Second graders review GLASSTASTIC 2019

Second graders from Kristi DiSalle’s art class at John R. Briggs Elementary School in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, traveled 100 miles round-trip for an epic field trip to BMAC on April 30.

The Briggs Elementary students, teachers, and parent chaperones made a day of it, viewing the Museum’s spring exhibits and making creature puppets in the Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Gallery. They also went across the street to the Latchis Theatre, where Mike Clough of the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum presented an animal program that included live snakes, a snapping turtle, a frog, and a hawk.

The highlight of the day for many of the students was the thrill of seeing their classmates’ artwork on display in a museum. Five of the second graders had submitted drawings and descriptions of wild, whimsical creatures last fall for BMAC’s biennial GLASSTASTIC exhibit. One of the students’ drawings was among the 20 chosen out of 1,200 submissions to be turned into a glass sculpture by a professional glass artist.

Here’s what the kids had to say about GLASSTASTIC:

“It’s cartoony and real at the same time!”

“I really like how they added a lot of detail and I like how they were creative and they definitely cared. If it looked kind of wrong, I like how they drew a lot of funny-looking things.”

“I noticed that his hands and his legs are almost little French fries.”

“I like the piggy one with the wings, because it has wings and it looks like a piggy.”

“There was this banana with peanut butter fingers, and I really liked it.”

“I liked all of them because they were so creative.”

Throughout the year, BMAC welcomes elementary school children to the Museum for school visits; sends artists out to Head Start classrooms; and partners with the Brattleboro Food Co-Op on a program where families come to the Museum to make art, then go to the Co-op to make food.

"Using art to open the eyes, minds, and hearts of kids is a huge part of what we do,” said BMAC Director Danny Lichtenfeld. “You never know what will come of an experience like this. Will some of these kids be inspired to make art of their own? Will they become lifelong museum-goers? Will they view the world around them in new and exciting ways?"

One of the visiting second graders may have a future as an art critic. He shared his review of “Emanation,” the exhibit of Sandy Sokoloff’s Kabbalah-inspired, spherical oil paintings:

“They are very impressive, because they have a lot of shades and colors. I like the backgrounds. On that one, it kind of looks like the sky is the background, and the clouds are made into orange puffs. And that one has the purple and the green and the blue all go together, and it’s really cool.”