First Day of School Dallas ISD

It's finally here!  All Dallas ISD students returned to school today.  I've spent the day helping with enrollment of new students and covering classes for breaks.  We won't start our art class rotation until Tuesday, but I've been working on a few finishing touches in my room.  Bushman is fairly old building and kind of plain in appearance.  We do what we can to make it seem more like home.  Last year our 3rd and 4th grade teachers started decorating their hallway.  They setup desks outside their rooms and decorated them using flowers and pictures.  They even made little laminated welcome doormats.  It really made a difference in atmosphere of the school and helped to create a warm, welcoming environment for their students.  This year our principal decided to make this a campus wide idea.  She gave us each a flower pot with "W.W. Bushman" and our room number written on it, along with a small tablecloth to use for our own display in the hallway outside our classrooms.  Several teachers have put plants or artificial flowers in their pots.  I decided to do something a little different.

I took my pot and tablecloth home this weekend and setup a still life with sunflowers.  Since I needed the painting to be dry enough to hang this morning, I used acrylic paints (even though I'm a die hard oil painter!)  I also took several old paintbrushes, dipped the bristles in acrylic paint, and let them dry.  I "planted" the paintbrushes in the pot, pushing the handles into a block of florist foam, and then filled in around the top with moss.  I hung the painting on the wall behind the desk, and the paintbrush boquet sits on the tablecoth covered desk in front. 

Very few of my students have ever spent much time around artwork (other than what we make at school.)  Every year we take the 4th graders on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art, but there's usually very little in the way of a budget to try to take any other grade levels to museums or galleries.  One of my goals this year is to put up as much artwork around the school as possible.  I'm talking real artwork, paintings on canvas, framed drawings and photographs, sculptures, etc., not just the usual posters.  I hope my humble little still life will be the start of a W.W. Bushman Renaissance!

Here's the painting along with a snapshot of my table setup in the hallway:

"Bushman Sunflowers"
Mark Nesmith
Acrylic on canvas
16" x 20"