I'm in a New York State of Mind!

Tomorrow is the start of the National Art Education Association's annual convention in New York City and I am going! This will be my 4th trip to the NAEA convention (I went to it NYC in '06, New Orleans in '08 and Baltimore in '10 which I also presented at) and I could not be more excited!!! The four-day convention includes over 1,000 participatory workshops, panels, seminars, discussions, exhibits, tours and keynote addresses by world-acclaimed educators, artists, researchers, and scholars. It is THE BEST opportunity to connect with other art teachers from all over the world and I have come back from every convention energized, excited and armed with dozens of new project ideas- I CAN NOT WAIT! There are also really great opportunities to try out new state-of-the-art materials to advance visual art instruction in our schools, which is pretty cool. I am most looking forward to the talk on Saturday by noted artist Chuck Close... I am bringing my book of prints by him to see if I can get it signed! And, I already have a lesson idea to potentially do using his artwork as inspiration when I get back!

Another WAY COOL thing about this convention is that one of my student's paintings was selected to be in The Big Screen Plaza art show! The Big Screen is a giant 30 x 16 ft. outdoor LED screen in midtown Manhattan  that showcases artistic talent for visitors to view and appreciate. During the NAEA convention, the Big Screen Plaza will be showcasing artwork from NAEA art teachers. We were invited to submit only one of our student's pieces of artwork and I chose to submit one of the Wayne Thiebaud-inspired paintings of pies (see below). There will be over 6,000 art teachers at the convention, but there are only 500 pieces of student work selected for the Big Screen Plaza show… and hers was chosen as one of them! The work is supposed to be on display within the slideshow at approximately 7:07pm on both Friday and Saturday. OF COURSE, I am going to make sure I am there by the screen to take a photo of her work as it is displayed.