Family Paint Night Fun at Woodhull School
March 21, 2024
The Woodhull Intermediate School community recently came together for a fun family paint night. Coordinated by art teacher Todd Hiscox, it gave everyone a chance to display their creative side.
Mr. Hiscox led the group in the creation of a canvas reproduction of a Jim Dine heart painting. Born in 1935, Mr. Dine is an artist known for his work in various mediums. He used the heart symbol to explore relationships of color, texture and composition. With Mr. Hiscox’ guidance, students and their family members were able to each produce “beautiful and unique works of art,” Woodhull Principal Stephanie Campbell said.
Mr. Dine has said that over time the heart became “a universal symbol that I could put paint onto” and “as good a structure geographically as any I could find in nature. It is a kind of landscape and within that landscape I could grow anything, and I think I did.”
After studying at the University of Cincinnati, Boston Museum School and Ohio University, Mr. Dine moved to New York City in 1958. “He soon began to participate—often in collaboration with artist Claes Oldenburg—in the Happenings that were designed to break down the barriers between ‘art’ and ‘life,’” according to profile on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website. “In the early 1960s Mr. Dine began to create collage paintings in which real objects—ranging from household appliances, tools, and bathroom fixtures to items of clothing such a suit or shoes—were affixed to the canvas or placed in relationship to it.”
The Smithsonian states that Mr. Dine’s art includes a “strong autobiographical” element to it. “Although Mr. Dine’s subject matter has led to his being categorized as a Pop artist, there are significant differences,” SAAM website states. “His work shows a greater emphasis on introspection and feeling, as well as an interest in painterly effects that he shares with the Abstract Expressionists. As the artist states, ‘Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors when I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don't think Pop artists feel that way.’”
Mr. Dine is now 88 years old and resides in Vermont, but Woodhull students and family members were able to relate to his artwork at the recent family paint night.
