Just desserts: feedings appetites and imaginations

This was a "sweet idea" borrowed from a local art-supply store's annual student art show. It was part of what I called a year of "Art on the Road." Each of our classes completed one or more projects designed to be entered in regional, national or international student art contests. In this case, we just added a few more ingredients to the recipe.

When I have lunchroom duty, I like to stroll around and observe the students' lunch and snack choices. Usually, I'm appalled: they seem to live on sugar! So, I decided to add a dash of nutritional awareness in my recipe for connecting drawing, printmaking, poetry, and computer-based graphic design.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX? The class entered the art room expecting news about our next project. What they didn't expect was a snack. As they took their seats around the group of tables in the center of the room I placed a big box on the table nearest to me and asked them to guess what was inside. Most went for the obvious: "art supplies." One or two said, "Garbage!" (After all, I do have a reputation for dumpster diving!)

I reached into the box and pulled out one clementine, then another, and another. I repeated the act until I had retrieved a clementine for each person in the room. I picked up one and asked the class to describe it. Someone ventured, "Round"; another offered, "Orange." Further investigation was definitely necessary.

I explained that their assignment was to taste the fruit and help write a list of words describing the entire experience (I had already made sure that no one in the class had allergies to citrus fruits). I passed out the fruit and waited. The skins and zest were peeled and the clementines were sectioned. Because the act of peeling was so full of sensory stimulation, some students began offering descriptive words even before tasting the fruit: "Waxy," "Squishy," "Smooth" and "Rough" were soon followed by "Juicy," "Orange color," "Lemony," "Sweet" and "Sour." I hurriedly wrote each new description on the board, trying to keep up with time torrential pace of the words.

When the word-barrage ceased, I took a snapshot of the chalkboard with a digital camera, and then asked the class to silently visualize their favorite dessert (This is a technique we often use to help students capture and clarify imagery). After a moment I asked them to compare the act of imagining something with the act of experiencing it. Everyone agreed that experience is better than imagination (ah, the folly of youth ...).

So, I made an offer: Following a unit on still-life drawing the students could each bring their favorite dessert to the art room for a special tasting. We would conclude the project with a second tasting, known as a "literary tea" where, in addition to life drawing, the students would make prints, write poetry, and then combine words and images at the computers into a published book from which each would read.

During the next few classes, one half of the group would sit around the clustered tables and draw an assemblage of objects I had chosen for their shape, color, texture or reflective qualities. Time other half of the group worked busily on the art-room computers, learning how to capture digital images with Web cams, edit them in the graphics components of AppleWorks, and translate the resulting images into several file types.

Each class would end with a review of what had been covered and what had been learned, whether at the computer or drawing table. A message was sent home to the parents letting them know about our dessert parameters (no ice cream or frozen treats, please!). At the conclusion of Friday's class I reminded the students to bring in their dessert on Monday.

TIME TO TASTE ... TIME TO DRAW I arrived at school on Monday with a shopping bag full of cakes I'd baked the night before. I wanted to make sure we had something to taste if one or more kids forgot (or couldn't get) their dessert. A short while later, I was called to the cafeteria to find students arriving with a wide variety of desserts: chocolate cake, pies, fudge, cupcakes, muffins, fruit, and rainbow-colored candy ... we were in business! We placed the collected desserts in the kitchen.

Later, when the class entered the art room, they saw all of their desserts displayed in the center of the clustered tables. My assistant Bunni Bing handed each student a paper plate ... and a pencil. We wanted them to draw before they are. As they sketched, I took several pictures with the digital camera. I planned to use the images as dividers in our upcoming poetry anthology.

Partway through the class I asked them to stop drawing and explained that I had a puzzle for them to solve. They were to taste a piece of the cake I'd made and try to guess the secret ingredients. Drawing and tasting, tasting and drawing, in a moment, one secret was out: vanilla. But it took a few more minutes before the class discovered that the second secret ingredient was applesauce.

I explained that the cake was made without fat: no butter, no egg yolk, no oil. As the class drew to a close we talked about nutrition and how some folks made it a choice to eat a healthier diet with less fat, less sugar, less salt and less fast food. And I announced that their desserts would be waiting for them ... in the cafeteria after they'd finished their lunches. The bell rang before they could object.