Art docents make it all available to NK students Second-graders don't care that they're gradually being exposed to great works of art. Chunky Man is a two-dimensional version of an artists' mannequin. For art docent Carolina Veenstra, it's a way to introduce kids to figure drawing, and a lesson she picked up from another art docent at Wolfle Elementary.
Drawing is a skill, like writing.
You get good at it by practicing it. Friday's lesson was interrupted by the exciting news that the class had read the most pages in the school's Read Across America festivities, but when Veenstra suggested leaving the day's print until next month, the second-graders firmly objected. For Veenstra, anything kids see in the painting is good. The district needs more volunteers for its fleet of art docents, who present a classic painting each month to an elementary school class and do a related art project. The halls of Gordon Elementary are covered with the results, including cityscapes, watercolors inspired by music and a Cubist collage.