Putting my boat in the water and getting my feet a little wet

At the beginning of my journey into the Fine Arts, I find myself mostly thinking about what kind of assignments that I have done or seen in the past that I really enjoyed. The first thought that I had was what my grade seven class did when I was a student. In preparation for the end of the year art project, my classmates and I created glass mosaics. Mine, if I recall correctly, was a hotplate bearing the frightening visage of Frankenstein's monster. Well, as frightening as one can make something using squares of glass manipulated by awkward prepubescent digits. Even if my family never used it (my mom said it was too nice), I remember is the fun that I had in making the hotplate, and I was proud of the lasting, permanent object that I had made. In fact, I think I still have it somewhere at my parent's house.

It makes me think of how many art projects that students make in school that do not survive past the end of the year, or too much longer past that point. I want my students to have a useful object that they've made with their own hands. Something that they can pull out and show to their children (or, dare I say, their own future students) decades from now. I'm not saying that every art project has to have the same level of permanency, but having a few artful artifacts of one's youth that can survive the ravages of time can't be a bad thing.