Teaching Artist Gabe Andres Receives 2022 Katie Kurcz Memorial Fund Award

Gabe Andres, who joined Snow City Arts last summer, is a visual artist who blends painting and drawing with a wide range of media, including animation and music. Gabe is also a prolific collaborator with other artists, and believes strongly in the power of art to build community. With his Katie Kurcz Memorial Fund (Kurcz Fund) project, he aims to create similar opportunities for our students at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

To start, Gabe will use the Kurcz Fund to build a Multimedia Hub at Lurie—a portable collection of technology and resources including a 3D printer, a sound mixer, a green screen and camera, and more. These tools will be gathered onto a moveable console that will enable students to use them regardless of where they are: in their hospital room, in the Panda Cares Center of Hope (Lurie’s flexible space for patients and families), or wherever they’re making art that day. Gabe is working closely with the hospital’s technology director to ensure the Hub meshes with all the hospital’s spaces and policies, making it even easier for students to access.

Once students get their hands on these tools, the sky’s the limit! They can work with a teaching artist to create almost anything: a song, a 3D model, even an original animation. With support from a teaching artist, the tools themselves are fairly simple for students to use themselves, allowing them to follow their artistic impulses.

“I’m envisioning a museum of student sculptures, a loop of student animations, maybe even having students do artist talks about what they created.”

Gabe also looks forward to collaborating with his fellow SCA teaching artists to help them learn how they can use the new equipment to facilitate student learning and exploration. 

“My goal is always to help students to master something as quickly as possible,” says Gabe. “Then, they can just … create!”

The most exciting piece for Gabe is that once a student creates a project with the Hub, they can choose to leave an electronic copy behind for others to use. By creating a kind of “inspiration library” of other students’ work, young artists can build upon the work of others to create something entirely new. This creates opportunities for students to more easily collaborate with one another, even if they can’t be in the same space.

“If Johnny writes a poem, then Rebecca could take that poem and write a song, and then Rob might make an animation from the song,” says Gabe. “It’s a way to structure student-led impulses within a framework of technology. ”

Animation by Logan, age 11, created in a workshop with Gabe.

The possibilities with these new tools are literally endless, and Gabe is eager to see what students will be most excited about.

“I’m envisioning a museum of student sculptures, a loop of student animations, maybe even having students do artist talks about what they created,” he says. Down the line, Gabe is also interested in the possibility of facilitating potential collaborations with other professional artists: “It’s all about what the students are interested in.”

The Katie Kurcz Memorial Fund at Snow City Arts was established in 2017 to honor Katie Kurcz, our beloved friend, former Auxiliary Board Member, and fierce advocate for Snow City Arts. Following Katie’s passing in 2017, her family established the Kurcz Fund to provide support for Snow City Arts teaching artists to deepen their artistic practice and create new learning opportunities to our students. We are grateful for the support of Katie’s family and all donors to the Kurcz Fund.

Make a donation to the Kurcz Fund today!