On Lok on 30th Street - Norma Block - Meandering Path, 2025, Watercolor and colored pencil on paper, 9x11
Description
Norma Block is from San Leandro, California. She taught 4th grade in Tokyo, and 4th and 5th grade in Boston, where she incorporated free-form art classes into her curriculum and used art as a way for students to illustrate facts. For a period of time, she also practiced the cello while working as a secretary.
She says, “I like learning new things, whether intellectual or artistic.” She has been participating in the Art With Elders class for two years. In her art, Norma likes to handle space, composition, and brushwork, and enjoys the freedom that art brings. She is also a musician and plays the piano at On Lok. Her work has a choreographed and dance-like quality in her line and counterpoised arrangements of color.
She enjoys going to museums, and her work is influenced by modern art. Visiting the Asian Art Museum has shown her possibilities she had not considered before.
Through the class, she has made many friends and discovered that “art is an international language.” She reflects that “life is not black and white but shades of grey.”
