Magner got the idea after visiting a recent National Portrait Gallery exhibition of artist Kehinde Wiley's portraits of contemporary hip-hop artists in poses and backdrops from well-known historical paintings.
The students spent almost a month, which works out to about six or seven classes, choosing from 200 portraits that Magner had cut out of old art books and downloaded from the Internet. They recreated them with acrylic paints, pasting a photograph of themselves in place of the faces.
All 82 charming portraits are on display in the school's main hallway. "I never tire of looking at them," Magner said of the sixth-grader's works of art. She has been a teacher at Fort River for 32 years but doesn't admit to being a day over 32 years old.
So many of the student's choices were surprising, Magner said. "I think the kids were so brave."
Color-mixing was a huge part of the artistic process, "taking those risks," to create new colors from existing ones. Magner just encouraged them, she said. "They can all do it. They need to be reminded of that."
Magner said she would have had a hard time deciding on a portrait if she were to do the assignment.
But on further thought, "All of my paintings have a shoe theme," she said. For instance, her painting of Mona Lisa wearing shoes in a shoe store.
Student Juliana Brissette picked a painting of a woman in a pink dress by artist Anne Adams.
"I like the dress," Juliana said, although it was "hard making the bows look 3-dimensional." She also enjoyed putting the cut-out of her own face in the painting.
"I just think it's a great example of the art program being innovative and appealing to all of the kids," said Juliana's father, Jim Brissette.
Chapin Duffy picked a painting of a woman amid foliage by Berthe Morisot.
"My friend Veronica said she almost looks like Princess Diana," Duffy said of Morisot's subject. "I like the way she looks like she's in nature."
Now, the students are working on an "art quilt" that's been in the works since they were in fifth-grade, composed of many thumbnail size re-creations in colored pencil of famous paintings like Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and, of course, "Mona Lisa."
"Miss Magner's a great teacher," Duffy said. "Personally, I had an awesome time doing this."
Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.
