Book by julia torokhov

Creating Art Julia Torokhov is a junior who attends Freestyle Academy and has a passion for art.

She lives with her mother, brother, father, and dog. She loves to make art and do photography, both digital and instant photos. She enjoys sketching, drawing, and painting in oils and watercolors. She knows four languages: Russian, French, Japanese, and English.

Her parents are of Russian heritage. Overall, she is very passionate about creating things.

Julia Torokhov

Creating Art Julia Torokhov

Dedication To everyone who helped me along the way.

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Sandy Xu, Maren Byrne, Sela Fixler

Acknowledgments There are many people this book would not be possible without. I would first like to thank Freestyle Academy, for pushing me to make this project.

I would like to thank everyone at the CSMA, for being the space over the years that has taught me so much, from art as a kid to how to be an adult in the present. I’d also like to thank children, both those who study at the CSMA and those who do not. Each child is unique; meeting and working with them gives me the opportunity to develop my world viewpoints and see life from a different perspective. Without these people, this project would never have been born or come to fruition in the way that it did.

Opposite page: Jesse Cupp with Sandy Xu

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Table of Preface

Gallery Idea Sketch Color Varnish Works Cited

Contents 8

10

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14 18 24

Preface T

he documentary project at Freestyle challenges students to create a book on a topic, person, or place to portray the untold stories of the community. The Community School of Music and Art is an after school program that seeks to provide art and music to children outside of school. I decided on this topic because of my time volunteering myself at the CSMA. Originally, I had planned to make this book about volunteering there as I had, however when I researched deeper into the importance of art education to childhood development, I wanted my experience to be incorporated into my book as well. I only had one week during winter break to take the photographs in this book, while simultaneously trying to aide the teacher for the winter class.

It was tough, and certainly the busiest of the classes I’ve ever aided. I plan to go back this summer and aide for more hours than before.

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As a producer, this topic has helped me grow in leaps and bounds. The longest paper I’ve ever written had only seen six, possibly eight pages, and this one took about a dozen formatted and drafted pages before translating it to book form. Furthermore, I had never designed an entire book layout using Adobe InDesign or any other program. I found it fascinating trying to create cohesive pages that all match each other in the same book, while looking distinct from one another. Every aspect of this book has a little piece of myself in it, from the writing to the order of the chapters, to the photographs I took and chose to place.

I am proud of the product I have been able to make at Freestyle Academy. Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoy it. Your satisfaction will make all the work worth it.

Ernest Regua and Sandy Xu

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Idea I

rush around the classroom trying to give attention to every single student calling my name. I hear “building editor!” from one corner of the room, “mom” from the other, and just my name said shyly next to me from a third child.

Every single student in the room is immersed wholly in their work. I hear the lavish stories chiming around about what each of them is doing.

Everybody is immersed in the process of creation, whether that means creating a single structure filled with details and splendor, or trying to sculpt a dozen sculptures within the next twenty minutes, much to the teacher’s chagrin. Neither student will end up finishing their work, yet both are satisfied, decrying that they did great. They are happy because focused on the process, rather than the product, unlike most adults.

Of a child’s actions, each is purposeful, thought out, yet ceaselessly amusing. There are few exceptions to this rule at the CSMA, or Community School for Music and Arts, a place of sunny days and smiles. Every aspect of the room is filled with a piece of humanity and innocence, one that is being shaped in every moment. The air of the room is of concentration and satisfaction, as children work to create. Not only do they create art with their hands, but the art creates the children. They all develop skills through this art, mentally and physically. Each student, each child is existing in a separate world from us; this world is filled with mystery and wonder, ready to be shaped by their environment.

Opposite page: Henry Jin and Nate Eyngorn

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However, this environment is at risk because art is not as valued as other subjects in a classroom setting. Such an environment should be possible in a classroom, yet the CSMA is not an elementary school. Rather, it is an extra-curricular program.

Budget cuts are sending students here instead of allowing them to get the art education they so desperately need in schools. The CSMA brings art to kids who cannot access it by attempting to provide a space for parents to bring their children to over the school vacation days. The camps they offer run from 8:00AM to 5:30PM so that parents who have work can leave their children in a safe space while they do their jobs.

Art is an integral part of childhood development and learning, but when states cut budgets, art education programs in publicly funded schools are usually the first to be cut.

This is especially shown in more urban neighborhoods (Hardiman). Despite art being federally called a core subject (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001), Los Altos High School art teacher Christina An was surprised to hear that this was true at all, sharing the opinion of many others. Moreover, Betsy Devos, Secretary of Education, has proposed to slash public school budgets and funnel these funds to private schools instead (Sargrad). This increases the vulnerability of those who need education and art programs the most.

