Artist Teaches Her Talents to Young Students

Suzanne Fierston has a classroom full of fifth-graders at her feet one recent Thursday absorbing a lesson on the shades of green. Don’t use only one watercolor crayon or pencil, she tells them; use several shades instead and blend them together.

Over the course of Fierston’s two-day lesson at the Center for the Highly Gifted at Clearspring Elementary School in Damascus, those greens will blend together with a palate of other colors to create scientific illustrations of plants common to colonial times.

In their regular course work, the students have been learning about the plants’ uses, economic impact, recipes and trivia. Through Fierston’s special lesson, the students will make a recipe, have a tasting and collect their illustrations into a booklet.

Clearspring is one of eight elementary schools in the county that host the program, which is designed to give advanced fourth- and fourth-graders a more stimulating curriculum.

“I like to draw nature,” said fifth-grader Robert Maxwell. “I like capturing that moment. You can look back and see its essence. It might be the last time you see it that way.”

“I love to draw and invent buildings,” said classmate Tabitha Fisanich. “I think drawing is important. It helps express what is inside. Drawing is a way to record history.”

Fierston has been working with the center’s fifth-graders since the beginning of the school year. She has been teaching them to “really see what is right in front of us” by “getting the kids outside.” The students have been observing and drawing trees and other plants around their school and in their backyards.

The students worked from printed images and learned that it is much more difficult to really study the plants that way.

Fierston is brought in by teachers who want creative ways to enrich the curriculum. The funding typically comes from grants or from PTAs.

She feels fortunate to have found “teachers that let me try out my ideas.”

The aim is to give students “a chance to succeed, not struggle; to do well,” Fierston said.

Fierston, who has lived in Montgomery Village for 20 years, has since 2005 been an artist-in-residence with the center at Clearspring, as well as its counterpart at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown.

Her involvement sprouted seven years ago, when her own daughter was in the Clearspring program. Fierston recalls that on the days her daughter worked with an artisit, she “came home happy and relaxed. It was a de-stresser for her.”

Fierston decided that she could do that. It has since turned into a range of projects, including:

A group of Clemente sixth-graders learned about the “emotional and seasonal meanings of colors” when their English class discussed the notion of utopia.

An eighth-grade project at Clemente, students are working with felting wool to represent abstract and symbolic thoughts.

A project at Silver Spring International Middle School, where students create works on their name, family and heritage.

Fierston also volunteers at Stedwick Elementary, where she has lead a leaf-printing project.

“The challenge is to find the right materials to fit the needs of the curriculum, to enhance the experience,” Fierston said.

In her own art, she prefers acrylics and watercolors.  She also does some landscape design and teaches non-fiction writing at John Hopkins University. Some of her work will be on display this fall at Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University.