Partnership between university, middle school brings acclaimed artist to Richmond

By Tom Gresham

Joseph Norman, an internationally acclaimed artist, visited Chandler Middle School last week in Richmond as the culminating event of a partnership this spring between Chandler and the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Art Education.

Norman, a large, dynamic presence, spoke to the students about art and about his own childhood during his April 5 visit to the school. Norman grew up amidst crime and gangs on the South Side of Chicago. He now serves as chair of the drawing and painting department at the University of Georgia, as well as the director of the Latin America study abroad program. His work is included in the major collections of a number of museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of American Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

“I use my stories and my art, as well as some hard facts, to challenge young people to think about the choices they make, the cards they are dealt and how they can make something beautiful and meaningful in their lives no matter what their circumstances,” Norman said.

Chandler Middle School and the VCU art education department teamed up to form a service-learning partnership during the spring semester that aimed to assist Chandler students in their English classes, as well as to provide VCU art education students with new teaching opportunities.

Norman’s work, “Target Practice: Take this. Take that!,” which features a large hammer and a piece of wood with protruding and bent nails, served as the center of a unit of instruction around the theme of “The Power of Words.” Norman said that “Target Practice” is symbolic of the way hurtful words affect others.

Pamela Taylor, Ph.D., chair of the VCU art education department, said art can be a useful tool in English instruction.

“The study and making of visual art is naturally connected to a wide range of academic subjects,” Taylor said. “After all, artists research, measure, write, study, experiment, speak and report all the time.”

The VCU art education students challenged Chandler students to develop, through their own artwork, a visual language that reminded them of the power of oral and written language to do good as well as harm. The Chandler students read stories, studied new vocabulary, analyzed poetry, practiced drawing and design techniques and painted. They also talked about art, language, feelings and the need to think before speaking.

An exhibition of the students’ resulting art work will hang in the Chandler Middle School cafeteria throughout April.