MURFREESBORO
— Young local artists have applied their talents and enthusiasm to an
MTSU-based project to help remind Tennesseans that they need a little Christmas
— now.
Students from Lori Kissinger's EXL Organizational Communications in
Communities class served as artists' assistants to nearly two dozen young men
and women who attend the Transition Academy of Rutherford County Schools and
the Tennessee School for the Blind.
The artists used paint, glue, holiday decorations and plenty of laughter
during a recent workshop to create unique ornaments for Tennessee’s 2014
national Christmas tree in Washington, D.C.
You can watch a video about the holiday fun at http://youtu.be/3TAaKpdpLKg.
The young artists work regularly with VSA Tennessee, the state
organization on arts and disability that was established in 2001 on the MTSU
campus. Kissinger, an organizational communications instructor at MTSU, also
serves as VSA Tennessee's executive director.
VSA, the international organization on arts and disabilities, was
founded in 1974 by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and was formerly known as Very
Special Arts. VSA merged with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts in 2011 to expand its services.
Kissinger's students regularly help with logistics for VSA events as
part of her experiential learning classes, coordinating events like the annual
Tennessee VSA Young Soloist Competition and the "Golden Ratio
Project," an international arts education exchange performance, along with
the now-annual holiday ornaments workshop.
While the MTSU students offered help and praise, each artist painted one
side of a clear plastic grapefruit-sized globe, then carefully placed
decorations inside to create tiny Tennessee Christmases.
Each of the ornaments is filled with a snow-covered toy tree surrounded
by glittering beads and Tennessee-focused items ranging from black bears and
horses to guitars and irises. Each holiday diorama will be protected by and
viewed through its plastic globe’s unpainted side as it hangs on the Tennessee
tree in Washington.
"The artist who created the design came in and talked to our MTSU
students to make sure they were on board with that design,” Kissinger
explained. “Every state has an artist who designs the ornament each year, and
then the children create it. She went through the process of creating it with
the MTSU students so when today came, we'd be ready to go."
The MTSU students were under extra pressure this semester to coordinate
the event logistics, help with publicity and serve the guest artists in such a
quick turnaround time.
"This class already had its class project set for the
semester," Kissinger said, noting that she explained to her students that
this VSA project would have to be accomplished during their regular afternoon
class time to accommodate the deadlines. The students won't receive additional class
credit for this event.
"Yet they're willing to go ahead and do it, to go above and beyond.
They're not getting a grade or anything, other than the enjoyment of
helping," Kissinger said. “It’s wonderful.”
"I appreciate them working with us," one young Transition
Academy artist said of his MTSU assistant. "We have a lot of fun and get
to create art, plus we're getting to help decorate the tree that goes to
Washington!"
The VSA Tennessee artists’ ornaments will once again become part of a
91-year-old tradition of celebrating Christmas with a national tree in the
nation’s capital.
Every year, one-of-a-kind ornaments are made by everyday Americans to
hang on the 56 trees — one for every U.S. state, territory and the District of
Columbia — that surround the national Christmas tree. President Calvin Coolidge
launched the tradition in 1923 when he walked from the White House to the
Ellipse to light a 48-foot fir tree decorated with 2,500 electric bulbs in red,
white and green.
Ninety-one years later, the tree-lighting ceremony is a family must-see
in person in Washington, D.C., or on TV in special National Park Service and
National Park Foundation programming.
VSA Tennessee helped bring a nationwide tour of unique artists to MTSU earlier this
fall with the “In/finite Earth” exhibit in the Todd Art Gallery. Last spring,
the VSA Tennessee Young Soloist competition was preceded at MTSU by a
special master class with internationally recognized musician and inspirational
speaker George Dennehy.
To learn
more about the work of VSA Tennessee, visit http://www.vsatn.org
or contact Kissinger at userk7706@comcast.net.
You can learn more about the national Christmas tree at http://www.thenationaltree.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment