Students experience Thomas Locker's work

With the help of a local artist, students at Abram Lansing learned about the region through both art class and the library.

Art teacher Chris Scott and librarian Carolyn McLoughlin created a unit together that had students searching maps and analyzing the artwork of renowned artist Thomas Locker, who has illustrated many books written by his wife Candace.

"It was a great exercise for students to learn about Locker's paintings and to connect the places they see in his books with the actual places on the map," said McLoughlin. The places students found on the map included: North-South Lake, Cohoes, the Hudson River, Storm King Mountain, Stuyvesant and Katterskill Falls.

In the library, McLoughlin had actual photographs of places the Locker painted. Each student received their own map to draw on and together they plotted points he had painted. Finally, the students searched through Locker's books to find examples of those spots.

As they discovered the landmarks in his books, the students cheered and got excited.

Meanwhile, in the school's art gallery, Scott had students examining Locker's paintings closely and looking for different shapes, colors and lines. As the students found examples of different objects within the paintings, they talked about the way he manipulated color and how it could help communicate the mood of the painting.

For example, students compared the shape and feeling of water in one painting to water in a second painting, noting that the crashing waves in the first one seemed to show fear and turbulence, while the waterfall and calm pool in the second painting seemed calmer.