixed Media teacher, Ms. Vivian Zapata to the Ravenswood community! See her class description, photo, and bio below!

Title of Class: Youth Mixed- Media Art Class (K- 2nd grade)

Days/Time:

Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:45-5:45

Focus area or “big idea”: The area of focus is drawing and painting. This class provides an introduction to the basic materials, methods, and principles of drawing and painting. As students create multimedia projects, they will gain an understanding of fundamental drawing and painting concepts: line, shape, form, value, texture, composition, proportion, perspective and color. Students will create Mondrian inspired work, contribute to an artist community fruit tree, create a Fall inspired mobile art piece, paint the inspirations of their everyday world, take a closer look at themselves with self-portraiture, create papier-mâché castles, and end off with personal memory based dioramas!

If you are interested in enrolling, please contact me at sgonzalez@colum.edu

Visual artist, Vivian Zapata, creates multi-media sculptures. These artworks are made with wood, foam, newspaper, artificial flowers, paint, and frequently incorporate found materials. Her exuberant, fantastic, and eye-catching artworks investigate the ruptured relationship between western culture and the natural realm, and seem to be culled from a dystopian future that reflects this inharmonious relationship. The work incorporates narrative strategies to support nature-endorsing philosophies such as Deep Ecology and Romanticism. The anthropomorphization of nature in her artwork recognizes the interconnectedness between humans and the natural realm, our spiritual and physical similarities, and works against our cultural assumptions regarding this sphere.

Chicago-born Vivian Zapata holds an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis, and a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Governors State University. Vivian also teaches a youth arts class at the Skokie Park District. She looks forward to teaching a youth mixed-media art class at Ravenswood Elementary School.