Years ago, we had artist Annie Lucille Greene come to an art teacher preservice meeting, and I fell in love with her yarn paintings. She gave each teacher a book on her work, Georgia Farm Life in the 1940s: The Farm in Yarn, and I treasure mine. The book has beautiful yarn paintings and short stories based on the artist’s childhood visits to her grandparents’ farm in Georgia. Her work celebrates her memories and culture and educates viewers about what life was like in the 1940s as a young Black girl in the South. Inspired by this, I challenged my students to choose a positive childhood memory to illustrate and share with the class. They were told that they would also create a narrative based on that image.
Art teachers and their students learn from, transform, and reimagine the places and spaces around them. Young students connect personal growth to changes in nature, elementary students create abstract faces inspired by Detroit artist Tyree Guyton, middle school students design fantastical digital gardens featuring insects and flora, and high school students use yarn to illustrate cherished childhood memories.
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