Starting this week, Selective Focus is changing direction. Instead of variations on a weekly theme as before, we will be posting brief profiles of visual artists and happenings around the area. We start it off with a collaborative project between UMD students and elementary students.

These are images made for the “One River, Many Stories” project with UMD Professor Alison Aune’s Art in Elementary School class. The UMD students learned about the river and then made linoleum block prints and handmade books with Jon Hinkel of Tight Squeek Press. The students wrote integrated “One River, Many Stories” science, social studies and art lesson plans on the project and taught kids at Laura MacArthur Elementary School to make prints using styrofoam blocks.

Some of the images are on display at the Duluth Art Institute Corridor Gallery until the end of April.
(Photos courtesy of Alison Aune)