Santa Rita Elementary School in the Los Altos School District only has a single art class every two weeks. Some students wish that the frequency of these classes could be moved, at the very least, to once a week (Bousse).

This is detrimental to students, as art is linked to improved cognitive development and a better overall future, shown by studies from organizations such as The Center for Arts Education, John Hopkins University, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (“10 Studies�). However, the CSMA gives children the

opportunity to learn through art once more, as well as provides a place for high school students to grow as volunteers.

Becoming an art teacher is even more limiting, as teachers get paid for roughly half of their actual work (Martinez). Teachers have to create curriculum and set up children’s art works and supplies, but only get paid for the time they spend actively teaching in front of their students.

Art is the foundation for life. It is everywhere. Robbing children of this art robs them of the opportunity to see other paths and be truly happy knowing of what they can do in the future. It robs them of the opportunity to develop the skills needed to do their best in their chosen career path, no matter what it is. The CSMA works to give children this pathway back when they cannot have it in school.

Opposite page: Allison Kim; Above: Emma Foster

Sketch

Emma Foster; Previous pages: Maren Byrne, Samantha Rauh; Opposite page: Nate Eyngorn

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n art, the first process is the sketch, and everything is built off of this foundation. Art provides children with a sketch of their body to grow and develop into more. The benefits of art begin in learning how to move and learning how to speak. The broad, sweeping brush strokes and large abstract squiggles on paper are fun to create; spreading glue and glitter while not making a mess takes precision to control. Both of these movements create muscle memory in the hands to perform delicate tasks (Rymanowicz). In the immediate present for children doing arts, they learn the skills to button a coat or tie their shoes; these are complex movements learned by tiny hands (Rymanowicz). In the far future, they have the control to have neat handwriting and work with both art supplies or fine computer parts using their now dexterous hands.

Children are more willing to practice using their hands through art, doing a project they are passionate about and working tirelessly and completely absorbing themselves for hours in their work (Bullard). Rather than forcing a child to write pages of handwriting letters in order to create a readable handwriting, giving children the chance to make art provides an opportunity to be able to practice the fine movements required to make neat, swirly letters that their nonart educated counterparts can’t seem to grasp.

The CSMA provides children with the opportunity to not only exercise their hands, but also their bodies.

Through art camps, children benefit from the fine motor movements learned when creating art, and also get a break from class to play outside. While children can focus for extended periods of time when focused, at some point the youthful energy overflows.

At this point, the children have a 15-minute break in the middle of class to go outside and enjoy the fresh air. Many children choose to play a game – whether a physical game such as tag or jump rope, or a board game. Either way, the kids get a chance to take a break from their work, using all the built-up energy, at which point they return to the classroom to finish the day.

The arts provide the foundation for the body, a sketch to begin physical development. Art education is important to be able to begin to grow, and without it, children’s bodies may become stunted compared to other children who have the opportunity to learn through art. Even if it is possible to provide similar corporal benefits without the use of art, art also stimulates the brain and creativity while providing physical benefits, a feat few other activities can do so well.

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Color 19

C

hildren need art as a baseline for their education. Coloring the picture of growth, children become whole after gaining art education. Without art, children’s growth suffers.

Studies prove that an arts education in elementary school provides a multitude of benefits, including raising test scores and improving attendance and graduation rates (“10 Studies”).

Art keeps our kids in school.

Moreover, students who earned a minimum of one art credit over three years in school were Above: Emma Foster’s artwork 1.5 times more likely to exceed the national average ACT score (Velasco). Students from low socio-economic backgrounds are twice as likely to succeed in math when they have a musical art education (Velasco). Art allows children opportunities for cognitive, emotional, and social development (Bullard). Metaphorically speaking, “When you teach art to kids it really does make them think beyond the pencil, outside of the box” (Martinez).

How can something as simple as arts and crafts for a few hours a week have such profound benefits for the future? Put simply, art acts as a developmental catalyst, stimulating mental growth and providing a foundation for children to grow and learn.

The first reason for the increased growth shown in students with art education is likely that it gives children the opportunity to add a tool to their learning tool-kit. Instead of using rote memorization and sitting in a class, art can give students the chance to gain a hands-on approach to learning harder material. For example, rather than learning all the names for parts of a flower, a picture of such a flower can be drawn, and then the parts labeled, which engages the student. Lisa Martinez, a CSMA teacher, describes when she teaches an art lesson: “You really teach art as a whole subject. I mean if

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you’re teaching a perspective lesson, you’re not teaching just perspective. You’re teaching math at the same time and the kids, they don’t realize that. You know, they say oh, this is math? I had fun learning math?” The art engages the students and turns difficult subjects into a more digestible form for them to process.

