the school website

Check out the Greensburg Salem School District Website! We made the front page!
http://greensburg.pa.schoolwebpages.com

Visit to Bergisch Gladbach

The LVR-Industriemuseum consists of 6 venues. One of them is an old paper mill. In March our colleagues from this venue (located in Bergisch Gladbach) invited our American guests to visit them. Katie, Anita, Nina and me got a great guided tour through the museum.

Katie and Anita produced their own paper! At lunch time we ate a typical meal at the museum cafe: potatoes and fried eggs. After that our American guests spent a lot of time at the museum shop.

My colleague Beatrix currently tries to prepare a lecture for a big conference for education curators in October. If that works, we’ll have the chance to present our Transatlantic Bridge to a wide audience of professionals.

Transatlantic Bridge on web site of school ministry

Click here to read more

As time goes by...Modern times in teeming II

Lieber Thomas Schleper,

"This day and time we´re living in

gives cause of apprehension

with speed and new invention

and things like fourth dimension...*

Not the fourth dimension is evoked in your article, but "teeming as a gate to modernity" You are reporting of Bonhommés picture "Teeming" from 1865, which shows the "soldiers of work" out of the perspective of the owner -- showing the factory interior view - who tries "to get a quick overall view of his capital investment and its useful exploitation".

Out of the perspective of a student of the art class 12 of our school -- whose drawings were made during a visit in the R.I.M --the structural change in industry has also changed the view on "teeming" . His collage - a new combination of two objects out of the R.I.M. exibition -- wants to show this fact symbolically.

Bonhomme´s "soldier of work" has become a stripped marionette, his body a fossil dinosaur and the teeming laddle a so-called "Auslaufmodell" (phased-out model?), his head illustrating the idiom "There´s no use crying over spilled milk". or " ... the simple facts of life are such, they cannot be removed..." furthermore as it sounds in the song from "Casablanca".
The song also is telling that only "on love you can rely".

However we can rely on both, the Industrial Museum in Oberhausen (R.I.M) and the Westmorelandmuseum of American Art in Pittsburgh - whose collection of industrial machines and paintings enable the students of our schools to have a look at a teeming laddle in original or the watercolour paintings "Teeming" out of "The Valley of Work" Collection.

These "everlasting" cultural goods - conserved at the museum - offer the possibility for the students to deal with the subject of the industrial past and to interpret in a creative "modern "

way from their individual perspective to past times.

Mining Dump Heaps

School at museum

all videos are made by U. Bugdoll and students, HBG, 2010

Modern Times in "Teeming"

Francois Bonhommé, Coulée de fonte, 1865,

Écomusée Creusot-Montceau, Collection: Académie Bourdon, photographer: T. Schleper

World Trade 1867, Paris
L'Illustration, Nr. 1272, 13.7.1867, S. 21f

The Frenchman Françoise Bonhommé is regarded as the first European painter who tried to depict both the new dimensions of iron works and the collective of the new working class in order to grasp the modern reality of industrial production in iron works. The monumental painting "Teeming", has been one of the attractions of the World Trade 1867 in Paris and Adolf Menzel, the famous German painter of the later "Eisenwalzwerk", took the opportunity to see that work of art. No surprise, the team of the museum counts itself lucky as - after repeated attempts - the Academy Bourdon just has accepted the loan to the exhibition "Feuerländer" in Oberhausen.

Bonhommé called the workmen "soldiers of industry" and wanted to grant to them a special dignity - in spite of the hierarchy within the production process. Therefore, this work is painted as a tribute to the new labour class. On the other hand, however, the painter applies a wide-angle perspective to the scene. It’s the perspective of the owner, who likes to get a quick overall view of his capital investment and its useful exploitation. The modern argument between labour and capital is present at this painting. Because of it, Bonhommés "Teeming" became a key work in the history of industrial painting: for the following artists and their interpreters as well.

The museum wasn’t able to do without Bonhommé and now it needs not renounce his work of art. "Teeming" represents a crucial point of the "Feuerländer" as a gate to modernity.

15 minutes of fame

+

Facebook, flickr, youtube - yet the vast majority of school districts have stringent rules against nearly all forms of social networking during the school day. Students and teachers working on the Transatlanticbridgeproject in Oberhausen and Greensburg are breaking all these rules now and are taking the liberty to blog, communicate on facebook and watch videos on youtube officiary during their school lessons to interact.

That we would be able to do so, Andy Warhol had already anticipated in 1968, when he coined the expression: "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes." Why not our students as well - doing artwork and using the internet to publish and have an interesting exchange of thoughts.

During our stay in Pittsburgh we visited the Andy Warhol Museum and while I was looking at his works it became clear to me, that Andy Warhol´s way of creating had highly influenced the American students creating their different pages of the Transatlantic Journals.

"Is that art?" my students in Germany asked, feeling the candy paper, which was glued in a journal and I had to explain a lot about American POP Art , about advertising and "commercial education" about Andy's message - we all can be stars - about POP as a kind of life style

- Andy´s life style.

About his infamous hot PINK, which made even good old Goethe glisten in his renewed splendor

and now makes a student look like he (she) "is in the pink"

( means he/she´s looking "hot"), about his technique of multiples, showing the mass fabrication and unlimited quantities of the object - now showing the many sidedness, the "multiple" personality of young people, about his using pictures of celebrities and photos from Time and Life magazines, now used for showing the glamourous dreams of the students, outing themselves as "fashion fans".

The journals - as "life capsules" - interesting to be opened.

Since Warhol´s death, changes in media market, as well technological advancement as oneline social networking and blogging allowed otherwise former individuals or concepts to gain widespread audience in a short period of time. John Langer suggests that 15 minutes of fame is an enduring concept because it permits everyday activities to become 'great efforts'.*

Our eyeryday activities - POPular Art - our life style.

" On the web, everyone will be famous for 15 people". This quote was said to have originated with the Scottish artist Momus - a recent adaption of Warhols quip.*And the sociologist Ervin

Goffman wrote about the necessity of grooming oneself for presentation in 'everyday life'.

And we guess that the grooming we really need today is for purposes of representation in the virtual domain.

- "Is that art?" Andy would answer that art and life are the same and social networking is only real life to be translated online - that social networking sites have become POPular sites for youth culture to explore themselves, relationships and share cultural artyfacts -and that there are not many limitations as to what individuals can post when online.

Today teachers have to take care of computer viruses and security regulations concerning the communikation via internet.

- Andy wouldn´t wast a thought on it.

*( after : wikipedia "15 minutes of fame")

+ Two pages designed by the American students of Kelley Audia´s Art class