Artful Truth

ARTFUL TRUTH STUDENT ART EXHIBITION
AT THE TAMPA MUSEUM OF ART
June 11 - August 13, 2000

You can view the works in the exhibition by selecting one of the participating schools or community organizations from the List of Exhibitors or by scrolling through the exhibition below.

List of Exhibitors

Six Truthful Plays for Children:
Smoky Lox and the Five Frogs
Brian the Lion
Charles and the Two Smoking Pigs
Little Red Smokinghood
Ohiopunk and the Truthful Spirit
Rumpelstiltsken, the Truth at Last
Digital photography
8 x 11 in.
Rockway Elementary School, Miami
Instructor: Kathleen Hull

Using several classic children's stories as a jumping-off point, students wrote their own tales of temptation-and redemption-from cigarette smoking.

Paradise or the Dark Side
Acrylic on wood
70 x 36 x 18 in.
Carol City Elementary School, Carol City
Instructor: Terri Alexandra

Students designed and painted a puppet theater in which short skits were performed to offer healthy alternatives to smoking. A tropical scene and a healthy lung represent Paradise; cigarettes emerging from flames and a blackened, smoker's lung symbolize the "dark side".

See the Light
Mixed media
68 x 26 x 9¸ in.
Holly Hill Elementary School, Holly Hill
Instructor: Kimberly Sander

After engaging in activities focusing on deconstructing advertisements, students designed their own ads, which were then heat-transferred to white Dacron sailcloth and stretched over a light box. Each work shines through to convey the truth, enabling the students and viewing public to indeed "see the light."

Diablos
Mixed media
36 x 24 x 12 in.
Oakland Terrace Elementary School, Panama City
Instructor: Michelle Creel

Students created several interactive sculptures, including this metallic cigarette pack of "Diablos" ("devils" in Spanish) cigarettes. The students equipped the pack with a button-operated device that proclaims, "I'm going to kill you!"

Tobacco Town-Where Beauty Becomes Polluted
Mixed media
83 x 46 x 5¸ in.
56 x 47 x 6 in.
56 x 48 x 6 in.
St. Margaret Mary School, Winter Park
Instructor: Katy Bretz

Students altered fine-art images with tobacco advertisements to create the "residents" of Tobacco Town, comprised of three cigarette-pack buildings. The individual works of collage are often surprising and reveal the students' sophisticated sense of satire.

For the "Jeopardy" computer game, students showed their expertise in creative typography and the symbolic use of cartoon characters in packaging design. Modeled after the format of the popular television show, students answered questions about the health effects of cigarettes, advertising, statistics, and brand names, as well as "gross stuff" about smoking.

The Death of Key West
Acrylic on papier mache
60 x 24 x 24 in.
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society, Key West
Instructor: Jane Rohrschneider

Students deconstructed the "glamour" of cigar smoking, a common habit in this resort town, as something quite the opposite: Cigars invite death, symbolized by a skeleton crawling out of three cigars.

The Truth, Cool Mike and the Opposite of Truth
Mixed media
54 x 25 x 1 in.
Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida, Orlando
Instructor: Linda Torres

Smoking a cigarette, Mike may think he looks "kewl" with his nice clothes and "phat" attitude. But when students look at the flip side of this figure to see Mike's heart, lungs, and teeth, they will see the obvious ill affects caused by the poisonous chemicals contained in cigarette smoke.

Marlboro Mortuary
Mixed media
34 x 47 x 48 in.
Spruce Creek Elementary School, Port Orange
Instructor: Dana Hoffman

After students were taken on field trips to observe and photograph people who smoke, they devised this installation, which combines photographic images, vultures, and other symbols of death and decay. Flying around a partially buried cigarette pack in this installation the white birds represent innocent children.

Anti-Smoking Cigarette Packs
Mixed media
14¸ x 40 x ¸ in.
Manatee School for the Arts, Palmetto
Instructor: Debra Cline

After analyzing the role of logos and symbols, students modified existing cigarette packaging by creating their own anti-smoking artwork.

Clay Smokes
Mixed media
3 x 24 x 24 in.
Spruce Creek Elementary School, Port Orange
Instructor: Dana Hoffman

These rather small mouth sculptures, made of terra cotta and clay, depict some visible hazards that come from smoking: yellow teeth and tooth decay.

Break the Habit Before It's Too Late
Smash the Habit
Mixed media
70 x 27 x 10 in.
50 x 27 x 70 in.
Jupiter Middle School, North Palm Beach
Instructor: Sandra Vanacore

The cross beside the kneeling figure represents death; each cigarette attached on the cross represents a person who died from smoking. The figure with the baseball bat is about to swing at the cigarette pack, expressing his feelings towards smoking.

