Skateboard artist preaches perspective during Hillside Elementary visit

• Artist and students

Mark Rivard, Minneapolis skateboard artist, (right) is a spokesman for Sharpie pens, which he uses to draw his art. Fifth-grade art class students used also use them to draw on a group-drawn board. Students (from left) are Andrew Van Horn, Neyeli Pallas-Yllescas and Cristal Ramirez. Bulletin photo by Judy Spooner

Talk about it

Getting the right perspective was the job of Hillside Elementary School students when they recently had skateboard artist Mark Rivard as a guest in art classes taught by Shannon Opichka.

Students watched a video of Rivard’s art and his life before he visited their classes recently every morning for a week. Opichka’s art assignment was to combine learning two-point perspective with cityscapes that Rivard includes in his art.

All the fifth-grade students also got a chance to work on a class project to decorate a skateboard with cityscapes.

Fifth-graders also drew cityscapes on mini-versions of paper skateboards and added their own interpretations.

Giselle Nunez added clouds to her cityscape and Jasmine Davis added a lot of detail by drawing in bricks.

“I’m a great artist,” said Robyn Phillips. “If it has anything to do with Sharpies, I’ll do it.”

Rivard is a spokesman for Sharpie pens, which he uses to draw his art.

Alyssa Aaby has learned how to compensate for the distance between the lumpy end of a Sharpie pen and the pencil line she drew on. Aaby is considering becoming an architect.

To frame Rivard’s autograph, Dakiria Acosta decorated the edges of a sheet of paper with scallops and flowers.

Students asked Rivard about his skiing career before he became an artist.

“I was chasing my dream to become a professional skier,” he said, but was injured numerous times.

“I broke a lot of things,” he said, adding that while recovering, he re-discovered his love of drawing and began by decorating a skateboard in 2003.

Tags: elementary schools, updates, education