If you’re going to the upcoming Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, look out for Alayah Frazier’s (BFA in Visual Art Studies, 2017) students’ art.
Since graduating from the Visual Art Studies program, Frazier is now teaching art to students from PK-5th grade at Grissom Elementary School in Houston ISD. Her students participate in the School Art Contest which is apart of the Houston Livestock Show, which is the largest livestock show in the world, attracting around 2.5 million visitors a year. Over 200,000 students compete to be featured in the art contest. Frazier’s students compete in the elementary level, sending one student to be a Gold Medalist and another for Best of Show piece.
We asked to Frazier about the process for competing in the art school and how her time at UT influenced her teaching.
What did your students submit and how did you/they select those pieces? Were they a part of a specific project?
Alayah Frazier: We submitted a total of 8 pieces. I sent one piece each for PK, Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grade. I sent two pieces for 4th grade. PK and Kindergarten submitted chalk pastel drawings of roosters, 1st and 2nd grade submitted chalk pastel drawings on cacti, 3rd grade submitted an oil pastel drawing of a cow, and 4th and 5th grade submitted colored pencil drawings of longhorns. In preparation for the rodeo, every student in the school did a lesson on western art. It was important to me to give every student an opportunity to win, instead of singling out students that I thought could "make it" and having them do an independent project.
What are some of the learning objectives that you brought into the classroom for this project?For the chalk pastel drawings, Pre-K through 2nd focused on identifying their warm and cool colors. We used warm and cool colors to create contrast between our subject and the background. 3rd through 5th focused on form and shading by adding black to colored media. From the students' perspective, it wasn't very different from any other project we'd do. I did inform them that it was for a competition, so I saw a lot of students giving it their best effort, but the content and structure of the lessons were not very different from how things usually go in the classroom.
What did you learn from your time at UT’s VAS/UTeach Art program that you brought with you into your teaching experience?
During our discussions in VAS, I realized that it was very important for me to encourage my students to participate in art contests. While it can be tiring to orchestrate, simply participating in competitions can give students a different perspective on how they view themselves and their work. Most of our discussions concerned our outlook on teaching and our teaching styles, which can be hard to dictate when you don't have a lot of experience teaching. However, our discussions on our ideals for our future art programs were very important for me in deciding how I would lead the art program on my campus.