MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. — Two dozen young Midstate artists’ unique visions will be on display,
with help from MTSU students, when Tennessee’s state Christmas tree shines
brightly alongside the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C., on Friday,
Dec. 1.
Participants in the VSA Tennessee
program crafted the festive folk ornaments on a decidedly non-wintry afternoon,
but a Yule log fire, a wisecracking Santa and holiday stockings and sweaters
inside MTSU's Ingram Building made the brief but boisterous workshop creatively
delightful for the artists and their supporters.
Those supporters included friends and family members alongside MTSU professor
Lori Kissinger and her EXL
Organizational Communications in Communities students, who once again
coordinated the project from beginning to end.
Kissinger also directs VSA Tennessee, the state organization on arts and
disability that was established at MTSU. It's also an affiliate of VSA, the
international organization on arts and disabilities founded in 1974 by
Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and
formerly known as Very Special Arts.
“This ORCO 3250 class voted unanimously to make this event more than
just making ornaments,” Kissinger said of her experiential learning students.
“They arranged for the decorations, the photo booth, the extra ‘make and
take’ ornaments, stockings and the refreshments. They’ve done a great
job!”
Yvette Cowden of Nashville, who’s worked with VSA Tennessee as a teaching artist for
several years, provided the artistic direction for this year’s ornament
project, an Appalachian folk-inspired design. Each of the ornaments is filled
with pinecones, musical instruments, ribbons, buttons, burlap, rolled paper,
feathers, beads and more and will be protected by and viewed through its
plastic globe’s unpainted side as it hangs on the Tennessee tree in Washington.
“It’s a fairly simple design. You just use your hands and your
imagination and have fun,” Cowden said as the young artists inspected and
collected items from the selection of supplies, already mentally planning their
creations.
Judy
Boyd of Murfreesboro looked on with a smile as her son, longtime craftsman Adam “A.J.” Boyd, consulted with his
artist’s assistant for the afternoon, MTSU freshman Dillon Koenig of Cleveland, Tennessee. Amid their happily noisy
surroundings, the men discussed which supplies would have the best impact on
Adam Boyd’s design.
“He is a crafty guy,” Judy Boyd said. “He’s participated in a lot of
events with VSA. Whenever Lori (Kissinger) has a project that he’s interested
in, he goes and does it.”
Koenig said he and his organizational communication classmates were
determined to make the event a special one for the visiting artists.
“We took a class vote and everybody immediately said ‘YES!’” Koenig, a
freshman majoring in public relations, explained. “We didn’t know what it
entailed at first, but it’s been really exciting to see what we’re all doing
together.”
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.
The VSA Tennessee artists’ ornaments will once again become part of a now
94-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 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. The Dec. 1 tree-lighting ceremony is
a family must-see, whether in person in Washington, D.C., or on TV in special
National Park Service and National Park Foundation programming.
All the trees will be on display through the end of the month on the
Ellipse in President’s Park.
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.
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