POUGHKEEPSIE – With the assistance of SF Morse Elementary School Art Teacher Melissa Cascio, the third, fourth, and fifth-grade students visited the 1970s during a black light art project that has been on display in the cafetorium all week. The stage space, complete with dark curtains provided the ideal darkroom for the students to learn about the effects of black lights on fluorescent paints and pens.
Utilizing a small grant to purchase the black lights, Cascio purchased the rest of the supplies with her own money*, to offer black light art for the first and second graders, who drew rainforest plants and animals that were on display last week.
This week, the third, fourth, and fifth graders worked on two different fluorescent pieces of art; lava lamps and “drips”.
Cascio expressed the importance of visual arts for young minds, noting that it doubled as a science project as students used colored paint pens and highlighters to design their lava lamps. For “The Drip”, each student created a small piece of work that was eventually pieced together, creating one large black light-reactive tapestry.
Lava lamps were created in Great Britain in 1963 and became very popular with the “enlightened” younger generations in America in the 1970s. The Morse students, after seeing examples of the lamps created their own on paper and were excited when they saw how their art reacted to the ultraviolet light rays emitted by the special lamps.
*Teachers at Morse Elementary School in the Poughkeepsie City School District, on average, spend $500 of their own money annually to provide needed supplies for projects and other classroom needs, according to several teachers in the building.
