Art After School - The following excerpts were published in School Arts, a monthly periodical for parents and teachers. Valerie Kerwin, an educator from Florida, and School Arts have graciously given HaringKids.com permission to reprint it here. [Parents and teachers may be interested in purchasing the video or books mentioned in this article. They can be purchased at www.haring.com/popshop/. ] Click images on the right to see more pictures.

Excerpts from Art After School, by Valerie Kerwin:
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the popularity of Graffiti Art in New York City grew to include a group of artists who expanded the meaning of Graffiti to be real Art.

My enthusiasm began with the Keith Haring video "Drawing the Line." Since I had been to college in the late 60’s I had never heard of any of these artists while in art school, and the video gave me much needed background information for this artist who decorated subway stations with his simplified icon-like drawings that feature his trademark "radiant baby" and "barking dog." I also saw a wonderful Keith Haring exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York City. That exhibit prompted me to read a biography of Keith Haring and also his diaries.

I work at a YMCA afterschool program and have done the following activities with children from preschool to fifth graders. The first week we talked about what graffiti was and where we had seen it. To get across the idea of graffiti and collaboration we decorated our classroom tables that had been getting kind of shabby looking. I had painted them a flat color and the kids used permanent markers to put small pictures and their names on the tables. I finished them with a coating of clear acrylic spray. As an alternate activity if they didn’t want to help with the table, they could pick a friend and paint a collaborative paining at the easels.

At the Whitney Museum I had purchased a book about Keith Haring that was written for children. It is entitled "I Wish I Didn’t Have to Sleep." Full-page illustrations of his paintings accompany various interpretations by children of each one. Keith Haring wanted his artwork to be easily understood, but he didn’t want to interpret any work a certain way. He hoped his paintings would be understood at different levels, by all ages. At the Kindergarten level I had templates of people that I drew from Keith Haring designs that they could draw around and color and cut out. We took all the cutout people and made a pile of people like Keith Haring often did in both drawings and sculpture. The older children tried drawing people à la Haring in some different poses and either cut them out to add to the "people pile" or did a whole sheet of them in marker for a design. Some kids got really into it and made up their own scenes. Since K. Haring also painted on tarps, a small group of fifth graders made a tarp banner with acrylic paint. It had Keith Haring-like figures moving across it.

During art camp the previous summer we had done a fence mural that was inspired by Keith Haring. Each student did a series of drawings of people doing things that people do in a park or on a playground. I then took the cut out drawings and fit them together for a composition that would work on the fence. Each child drew his or her own contribution on the already painted green fence, then we all filled in the colors and outlined them in black. This fence was inspiration to the afterschool students to appreciate and understand Keith Haring. If you have more time and an empty fence, this works well as a mural.

Keith Haring’s subject matter and beginnings with graffiti art were the connections that intrigued my students and will intrigue yours as well.

Valerie Kerwin teaches art in an after school program at the YMCA in Sarasota, Florida.
Special thanks to School Arts Magazine for their generous assistance.