Teaching Artist Spotlight: Chuck Jones
Meet CAPE teaching artist Chuck Jones, who has been with us since 2011, and whose students’ projects are on display! He started at Louis Pasteur Elementary School five years ago, collaborating with the school’s art teacher, Arturo Barrera. Their students have created numerous zines that showcase their interests, immediate thoughts, and creative storytelling. You can take some home from the exhibition!
More recently, Chuck has expanded his work at Pasteur by collaborating with four other teachers who are new to CAPE. He bounces from one class to the next, with students recognizing and greeting him in the halls, asking what they will be making when they see him later in the school day.
After his class with Arturo, he visits Maria Fieldman’s class, where he teaches students to construct masks using rolled paper and tape. Chuck offers advice to any student seeking help in translating their ideas and sketches into a 3D mask form.
Next, Chuck participates in Carmen Guzman’s class, where students arrange paper cut-outs of shapes to represent animals. Some students create a single animal, while others form pastoral scenes from the paper mosaics.
In Cande Rodriguez’s class, students contemplate their future by creating puppets that resemble themselves at different stages of their lives. Taking introspection further, the puppets are interviewed about everything from dream jobs and pets to family, their future homes, and neighborhoods—nothing is left unquestioned!
The final class of the day is with Margaret Rux. In this class, students draw monsters and then classify them, asking questions like “Which ones are friends? Which ones are family? Can we put them in order by how angry they are?”
Join us to view and learn more about Chuck’s prolific art projects with students and his various teaching partners at Pasteur. Don’t miss the Convergence opening reception this Saturday!
Convergence is CAPE’s annual end-of-the-year exhibition celebrating the arts-integrated investigations by Chicago Public School students engaged in CAPE’s Artist/Researcher Partners Program. Artist/Researcher Partners are CAPE’s long-term teacher and teaching artist collaborators who push the boundaries of arts-integrated, inquiry practice.
