English teacher Suzanne Diffine and her eighth-grade students at Frederick Law Olmsted School #56 collaborated with poets from Just Buffalo Literary Center on this multi-arts project. The title was based on Virginia Woolf’s 1929 novel about what an artist needs in order to create her work and, playing on the metaphor of interior décor as interior life, the students produced work that voiced their dreams, desires, hopes and fears. In addition, the students read Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” which inspired their own poetry. Encouraged to experiment, the students produced a room full of furniture and objects painted periwinkle blue, covered with poems in acid-green lettering about what binds them and what sets them free. Diffine described the project as “a successful merging of the student’s interior and exterior experiences. The creative engagement in the learning process helped them to shape their abilities, as they realize their own lives more fully, and more critically.” The entire room was installed at the University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery in June. Vignettes from the room and many of the students’ self-portraits were presented at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Project sponsors included the New York State Council on the Arts’ Empire State Partnership Program, the Olmsted Home/School Association, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.