Buy your tickets now for the community benefit dinner for Gallery Route One Artist in the Schools Program. June 10th, 6-9 pm | Admission: $60
About GRO’s Artists in the Schools Program
GRO’s Artists in the Schools Program began in 1993 to collaborate with our local schools. The program focuses on our natural environment through science, art practice and creative writing. To support the environmental science component of this program, we invite naturalists from organizations working with the natural environment, such as the National Park Service, to participate in presenting curriculum. The children have hands-on experience by learning, writing and art making directly in the habitat. Over 10,000 people visit our month long exhibit of the AIS Program every year held in Toby’s Art Gallery in Point Reyes Station. We hope you will too!
We were “For The Birds” this entire school year at West Marin and Inverness Schools. The feather making and nest building we began last fall in collaboration with the Lucid Art Foundation and environmental artist Jane Ingram Allen developed in a myriad of ways. The bird size and human size nests that we created and installed throughout downtown Point Reyes stimulated a study of our local songbirds.
With the Institute for Bird Populations we followed the migration of these birds via Amigo Alados, a project that links classrooms in California and Mexico. As penpals, the students communicated about the migratory songbirds they share. Through the observations of students in Jalisco and Michoacan, the wintering sites of many of our local songbirds, we learned about the birds’ patterns in winter, and the students in Mexico learned from our students about the birds’ spring breeding and fall behaviors.
The annual installation at Toby’s Art Gallery in Point Reyes Station of GRO’s Artists in the Schools Program will focus on our “For The Birds” work: an obstacle course and map of the migration, birds made from felt, plein air automatic drawings, and bird-totem self portraits. We will also exhibit the 8th grade kites with poems and annual 8th grade self portraits.
The Artists in the Schools Program is supported by community donations, the West Marin Fund and the Lucid Art Foundation.