ProjectART partnered with The Leaning Pear restaurant and Wimberley Fig Tree recently to create merchandise as part of their “Art as Activism” class. Jennifer Ober, co-founder and board member of projectART, led her class of 4th to 6th graders to design and screen-print canvas bags with the purpose of selling them at the Leaning Pear restaurant in Wimberley. All proceeds are to be donated to Wimberley Fig Tree, a nonprofit organization that provides nutritional support for children experiencing food insecurity. The class was created by Ober to educate young people about the importance of engaging with their community to effect positive change.
The class began with a presentation by Christy Youens of Wimberley Fig Tree, who talked about food insecurity among young people in the Wimberley community and the support that Fig Tree provides students over weekends and school breaks. The class designed images that represented the importance of nutrition, community support and healthy bodies for success in school. Students learned how to create screens and to screen print their artwork on cloth grocery tote bags. Each young artist made two bags to keep and 10 to be sold by The Leaning Pear to raise funds for Wimberley Fig Tree.
As the class continued, students learned two clay building techniques for bowls. After building two bowls, they glazed the bowls with food-safe glazes. Students chose one bowl to keep and one to donate to the Empty Bowl Project, an annual fundraiser for the Dripping Springs Helping Hands Food Pantry.
For the final project, each student thought about and chose an issue that they considered important and created a linocut carving that was printed in the final class.
