By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
To the sounds of friendly, whispered conversations and the clinking of paintbrushes bumping against each other, Kim Soule walks students at Barren County Middle School through the steps to draw the outlines of their self portraits.
Soule is a Bowling Green-based artist that will be in residence at Barren County Middle School until Thursday, Sept. 21, teaching numerous art classes alongside BCMS art teacher Sarah Vetter.
Soule has been teaching art for more than 27 years, first teaching in Memphis, Tennessee, before moving to Arkansas to teach there. Eventually landing in Warren County to teach there for 20 years. She officially retired in 2018 and started working full-time for Art for All Kentucky. She has served as the National Art Education Association Seccondary Division Director from 2019-2021 and is the past president of the Kentucky Art Education Association.
Art for All Kentucky — formerly VSA Kentucky — was incorporated in 1987 and “provides arts education and inclusion programs for children and adults with disabilities throughout the state and offers an underserved population equal opportunity to explore the arts in a way that is fully accessible.”
“It’s important to provide more opportunities for more students to be included in the art process and to provide opportunities with materials and Arts for All brings in an artist and materials as part of the grant and it’s all beneficial to the students,” Soule said. “It’s all about the students.”
“Students with disabilities can do the projects just as well as other students,” Soule added.
It is through this grant, in the amount of roughly $1,400, that Soule was able to come to the school, she said. The grant — or more of an award, as Soule said — is supported by The Kentucky Art Council with state tax dollars and through federal funding through the National Endowment of the Arts.
Soule is spending three days at the middle school teaching art in tandem with her friend Vetter. Yesterday, Sept. 19, was devoted to Gelli Prints, Soule said, which will then be incorporated “in some way” into their self portraits they are working on today and tomorrow. Soule and Vetter said art classes are important for children because, unlike subjects like math or science where some take to it easier than others, “anyone can succeed” in Vetter’s classroom.
“Art is a place where people can express themselves, their duality, their interests, their passions and find success,” Vetter said. “I want my classroom to feel like a place where anyone can be successful. Even if it’s just learning the smallest thing. The smile you see is so cool.”
At the end of the project the students’ artwork will be hung up in various locations around the school, Vetter said.
Vetter said she knew about the grant through her time at her previous teaching job in Hart County and through her friendship with Soule. Though this grant is targeted to students with disabilities, Vetter said, all of her classes will participate in the three-day project, which includes printmaking, acrylic painting and collage.
“I knew about the grant, I had applied for it and used it at my last school for a mural project,” Vetter said. “It was really important to me to do a project that was geared towards [children with disabilities] but also for the whole school to do.”
Her “core group” of the grant is her fifth period class that includes some students from Staci Maynard’s moderate and severe disabilities class, Vetter said. Originally, she said, there was going to be three MSD students in the class, but two of them got sick. Vetter said she is going to do this project, or one similar, with them when they returned.
In the end, Soule said she was glad to be back in the classroom and felt “truly blessed” to be able to help these students.
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