The assignment was excellent, and the results are wonderful.

Sue Silverstein’s Bishop Gibbons Art and Photography Class are producing some of the most exciting and creativity-conceived photographs I’ve seen anywhere, let alone from high school students, most of whom are taking their first pictures.

Sue shows us what young minds can do, given encouragement and support. In the Tik-Tok era, it’s fashionable to bemoan kids today, the calling card of Old Fartism. These kids and the Bishop Gibbons Art Program are putting a lie to this.

The art program is a powerful example of a community coming together for good – Sue, the Army Of Good, me, Maria, the students, her school, and the scores of good people across the country who sent materials, clothes, and discarded objects. It is beautiful to see what all these different parts can do together.

I hardly know any of the donors or even where they live. The blog is our joint meeting ground, our communications center.

People are eager to do well, given a chance; this is the true heart of America. We are changing lives, from tuition to clothing to encouragement and attention. Our small acts of kindness have provided great opportunities to people who need a helping hand.

Many thanks to the donors and to Bishop Gibbons for supporting creativity.

Paying homage to a western saloon.

The assignment of Sue is all about imagination and creativity; the idea is to choose among the many donated vintage garments and look at fashion culture in America and how it has changed and changed us.  She encourages her students to make their own choices, think for themselves, and trust their instincts—important lessons for life.

They can celebrate it and spoof it or find a dark side. Elizabeth and Jordan put together the very striking photo above.

The students have to step in the shoes and clothes of others and imagine lives different from theirs in almost every way.

Maria and I are heading to Bishop Gibbons tomorrow with a carload of art supplies and donated things we’ve been saving until the storms stop. I will congratulate these creative spirits in person; I’m looking forward to going, and so is Maria. The winter storms have kept us away.

Sue doesn’t want people to buy things for the art class; she’s looking for discarded, forgotten, or unwanted objects, from clothes to wood to acrylic paint to canvases for painting, vintage clothing, unwanted jewelry,  photo paper, puzzles, and toys. She and her students will turn them into art.

The address is Sue Silverstein, Bishop Gibbons High School, 2600 Albany Street, Schenectady, N.Y., 12304. Thanks so much for supporting this unique and radical art program; Sue tells me that she couldn’t do any of it without you every day.

Below, Noah also takes a comically dark look at fashion culture – not the hand chopped off by the paper cutter below. Looking at a mink stole differently.

I’m astonished at the inventiveness and imagination being unleashed in this art class. Noah has a very creative dark side.

Another scary hand