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Art class in out of doors makes impression

For many of Betsy O'Hagan's students, real art was something that people they know nothing about painted a long time ago. It hung on museum walls, and it had very little to do with their lives.

Students (from left) Zach Persechino, Ashley Wilburn and Patricia Templeton post drawings at Good Shepherd, Ardsley. (Ron Tarver/Staff)
Students (from left) Zach Persechino, Ashley Wilburn and Patricia Templeton post drawings at Good Shepherd, Ardsley. (Ron Tarver/Staff)Read more

For many of Betsy O'Hagan's students, real art was something that people they know nothing about painted a long time ago. It hung on museum walls, and it had very little to do with their lives.

O'Hagan, who teaches at Good Shepherd Catholic Regional School in Ardsley, Montgomery County, wanted to change that.

Enter Claes Oldenburg, the Swedish sculptor best known for creating public art in the form of giant versions of everyday objects, like Philadelphia's iconic Clothespin.

Oldenburg's most recent work, Paint Torch, is a 51-foot-tall, 12,000-pound paintbrush newly perched at the entrance of Lenfest Plaza at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) on North Broad Street.

"A lot of people didn't know about it," said O'Hagan, who teaches kindergartners through eighth graders at the 250-student school. She saw the Oldenburg installation as a way to make art come alive for her students.

And it did.

As PAFA president David Brigham noted: "Oldenburg uses everyday objects for his themes, which makes his sculpture widely accessible."

O'Hagan's students studied Oldenburg's body of work. They learned about his life. And they made their own Oldenburgesque works - drawings featuring giant objects in otherwise ordinary landscapes.

Like Oldenburg's, the Good Shepherd students' art is whimsical and inventive, featuring a hockey stick, a doughnut, dental floss, a bird, a diamond ring, a spatula, a piece of candy corn.

One third grader placed a remote control amid the vivid greens of the tropics.

"They got the humor of it," O'Hagan said. "This captured the imagination of every child."

On a whim, she and her students wrote Oldenburg a fan letter and sent some of their Oldenburg-inspired work to PAFA, whose officials put the drawings in the artist's hands.

PAFA spokeswoman Heike Rass was sitting next to Oldenburg when he looked at the students' drawings.

"He loved them," Rass said.

That Oldenburg saw their pieces was seriously impressive to O'Hagan's students.

"A real artist saw our stuff," said Sean Lukens, 11, a fifth grader. "He took everyday objects and made them art, and that's really cool."

Classmate Michael Yoast, 10, agreed.

"His stuff really sticks out," Michael said. "It's so big."

Fifth grader Patricia Templeton's take?

"I think he's awesome, different, not like anybody else," said Patricia, 11. "Philadelphia has more of his stuff than any other city." "

The Good Shepherd students now join the ranks of Oldenburg experts. O'Hagan's classes can rattle off their favorite Oldenburgs easily - Gartenschlauch (Garden Hose) in Germany, Spoonbridge and Cherry in Minneapolis, Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle) in Paris.

They can tell you how the works are installed - "without platforms, and that's so cool," said fifth grader Jessica Blick, 10.

And some have even seen Paint Torch themselves.

Fifth grader Finn McGovern saw it on the way home from a Flyers game, he said - "all lit up. Very cool."

"My mom took us on a special trip to see it," said Knocer White, 9, a third grader.

"It was really tall," Knocer's twin brother, Kendall, said.

"I saw it," said Aidan McGrail, 7, a second grader. "Twice. That's my favorite art."

And though O'Hagan's classes have moved on to their next projects, they're still peppering her with questions: What's Oldenburg's next project? (Unclear.)

Where was his wife from? (The Netherlands.)

Was it hard to create Paint Torch without her? (Coosje van Bruggen, Oldenburg's wife and longtime collaborator, died in 2009, and Paint Torch was his first work without her; this year, Oldenburg told The Inquirer that "I definitely feel her absence and try to remember what she would think or say about what's going on."

Their interest - and that art feels different to them after studying Oldenburg - is gratifying, O'Hagan said.

"For art teachers, you try to squeeze in art appreciation, but it doesn't always work," O'Hagan said. "This really made it come alive for the kids."