When I interviewed an elementary schooler, Maarten Bousse, I asked him if he thought he learned anything other than art while doing art. He laughed at me and said, “totally not”. His response shows how innate this process is.

A student notices holes on the leaves of a flower they have been asked to draw. This leads to the question, what caused these holes? And thus, the questioning process begins. All learning begins with a question.

The difference, this time, is the student has learned how to drive the inquiry process themselves, rather than having to be told by a teacher to answer one. The student asks his peers, and they begin to talk about their increasingly outlandish theories. Perhaps, possibly, a shrink ray shrank a person so small and he wanted a salad, and so he ate the holes in the leaves. Or maybe, the flower wanted to have beautiful, lace patterned leaves, so it cut holes into its leaves until they formed pretty patterns. This is imagination coming to life, making the children think and exercising their brains.

This continues until the student asks the teacher whatever could have caused the holes in the leaves. She tells him what could

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have happened: it was most likely a bug that ate the holes, and while the bug got a snack, it damaged the plant. In this way, the student has learned about the diet of bugs, and will likely go on to have more questions about such bugs too, creating an endless cycle of learning.

Next, the student has to find a way to share their ideas with others. As we all know, kids love to talk. Even kids some may consider shy tend to open up when talking about an idea or project they are passionate about. The best vessel for this communication is through the sharing of an art project.

Children can learn new vocabulary words and communication skills as they share their art (Rymanowicz).

Students learn all the colors, all the words to describe texture, and many more words through their art.

"When the kids haven't had such an in-depth art education, they don't have as much confidence as the kids who have, they don't have as much confidence to persist" -Lisa Martinez Art is a vessel to develop emotions as well. Feelings too strong to be put into words at a young age can be expressed through the pencil (Bullard). Students also gain a sense of pride and confidence when they create art that they see as good (Bullard). Art can open up a dialogue with adults that may have been inaccessible without it.

Moreover, art provides the stimulation required for developmental growth. Children who learned about music rising and falling had greater spatial awareness (Hardiman). Moreover, art provides the stimulation required for developmental growth. For example, musical training is correlated with phonological awareness- the ability to read and speak (Hardiman). Nerve fibers in the corpus callosum

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were studied, and these were found to be engaged in both phonological awareness and reading capabilities.

Music, a form of art, was engaging the brain and causing it to grow and change physically. Music students were studied to have math scores surpassing their nonmusical classmates in a different study (Hardiman).

Overall, for children, the effect art has on the brain alone is profound and a lack of art education can be cataclysmic for a student.

Martinez said she feels “When the kids haven’t had such an in-depth art education, they don’t have as much confidence as the kids who have, they don’t have as much confidence to persist”. The children who have had art ripped away from them don’t have the mental toolkit developed to be able to have confidence and persistence in other areas of their lives. The CSMA alone does not provide enough art stimulus to children to be able to create an environment for the period needed to show enough of these benefits. However, any art education is better than none at all.

Henry Jin and Samantha Rauh

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Varnish 24

Sela Fixler

A

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Above: Francesca Seni

single child can do as much art as they please, however once they have been able to paint a picture of themselves, the most important part is the future that picture sees.

Whether a good future is in reach is dependent not only on the child learning art, but on the social sustainability of art. Politicians see art as a subject that is worthless; it is seen as a career path for fools. Its difficulty to measure makes it different than areas that are easier to measure; math and science have standardized tests politicians can take credit for that a subjective subject like art cannot provide. Administrations underfund art, making it harder for students to succeed in this area and closing off the pathways to find a job in the future. Ms. An said that when people think of art, they have “The preconceived notion of: Oh! Art! There’s no jobs! Period! And then they don’t look further than that, and they can’t really look past that barrier so they don’t know what exists.

And when I show them the career pathway, they’re surprised”. Despite the plethora of jobs available, students get lost in society’s demonization of art as a career.

The Alliance for Childhood’s Crisis in the Kindergarten report 64% of Los Angeles and 48% of New York kindergarten classrooms have said there is no longer time for art, and over 60% of classrooms in this cities cannot make room for dramatic play (Hardiman).

Children in schools end up having art and music taken out of their curriculum in favor

of more “profitable” classes, such as math and science, and as these classes eat up their time the teachers end up arguing there is no longer time for art.