Simple Addition
Mixed media
19 ¹ x 22 ¸ x 1 in.
Congregation of Liberal Judaism, Winter Park
Instructor: Karen Carasik

Students created brief phrases that will stick in people's minds, which will remind them of the effects of smoking.

Bridge United Against Smoking
Mixed media
31¸ x 72 x 3¸ in.
Parkwood Heights Elementary School, Jacksonville
Instructor: Jeanette Dennis

A colorful array of clay people, created by young artists, represents students united against smoking in this project produced with The Bridge, a United Way program.

2000 Truth Team
Mixed media
72 x 91 x 76 in.
School District of Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach
Instructor: Pearl Krepps and Renee Hennessy

Spoofing the practice of cigarette-branding race cars, students created their own personal logos to decorate a working go-cart, the "Artful Truth 2000."

Matchless Matchbook Covers
Mixed media
2 x 1 in.
Pine Grove Elementary School of the Arts, Delray Beach
Instructor: Patricia Littlechild

Inventing a variety of message vehicles, students produced a promotional campaign to express a strong anti-tobacco stance. They created "matchless" matchbooks, and playfully fashioned pop-up anti-tobacco slogans that spring up from matchbooks and matchboxes.

Cool Girl, Cool Boy
Mixed media
64 x 33 in.
63 x 40 in.
Oakland Terrace Elementary, Panama City
Instructor: Michelle Creel

These figures, taken from the children's own drawings, depict the "cool" kids who smoke. But appearance is not always reality: When the doors open they reveal the darkened lungs of a smoker.

Program for Academically Talented Students, Pensacola
Instructor: Maurine Kramerich

Using handmade paper as the medium, students combined cigarette butts with written slogans to produce these unique works.

Generations Up in Smoke
Mixed media
48 x 48 in.
Interact: Youth Arts Coalition, University of South Florida, Tampa
Instructor: Jean Calandra

For several months students interviewed the elderly residents of the University Village Assisted Care Living Facility, to learn how generations that came of age since the 1920s developed their attitudes toward tobacco. Students tape-recorded their interviews with the senior citizens, including questions about their first experience with tobacco and whether their friends smoked. Some of their answers are included in this piece, such as "I only smoked to show off!" as well as portraits of the residents and students.

Throw Away Your Cigarettes
Mixed media
24 x 18 in.
Parkwood Heights Elementary School, Jacksonville
Instructor: Jeannette Dennis

A young basketball player seen holding a pack of cigarettes may be ready to learn the truth: "If you smoke you choke."

Wolf and Pig
Papier mache puppet
22 x 18 x 11 in.
23 x 12 x 15 in.
Palm Springs Elementary School, Lake Worth
Instructor: Susannah Brown

Students crafted hand puppets to represent the characters of the classic children's tale "The Three Little Pigs" in a version that depicts the evil wolf pushing cigarettes on unsuspecting innocents. One of the three little pigs proved to be especially vulnerable when pressured by the wolf to smoke.

Smoking Pigs Book
Colored pencil on paper
11 x 9 in.
Palm Springs Elementary School, Lake Worth
Instructor: Susannah Brown

A companion piece to "The Three Little Pigs" puppet show, this hand-made volume illustrates how one pig, with the help of his friends, was able to escape from the perils of smoking.

Artful Truth Kite
Acrylic on nylon
36 x 48 in.
Cutler Ridge Middle School, Miami
Instructor: Pamela Formosa

By constructing this working kite, one of seven students created to display an anti-tobacco message, they also learned about basic concepts in geometry.

Pack of Troubles
Mixed media
5 x 17 x 1¸ in.
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa
Instructors: Lisa Kahn and Patt Fosnaught

A Girl Scout troop comprised of Tampa-area, at-risk youth created this showcase (reminiscent of a pack of Marlboro cigarettes) in which each girl crafted a cigarette pack emblazoned with an anti-tobacco message.

To Your Grave
Mixed media
24 x 9¸ x 5 in.
Parkwood Heights Elementary School, Jacksonville
Instructor: Jeannette Dennis

Artful Truth Message Quilt
Mixed media
59¸ x 46 in.
Parkwood Heights Elementary School, Jacksonville
Instructor: Jeannette Dennis

Students decorated digital photographs of themselves with personal messages and symbols to create a large-scale anti-tobacco message.

