El Tigre Art Camp: Sarita Elementary School

Credits

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Media Education Program Manager
Zulma Aguiar
Producer of El Tigre Art Camp Blog/Website
Video Producer, DVD Producer
Managed the Filmmaking/Stop Animation Art Camp and the Assistants
(www.zulma.org)

Texas A&M- Kingsville Professor, Grant Writer and Fund raiser

Professor Santa Barraza

www.santabarraza.com

Sarita Elementary School Teacher & Liaison

Joe Silguero

Visiting Artist
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Published Author
(www.aroundthebloc.com)

Visiting Scholar
Claudia Zapata

Undergraduate Media Education Teaching Assistants
Venessa Ramos
Justin Perry

Sponsors:
The Rivera Telephone Company
Kenedy County Sheriff's Office
The Kenedy Memorial Foundation
The Art Department of Texas A&M Kingsville

Frank Ureño & Nino Mendieta from the
Office of the Associate Vice President and
Dean of Students at TAMUK
Kenedy Ranch Museum
Department of Communications at TAMUK
El Tigre Art Camp

Equipment
Checkout
Special Thanks
Kirk Notarianni
Mr. Wissinger
Dr. Saltarelli
Mr. Todd Lucas
Special Thanks
Homer Vera
Kenedy Ranch Museum
Renee Garcia, Principal
Sarita Elementary School

Drug Awareness Commercial

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Click To Play

In order to get all the funding required to make the El Tigre Art Camp happen, we asked for the help of several local sponsors.

This video was requested by the Kenedy County Sheriff's office in order to pay for the costs of running a two week art camp at TAMUK.

This is our video to say thanks Kenedy County Sheriff's Department for supporting Sarita Elementary Students to commute every day to Kingsville (20 mile bus ride) and learn from expert Visiting Artists about New Media, Literature and History!

Delia from the Art Department

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Delia from the Art Department, originally uploaded by zulma.

The Texas A&M-Kingsville Art Department provided the Sarita Art Camp with four brand new video cameras specifically for this project. This is a photo of "Delia," the Art Department Office Manager, trying them out for the very first time. We were all so excited to have this opportunity to use this equipment. Thank you TAMUK Art Department for all of your support.

Zapata teaching the Mesoamerican Timeline

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mesoamerican timeline, originally uploaded by zulma.

This is a photo from when Claudia Zapata, a Mesoamerican iconography Scholar from UT Austin was teaching the Sarita El Tigre Art Camp participants the Mesoamerican time line in the Ben Bailey Gallery at TAMUK.

Claudia drove all the way from Austin to be a visiting scholar to this program. Claudia spent an entire week going over Mayan history and working with the students on "Mayan Codices".
Here is an example of the completed version of TJ's Mayan Codice.

Claudia used the brainstorming stories that the children and I had worked on to create the storyboards for their films in my workshop the week before and recycled the stories into these gorgeous original art pieces.

I was busy working on video projects when by the end of the event, Claudia quizzed the students on Mayan iconography. On the last day of the project she asked the students, as they rested at their "Pizza Party" outside the Ben Bailey Gallery of the campus, "Whoever can say what this Mesoamerican symbol stands for in English gets these free Mayan iconography coloring books!"

I looked at Claudia in disbelief. As a Chicana myself I never thought the kids would be able to decipher a sculpture that sat outside the campus building. We all watched in amazement as Ryan only 10 years old raised his hand.

Claudia prompted him for the answer.

Ryan quietly blurted, "Movement."

My jaw dropped, and we all praised him for his achievement.

The children never ceased to amaze me.

From Children's Finger Painting to Stop Animation

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Painting Animation Set, originally uploaded by zulma.

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

This photo demonstrates a child using traditional art techniques to create what I call "Paper Tiger TV Credits". We did this as undergrads paint our own credits. We had the children paint as a reward for finishing their stop animation project faster than anyone. This is the time that Famous Chicana Artist and TAMUK professor, Santa Barraza, got to instruct the children one on one on how to draw a line professionally. My kids were so spoiled! We like it that way! lol

Peanut the Longhorn

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The participating students of our art camp from Sarita Elementary School produced this stop animation video. If the storyline seems a little misguided it is only because our participatory process produced these results.

What you're seeing is a narrative composed from many different stories merged into one.

I asked each student to draw out their own storyboards each with an original story from their memories.
Each student produced his or her own original storyline. This group had many children with diverse talents however they collectively decided on this final narrative for the video.

The process was very democratic and I made sure to engage with each and every one of them. This art camp student group’s age ranged from 6 years old to the age of 12.

