My name is Jenna Wright and I am one of the Artpace Associate Educators. I currently study at UTSA and in May I will receive a Master in Fine Arts focusing on sculpture/ceramics. I also work for the Southwest School of Art Mobile Art Program. With this program I visit the Daughters of Charity site every Wednesday and create weekly lessons to engage these students and nourish their creative abilities.

Recently I had a chance to try out one of the projects on the Educator Resources page of the Artpace website. I chose Rigoberto Luna: Vinyl Self-Portraits to pursue with the group of 6-10 year old students I have in my Mobile Arts Program. I was a bit skeptical at first, since I don’t have a vinyl printer or a scanner. Luckily, like most of the projects from Artpace, I found that I could adapt the project to my group and the resources I have available. I decided to have the students trace and fill in their self-portrait photo with a black sharpie on transparency paper, which took away the need for a vinyl printer. My students then chose objects that described them or represented an aspect of their personality. I simply took a photo of these objects on my phone over a white background and printed them. Then, placing the transparency over the photo of the objects we had our layered self-portrait. The students had a lot of fun with this project and it was great to see what objects students are drawn to and how their personalities really do surface in this project. See some examples of their finished work above!