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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The Zullo Art Gallery offers a variety of art courses for young art enthusiasts. Starting in February, students in grades one to three participated in a Drawing/Mixed Media course taught by Kurt Johnson. Johnson is a professional artist and storyteller. He also currently teaches at the Medfield After School program. Lasting five weeks, the class combined drawing skills, from beginner to advanced, with a wide variety of media. “They work with some basic drawing skills, then we did some shading with charcoal, we talked about color compositions,” Johnson explained. Meeting on Saturday mornings, the kids were able to develop their artistic skills at their own pace due to the small size of the class, and got the chance to work one on one with Johnson.
“They did oil pastels and we did a lesson in basically listening, in following directions - but how following directions can lead to different perceptions,” Johnson said, referring to their previous meeting. “So they’re going to fill those in today, have fun with color and use chalk pastel as opposed to oil pastels.” Johnson gathered the kids around and demonstrated some chalk pastel technique to them, especially how to blend different colors. They also discussed concepts such as complimentary colors and basic shapes. Johnson has a playful tone with the kids, letting them learn from his explanations and leadership while still remaining engaged.
In addition to this course, the Zullo Gallery offers a class for students in grades three to five, also taught by Johnson. That course is called Cartoons + Clay/Drawing & Building and focuses on developing form, texture, shading and positive and negative space. Those two courses were offered during the winter session, and new ones will be available for the spring starting in April.
