When the children at Atkinson Elementary School were asked to draw images of themselves in nature, they offered a wide variety of picturesque illustrations that could have been brought forth only from the imagination of a child.
Some children envisioned themselves among trees. Others were climbing mountains or floating along in a boat. A few even imagined themselves as fantastical creatures, with six arms and horns jutting out from their forehead.
All of these images (and more) are up this month throughout the Millar Library as part of the Community and Language Enhancement through Arts Resources program. The art is an endearing view into the artistic minds of children.
The work that’s up in the library is from students at Atkinson Elementary in Southeast Portland, and was brought to campus with the help of Portland State students in the applied linguistics department, as well as students from the community activism class.
The pictures hanging on the walls were made with Styrofoam blocks, ink and colored paper. Another part of the display is made up of accordion pop-out books constructed with pencil and watercolor.
“The covers were created by the children responding to the prompt: ‘Picture yourself in nature,'” said Janet Cowal, creator of the C.L.E.A.R. program and an applied linguistics professor. “One side of the accordion book was created by the prompt: ‘Think about a plant and an animal that reminds you of you.’ The other side of the book was the child’s interpretation of a story they heard from interviewing an adult in their life about an experience the adult had in nature.”
Three hundred students took part in the project and each student made four prints. There are a variety of outlooks expressed about nature on display.
Many students were illustrated on top of a mountain, in a cabin setting or among trees as butterflies, ladybugs and dogs pass by. Others showed underwater scenes with jellyfish, eels and fish resembling Nemo. One particular work that stood out was a print of a young student riding atop the spiked back of a razor-toothed monster (through trees of course, the display is nature-themed after all).
“Atkinson is a linguistically, culturally and socio-economically diverse,” Cowal said. “Half of the children speak a language other than English at home.”
Cowal created the C.L.E.A.R. program with funding made possible through grants from PSU’s Internationalization Council and the Applied Linguistics PSU Foundation. The purpose of the C.L.E.A.R. program is to help students discover nature, poetry and art while they are in the midst of learning a second language. After the display finishes its time here at the library, it will head back to Adkinson Elementary, where it will hang for future students to enjoy.
“The goal of the project was to increase students’ motivation in language class by doing art and by using the foreign-heritage language as part of the interaction in the art project, and to celebrate the children’s diverse backgrounds,” Cowal said.
The display runs until the end of May. So if you have some time between class–check it out.