Ohio Elementary School Honors Artist Jeff Fioravanti for Upcoming School Year

I'm pleased to announce that the Morgan Elementary School in Hamilton, Ohio has honored me as one of six living artists the school will study in their weekly art class for the 2009-2010 school year.

Now one might wonder, how does an artist from Massachusetts become part of an art class at an elementary school in Ohio?

Well, as a visual artist with a web site, I receive a number of queries through my contact page.Now the down side to that is you also get a lot of spam and scams, so you have to be skeptical at times when you open up those queries.

Sometimes though, you get something that is rather unique and special. I’ve gotten contacts from relatives whom I had never met, developed friendships and perhaps the most interesting thus far has been the contact from Ms. Jenna Rahrig, the art teacher at Morgan Elementary.

When I queried Ms. Rahrig back, this is what she had to say:

“This is my 4th year teaching and I decided 3 years ago to name my tables in my class after an artist. I started off using artists such as Picasso, Degas, Pollock etc. But the students always asked me if the artists were still alive and I always had to reply with a no. So last year, I taught my 4th grade class about 6 different Ohio Artists since the students study Ohio History in Social Studies.

This year however I decided to combine my "Happy Birthday to the Artist of the Month" bulletin board with my classroom tables. I was looking on the internet and http://arthistory.about.com/od/artistsbdays/l/bl_feb.htm when I found your name listed. I investigated further and decided that Jeff was the type of artist that I wanted to share with my students.

And so, the artist from Lynn goes to Ohio to be admired, at least for this year, by 350 grade school children. A nice gig if you can get it! I am certainly happy to be a part of their school year! Thanks for the support, and hope to see you on the painting trail/scene soon.