Student Projects - Pleasant Hills Middle School

Teacher Reflections

“I and my students benefited with the Art/Social Studies collaboration. It gave students an insight to collecting as a historian as well as an artistic resource that can be supplied to all subjects.”

Chuck Stout

Student Reviews

“If in 1,000 years from now this box was the only remaining artifact from 2005, people of the future could tell that our culture liked to shop and celebrities were admired.” (Referring to a classmate’s time capsule project featuring Aeropostale and Hot Topic shopping bags, an ankle bracelet, a poster of Britney Spears, and a magazine featuring Jessica Simpson.)

“The most important thing I learned in this project is that an artist doesn’t have to paint, that you can collect anything, and you can do anything and call it art.”

“Collecting as an artistic practice means when you collect things and organize them and get them to represent you in an artistic way.”

Student Projects & Adaptations: Pleasant Hills Middle School

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Michael Fratangelo, Visual Arts
Charles Stout, Social Studies

Shrink wrap project

Summary:

Michael Frantangelo and Charles Stout combined their talents to present the Collecting Unit to their entire seventh grade. Students began this unit with the Brainstorming Map, as well as an activity called the Locker Project. Teachers and other members of the community introduced students to a diverse array of time capsules, including a time capsule opened by Mr. Stout created by the school’s seventh graders in the early 1990s. As part of a larger school-wide project around the theme “The Greatest Generation,” representatives from Soldiers and Sailors National Military Museum brought a historical collection to the school. During an outreach presentation at the school, as well as a visit to The Andy Warhol Museum, Artist Educators introduced students to Warhol’s Time Capsules, the artist Biko’s collection of African American memorabilia, and other contemporary artists’ collections.

Adaptations:

Personal Collecting: Locker Project
Students emptied their lockers and arranged the contents onto a sheet of white paper to be photographed. They explored these photographed collections from both an individual perspective, as well as from cultural and historical perspectives.

Local News: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article

Professional Collecting: History, Time Capsules, and “The Greatest Generation”
Students collected stories from their grandparents and older members of their neighborhood culminating in an evening event showcasing the collections of students, parents, and grandparents, which included art, memorabilia, and even 1940s swing dancing.

Shrink Wrap Project:
Students created personal time capsules as their final project. These time capsules included objects they saw every day, items representing family members, friends, and sentimental objects that couldn’t be replaced. Items were arranged in shoeboxes, shrink-wrapped, and displayed en mass with other students’ collections. During a final group critique, students concluded that through collecting and arranging personal objects into a work of art, they were able to at once reveal information about themselves, information about their generation, and information about American culture.