Naturally, this control of the school environment stifles creativity. While this may arguably have been a good approach in the age of industrial workers, where a lack of creativity and being able to listen to orders was hailed as a virtue, in today’s society creativity and outside the box thinking is rewarded. According to Ms. An, “When companies like Google send a rep to give talks to [students], what is the number one thing they’re looking for? Starts with the letter C. They’re looking for creativity” (An). However, with controlling, underfunded school systems this creativity is not rewarded in children’s developmental years. If students were given more choice in school, they would surely be better off in the digital century and be able to gain the big C that tech companies so crave.

There is an economic incentive in both teaching and not teaching art in schools, however only one leads to a successful society. One is in the increase of adults ready to blindly obey a boss and fill jobs that others may not take, and the other is in the adults ready to take on the world and innovate, creating more jobs.

Teaching kids to take strict math and science classes and not question it leads to an influx of workers who are obedient to their bosses. This is especially true in the case of the student who had no aptitude for these two areas.

It allows corporations to have a body of people who can easily be taken advantage of due to their upbringing. A student could have pursued an artistic career, yet after

being beaten down in their developmental years, who are they to question authority?

However, giving children a choice leads to having an adult population happy with their skill set, knowing where they are going, and being overall productive and pushing the world forward. These adults had the opportunity to explore and create, whether that creation led them into STEM or otherwise. Innovation is led through choice.

At the CSMA, camps are offered at a lower cost than similar programs, which while a bar for some lower-income households, makes it so that many can access these programs. The way the CSMA has the ability to do this is through its volunteers.

Volunteers, usually high school students, work as camp aides over their breaks. They work one-onone with students, help teachers with materials and supplies, and supervise students when they aren’t strictly in class. They are the reason the camps can run for so long, as the actual art classes are only two and a half hours long with an AM and PM class. The head aide, Jesse Cupp, stated that “If there weren’t any volunteers, [the camps] wouldn’t work...if we didn’t have them at all, the place would certainly fall apart”.

Even if many of the volunteers are just high school kids who are simply learning on the fly as they go along, they are still an integral part of the system. Martinez thinks that “they are pretty much key to running a good CSMA camp. [She] had a volunteer last summer who knew so much about cameras that she really could have been a teacher”.

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Volunteering can further people’s lives in a more selfish way. Unlike other reasons for volunteering, such as wanting to help others, this is the most self-serving one – to better one’s own life through the plethora of benefits volunteering provides. However, in this case, the ends more than justify the means. Volunteering benefit people through the chance to gain valuable life skills. At the CSMA, for example, volunteering there is a fast-paced environment working with many kids, trying to keep them all interested and under control, and for many of the high schoolers an incredibly difficult task when considering for many this is essentially what is their first job. However, with the low-stakes volunteering provides (no need to be worried about being fired when there is no element of pay), it is a good way of learning.

The students who volunteer at the CSMA grow a sort of symbiotic relationship with the place. The volunteers support the cause and reap the benefits of their work. Volunteering is hugely beneficial to those who choose to, as it provides health benefits, a sense of purpose, and can provide more opportunities to volunteers. It gives students a chance to try out paths they had not thought of before. In the case of the CSMA, it allows students to have a glimpse of what it is like to work with kids. Volunteering gives people a chance to begin to build their career and social networks. Through volunteering, rather than starting at a minimum wage job that overworks one and provides no benefits aside from money, individuals can use volunteering as a way to get their foot in the door for a more lucrative career while also doing meaningful work (Musick).

For some, the benefits of wages outweigh this; for others, volunteering is the path to future career success as well as personal growth.

Moreover, for many, volunteering gives a clear benefit to mental health (Watson). Having purpose and acting on a goal helps stave off illnesses like depression. Another benefit is that stimulating activities such as reading or tutoring stimulate the mind and maintain thinking and memory skills (Watson). A third and final tangible benefit is the benefit to health. At the CSMA especially, the job is a standing job mostly, also on your feet to help various people, and the standing and walking done during can provide large physical health benefits.

While the path of volunteering is fraught with places for an employer to take advantage of someone, if done correctly can be a way to get a good job and good skills for the future while supporting a good cause (Musick).

"If there weren't any volunteers, [the camps] wouldn't work.. if we didn't have them at all, the place would certainly fall apart"

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-Jesse Cupp

In his book Volunteers: a Social Profile Musick writes that activism is the solving of an issue, and volunteering is the long-term maintenance. Both are noble, however making change and eliminating the need for volunteers requires a lot more social bravery and action. Different people have different ways of providing solutions for societal issues.

While volunteering is generally regarded as a type of activism, they are quite different. People may be less comfortable with activism than they are with volunteering. At the CSMA, it is held together by the volunteers due to the fact that the government has put out less funding for arts education and the budget is spread thin. Volunteers help with camps, however activism could eliminate the need for volunteers should art again become a value in our society and provide funding for art schools.