The challenge was to get this very diverse group of students to create only one stop animation video from all the storyboards.

This group introduced ideas about bike riding while you play baseball in a farm where long horns invade the play space. Then some off road vehicles replace what originally were horses, or donkeys. I edited all the pieces on final cut and taught a short workshop on how to do it on iMovie. We only had four hours with the children each day but my assistants, Barraza and I worked until the wee hours of the night trying to move the project along for the next time we worked with the students.

The children of Sarita are very aware of their specific cultural environment. Sarita, Texas belongs to what used to be the "Kenedy" Ranch. The town is named after the daughter of a famous rancher. The children of Sarita tend to work in the Kenedy Ranch during the summers and at their young age know how to take care of farm animals. The reason why you see so many animals and stories about horses and snakes is because this is what they find very funny. They had stories about every kind of animal you can imagine. It was so refreshing to learn that they celebrate the life of animals just as much as that of a human.

I learned so much about "South Texas", Kingsville, "los Kenedeños vs. the Kingeños" from locals and especially Santa Barraza who she herself was a child raised in Sarita, Texas.

The program ended with a bang. We contacted the director of the Kenedy Ranch Museum and begged Homer Vera to allow us to screen our films there. We had a wonderful turnout from parents and community members anxious to see the work the El Tigre Art Camp students from Sarita Texas. I produced the DVD and Video Art Camp with the help of Santa, the assistants and our Sarita Elementary School liason and 4th grade teacher, Joe Silguero.

Donkey Cinema

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Crazy Cats

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teaching stop animation

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teaching stop animation, originally uploaded by zulma.

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

El Tigre Art Camp

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El Tigre Art Camp, originally uploaded by zulma.

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Sarita at the Kenedy Museum

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SaritaMuseum, originally uploaded by zulma.

Sarita Elemetary School

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SaritaSchool, originally uploaded by zulma.

Kenedy Museum

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barrazaMuseum, originally uploaded by zulma.

Sarita Kids learn languages from AroundTheBloc.com

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Sarita Kids learn languages, originally uploaded by zulma.

From memoir writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is an amazingly talented writer from Corpus Christi, Texas. As you may or may not know, Corpus, as locals affectionately call it, is only about an hour away by car from Kingsville.

Stephanie has lived all over the world and written memoirs of her travels and analysis of them in several books. She's written 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, Around the Bloc and her latest book Mexican Enough.

Professor Barraza invited Stephanie because she's bright, intelligent and most amazingly "a local."

Relating to Stephanie was easy. She was fun, accessible, and engaged them with sophisticated languages and exotic words that piqued the interest of our Art Camp Students.

By the end of the two weeks the children were so happy and confident they had learned so much in just two weeks that it was almost hard to say goodbye.

Santa Barraza invites Sarita Kids to TAMUK

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Santa Barraza & Sarita Kids, originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School.

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Brainstorming with Zulma

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Brainstorming with Zulma
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Stop Animation Examples

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Stop Animation Examples
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Applied Knowledge

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applied knowledge
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Setting up the Green Screen

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setting up the green screen
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Kirk Notarianni let us borrow the camera and green screen for the first week of production and has promised our Sarita Kids El Tigre Art Camp with a tour of the facilities of the Communication & Theater Department next week.

Photo Credit: Zulma Aguiar

Creating the Sarita Blog

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Creating the Sarita Blog
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos
Blog Creator: Zulma Aguiar

Group Photo @ TAMUK

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Group Photo @ TAMUK
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Arriving from Sarita, TX

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Arriving from Sarita, TX
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

Art Camp at Work

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compromising
Originally uploaded by Sarita Elementary School

strategizing

Photo Credit: Venessa Ramos

El Tigre Art Camp Screens films at Kenedy Ranch Museum

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You're invited to come look at the films that the students made at their Texas A&M El Tigre Art Camp at the Sarita, Texas Kenedy Museum Film Screening Room on Thursday June 26, 2008.

The Films start at 6pm and will loop/play until 7:30pm.

Bring your mom, dad and friends that live in Sarita to come see your film.

El Tigre Art Camp, partially funded by the THE JOHN G. AND MARIE STELLA KENEDY MEMORIAL FOUNDATION and the Kenedy Museum is a project of THE JOHN G. AND MARIE STELLA KENEDY MEMORIAL FOUNDATION.

Storyboarding Experts

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Sarita Texas, originally uploaded by zulma.

click here to see the entire slideshow of the Art Camp.