This week, WDS kindergarten students had the privilege of meeting Hanoch Piven, a world-renowned Israeli artist, illustrator, writer and educator, best known for his creative and playful collage portraits employing the use of everyday objects and forging intricate connections between these and the subjects of his brilliant and witty creations.
Piven joined via Zoom from Jaffa, Israel, shared with the students the way in which he creates his art and showed them around his amazing studio. Students were amazed by his big storage drawers in which he organizes all the collage pieces that he collects. Additionally, Piven read to them one of his famous children’s books, “My Dog Is As Smelly As Dirty Socks,” and the children loved all his creative portraits, including the smelly dog who gave the book its title. The kindergarteners wowed the artist by sharing with him their own mixed-media collage masterpieces inspired by his art. He talked to many of the students individually and commented on their works before asking the entire kindergarten to show him their creations. It was a wonderful experience!
Meeting with the artist was truly a grand conclusion to an amazing collaboration between Jolanta Goldstein, the art specialist, and Ziva Doft, one of the Hebrew language teachers. Under their guidance and over the course of a few joint sessions, the children created colorful backgrounds using sharpies, canvas and rubbing alcohol, tapped into their knowledge about shapes to create blank self-portraits, partnered with classmates to wrap colorful yarn around each other’s arms to make hair, and carefully selected materials that best reflected their personalities, likes and interests. Last, but not least, they assembled all their collage pieces and, with great delight, gave haircuts to their likenesses! While engaged in the creative process, the students were simultaneously immersed in a fun Hebrew vocabulary-building experience. They learned an entire host of words for different body parts, colors, textures as well as names of objects that they chose for their collage works—animals, plants, machines and more.
WDS is a firm believer in the power of integrative learning and is immensely grateful to Piven for accepting Goldstein’s invitation to visit and sharing his incredible art. The school looks forward to many more in-person collaborations in the future.
