May 2007

Two MacDowell artists and 33 local children will come together to present their collaborative work at the Peterborough Players for the culmination of the 2006-2007 MacDowell Downtown season. Filmmaker Sandro Del Rosario and composer Caroline Mallonee have been working with local students since early March on a short animated film — one of seven Peterborough Projects commissioned by the Colony to engage the local community in the process of making and enjoying contemporary art during its centennial year. “The idea was to make a short experimental film with animation and sound entirely created by the students,” says Del Rosario, who, along with Mallonee, guided the students through the process while providing basic technical information and support in their respective fields.

Working with three separate groups twice a week for a period of six weeks, Del Rosario and Mallonee engaged the students in creative exercises to get them thinking about the theme of cultural identity and place. “We helped them work to develop an awareness of what it meant to them,” Del Rosario explains. Composed of three separate age ranges, the groups — which included Amy Iwanowicz’s fourth-grade class and Amy Wilson’s seventh-grade class from The Well School, as well as 11th- and 12th-grade art students from ConVal — had very different ideas, and very different ways of expressing them. The end result of the exercises were varied, and included such things as a house and school made of Lincoln Logs, two-dimensional drawings, paper animal cutouts, collages, audio interviews, watercolors, short animated pieces, and a music video — all of which have been incorporated in the process of pulling together the 10-minute animated film.

Image of local children working with artists


Del Rosario and Mallonee, who met while in residence at MacDowell last year, were inspired to apply for a Peterborough Project based on previous experiences both had working with children. “I had an incredible experience working with a group of teenagers last year,” says Del Rosario, who decided it might be interesting to work with children of different ages this time. He approached Mallonee — who spends her summers teaching music composition at The Walden School in Dublin — and she readily agreed to be part of the project. “It’s been exciting,” says Del Rosario, “because we love what we do, we love children, and we love MacDowell.”

In addition to screening the completed film at MacDowell Downtown, Del Rosario and Mallonee will show some “behind-the-scenes” footage, and talk about the labor-intensive process of animation. After the screening, students who participated in the project will join Del Rosario and Mallonee on stage for a Q&A session with the audience. Artwork created by the students for the project will also be on display.