Holy Smokes
Ink on fabric
29 x 35 in.
PJ Productions and Sarasota County Educational Assistance Program, Sarasota
Instructor: Michael Waldron

Holy Smokes
Painted screen
90 x 90 in.
PJ Productions and Sarasota County Educational Assistance Program, Sarasota
Instructor: Michael Waldron

Students designed a theatrical set depicting the gates of heaven, where the Marlboro Man probably hung his hat for the very last time. The backdrop was used in a musical play created by the class and was performed for the entire school.

No Smoking
Mixed media
18 x 18 x 1² in.
Manatee School for the Arts, Palmetto
Instructor: Debra Cline

Created from cigarette advertisements students selected from magazines, this collage uses the visual vocabulary of cigarette marketing to communicate the opposite message: don't smoke.

Heartmobile
Mixed media
Life seize car
Banyan Elementary School, Miami
Instructor: Paige Karaboyas

Using a colorful array of buttons, beads, fabric, paint and commercially produced hearts, students created an "art car" to convey the message "Save your heart-don't smoke."

Artful Truth Kiosk
Mixed media
144 x 48 in.
Samsula Elementary School, New Smyrna Beach
Instructor: Cindy Jesup

This three-sided kiosk acts as a memorial to students' loved ones lost to tobacco-related illness, and at the same time points the way to a bright future for the students. These fifth-graders researched facts about tobacco and prepared text to accompany each photo. In one example, Lisa writes: "This is a picture of my grandmother...She died from cancer. She got cancer by smoking. I wish I could have seen her when she was alive, but she died before I was born."

During the course of a special two-day workshop, students deconstructed a pack of cigarettes and experimented with letter forms. They then invented their own brand name designed to send a anti-smoking message, examples of which are displayed on this six-panel, two-sided folding screen.

VIDEOS

The files below require Quicktime for viewing. If you do not have Quicktime, please click the link below to download it.

These videos are shown in full at the Tampa Museum of Art from
June 11 - August 13, 2000. You can view a short sample of the videos by clicking on the title.

Students produced an MTV-style video that empowers young people to resist the pressure to smoke. They sing a song that describes cigarettes as addictive, dangerous, and, for children, illegal: "No smokin', I'm never gonna start. It's bad for your lungs; it's bad for your heart. It could kill you, and that's not all. When a kid smokes it's against the law."

Boys Room
Video
02:15 minutes
Canal Point Elementary School, Okeechobee
Instructor: Anita Smith

Forbidden cigarette smoking often takes place in the boys' room in school. This video shows the messy aftermath of this behavior as well as how popular music validates smoking with songs such as "Smoking in the Boys Room."

Funeral for a Friend
Video
02:00 minutes
Canal Point Elementary School, Okeechobee
Instructor: Anita Smith

After students participated in activities designed to show how advertising can manipulate their perceptions and emotions, they produced a Public Service Announcement. This video offers a series of graveyard scenes in continuing succession, to which the viewer is invited, "compliments of big tobacco."

Smoking's Not Cool!!
Video
13:00 minutes
Kingswood Elementary School, Brandon
Instructor: Christine Charlton

Students demonstrate their knowledge of the hazards of tobacco products and second-hand smoke in this series of short skits. These students dramatize their understanding of persuasive messages by examining tobacco from a variety of perspectives: an interview with a smoker, and a scene in which students dramatize how to resist peer pressure to smoke.

Dorothy and the Heavy Puffers
Video
05:00 minutes
Central Florida Women's Caucus for the Arts, Altamonte Springs
Instructor: Judith Segall

The Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, the well-known characters from The Wizard of Oz, have fallen under the spell of the Wicked Witch. In this retelling of the familiar tale, the characters still lack courage, brains and heart-qualities they need in order to quit smoking. Dorothy reminds her friends that "it doesn't take a wizard" to know "you can stop if you just try hard enough."

Smoking Trivia 2000
Video
07:00 minutes
Kingswood Elementary School, Brandon
Instructor: Christine Charlton

When these students learned about the effects of tobacco and second-hand smoke in Artful Truth, they decided to put their knowledge to the test in this game-show video. Teams of contestants representing "Smokers" and "Non-Smokers" square off in a series of tobacco-related trivia questions. The "smokers" prove to be the losers in every round.

Sucked In
Video
08:00 minutes
Edgewater Public School, Edgewater
Instructor: Robert Miller

When the space alien Zerlock encounters a group of young people, he offers them "a harmless gift that will change your life and entertain you." Cigarette in hand, Joe Camel conjures visions of good times, fun and relaxation. They almost believe him, until they see for themselves the ugly consequences of his habit. "My ads are everywhere," he says, "and you just may be sucked in later when you least expect it!"