Inspired by artist Tyree Guyton, students create abstract face collages.

Jennifer Nesson

This fourth-grade project was inspired by artist Tyree Guyton, who grew up on Heidelberg Street in Detroit. His neighborhood greatly influenced his art later in life. As a child, Guyton often visited the Detroit Institute of Arts with his grandfather. Since 1986, he has gained worldwide recognition for the Heidelberg Project, which transformed an entire street he loved into an interactive sculpture park. It showed how art can change a community.

Students listened to the book Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art by J. H. Shapiro and Vanessa Brantley-Newton (Charlesbridge, 2015), which describes how Guytonʼs grandfather Sam taught him to “paint the world.” In the story, Guyton “wanted to wake people up... to make them see Detroitʼs crumbling communities. Paintbrush in hand, Tyree cast his artistic spell, transforming everyday junk into magic trash. Soon, local kids and families joined Tyree in rebuilding their neighborhood, discovering the healing power of art along the way.”

In this project, we focused on Guytonʼs abstract faces series that he painted on car hoods. At first, these artworks did not appeal to students. They thought they looked “funny” or “strange.” We talked about how artists can simplify or exaggerate facial shapes to convey emotions, and that art does not have to be realistic. Each artist has a unique style and mode of expression. Students noticed how Guyton often used the letter shape “L” for a nose, a large oval for a mouth, and bold colors in his faces. These artworks became the inspiration for our collage faces.

When presenting this project, I reminded students that Guytonʼs faces were not realistic but stylized, and that their faces did not have to represent anyone they knew. Instead of giving them pencils, I offered a choice of skin-color crayons to trace a large oval for the head. I encouraged them to make their faces BIG. Using scissors, they cut shapes for the faces and incorporated patterned and tissue papers into their collages. The final step was to add color with paint sticks in and around the faces. The variety and expression in the work was astounding and always makes me smile.

In the same spirit as Guyton, students transformed their classroom into a vibrant gallery of color and expression.

Jennifer Nesson is a K–5 art teacher at Arnone Elementary in Brockton, Massachusetts. jenniferlnesson@bpsma.org

The Freedom of Collage and Abstraction