A world in which the future is preserved through art will push our society forward, and it begins with teaching our children art. It is a fundamental part of learning, and without it, we as a society are nothing. While in the previous century art was discouraged in order to promote the conformist mindset, in this digital age creativity is what will lead to growth. Protecting children’s futures through art is the way to cement a future of creativity rather than mindless automatons.

Above: Audrey and Allison Kim

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Gallery O

verall, art is an integral part of learning, and taking it away from children harms them irreparably. Trying to force children to choose a path, but not making it clear which paths are available makes it difficult to succeed.

The CSMA fills the gaps in art education when public schools cannot. In fact, the CSMA runs a program called Arts4All, where teachers go to classrooms and teach art when the school lacks the funding to. Many Bay Area schools utilize this program. Cupp said that he “was shocked to learn that the CSMA is the art program for a lot of schools. They don’t have their own art teachers.”

Martinez’s best memory of teaching is when she had a small class and had the ability to afford to give each child huge pieces of paper to make large gesture drawing with. She said it allowed them to break boundaries and allow them to reach their full potential in that moment. This was only possible for her handful of students that day though, due to the fact that there is no way money-wise for such a project to happen for a large class.

Opposite page: Sela Fixler, Samantha Rauh, Sandy Xu

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We as citizens with the power to make change must restructure ourselves away from the society of the last century where conformity and blindly following orders were the norm and evolve with our world to value creativity. Without creativity, the innovations that have been sparked could never have happened, yet we still choose to pretend art is not a subject that is required for children to learn to cause progress.

Students end up miserable after college when they have been pushed into an unwanted career path.

Ms. An told of the students who come back to her switching majors from the one society had pushed, or not switching majors and only after retirement being able to follow their dream of making art.

No other subject can develop a child in the same way as art can. The choice to be able to choose it as a path needs to be accepted, and society has to be restructured in a way that art is valued. In short, I hope to see a future that is a gallery of children, bright-eyed and ready to face the world as adults.

"The CSMA is the art program for a lot of schools. They don't have their own art teachers" -Jesse Cupp

Works Cited “10 Studies on the Importance of Art in Education.” OnlineColleges.net, 3 June 2016, www.onlinecolleges.net/10-salientstudies-on-the-arts-in-education/. Accessed 18 April 2018.

An, Christina. Personal interview. 18 April 2018.

“The Art of Creating: Why Art Is Important for Early Childhood Development.” MSU Extension, msue.anr.msu.edu/news/ the_art_of_creating_why_art_is_important_for_early_childhood_development. Accessed 18 April 2018.

Bousse, Maarten. Personal interview. 26 March 2018 Bullard, J. “How the Art Center Enhances Children’s Development.” Education.com, 20 July 2010, www.education.com/ reference/article/art-center-enhances-children-development/. Accessed 18 April 2018.

Cupp, Jesse. Personal interview. 23 February 2018.

Hardiman, Mariale, et al. Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain. Dana Press, 2009.

Martinez, Lisa. Personal interview. 16 March 2018.

Musick, Marc A., and John Wilson. Volunteers: a Social Profile. Indiana University Press, 2008.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 Rymanowicz, Kylie. “The Art of Creating: Why Art Is Important for Early Childhood Development.” MSU Extension, 22 Jan. 2015, msue.anr.msu.edu/news/the_art_of_creating_why_art_is_important_for_early_childhood_development.

Accessed 18 April 2018.

Sargrad, Scott, “An Attack on America’s Schools.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews. com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-05-23/donald-trump-and-betsy-devos-budget-would-destroy-publicschools. Accessed 13 April 2018 Watson, Stephanie. “Volunteering May Be Good For Body and Mind.” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publishing, 26 June 2013, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/volunteering-may-be-good-for-body-and-mind-201306266428. Accessed 18 April 2018.

Velasco, Jessica. “How The Arts Can Help Students Excel.” Scientific Learning, 17 July 2014, www.scilearn.com/blog/ how-arts-help-students-excel. Accessed 18 April 2018.

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Above: Nate Eyngorn and Cloe Chai

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Creating Art Julia Torokhov is a junior who attends Freestyle Academy and has a passion for art.

She lives with her mother, brother, father, and dog. She loves to make art and do photography, both digital and instant photos. She enjoys sketching, drawing, and painting in oils and watercolors. She knows four languages: Russian, French, Japanese, and English.

Her parents are of Russian heritage. Overall, she is very passionate about creating things.

Julia Torokhov