Cape May. The Gallery is open 10-6 pm Thursday and Sunday, 10-8pm Friday and Saturday. Call 609-770-8261 for extended holiday hours. Art supplies should be suitable for a child in grades K-3. Donations will be accepted until December 31st.
Artist/teacher, Janet Payne who is also a co-manager of the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery believes, “Every child should have the opportunity to express their creativity. I am hoping this community project will give the children a chance to express their creativity with a variety of art supplies they haven’t even dreamed of. The arts are so important to children.” Payne is quick to cite American art educator, Elliot Eisner, who feels the arts teach very important lessons to children. The following is an excerpt from his list of “Ten Lessons the Arts Teach”:
• The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
• The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
• The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
• The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
• The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
The Artists’ Cooperative gallery is a group of twenty five local artists who have joined together to showcase and sell their work as well as educate the public about their art.