Summer Break

I have been home for a week and a half now and I am busy getting ready for my big trip this summer.  This time next week I will be in London, England with 7 students for a 10 day European Vacation.  Of course before I can do that I need to be at Crooks Community Days for a fundraiser with my next Art Club Trip group.  So if your in the area on Saturday, come and have the art club paint your face or help you make a tye-dye shirt or socks.

Art History in a nutshell

To end my Art 1 class I give out the mother  of all Art assignments.  I give my high school students 2 and 1/2 weeks to put together a collage of 12 famous artists.  They have to research these artists, pick out their favorite artwork from these artists and then use one piece of their artwork to create their own art history collage.  They are given a sheet of about 50 artists to choose from plus a couple of blanks in case they find an artist that I have never heard of, but they love their work.  I encourage them to transfer these artwork pieces to photoshop where they can arrange their collage, print it off and use it as a grid to help them create the large 18x24 picture that they have to draw.  I strongly suggest getting the planning stages done in the first 4 days, however they never understand why.  For some reason they never get that it takes a good two weeks to draw the final project.

I do have other criteria.  They need to use at least 4 different mediums.  It needs to be arranged creatively, for instance, put a Degas Dancer on top of the Warhol soup can.  They also needed to write a paragraph per artist.  So that is a 12 paragraph paper, just in case you lost me.  In these papers they need to give the title of the work, the artist, one fact about the artist or painting, where they put the image in their collage and what medium they used to create it.  This year's class did pretty good, but next year I am going to require that they tell me which image they used out of the painting.  There were a few that I don't have a clue what they used.

All in all they did pretty good, and I think they put forth more effort this year than in past years so that is an accomplishment all in itself.

Sabrina L.

Joslynne S.

Kelsey C.

Emma J.

On another note.  I am about to have my last elementary class, and while I know it will be a busy 40 minutes (mostly because they are pumped about the last day) but I am ready to be done.  I am sure it will not hit me until the fall. 

The best for last...

For the end of the year I gave my painting/sculpture class a choice project for their final project.  I let them do anything they wanted, and they didn't disappoint.  Enjoy the last of their artwork.

Summer B.

Logan O.

Shayla B.

Carolyn H.

Chelsea A.

Justin U.

Style meets Function

I wanted my Painting/Sculpture class to learn that art isn't always just something you look at, it can also be beautiful and functional.  So what better thing to make then sandals for summer!!  Okay so maybe they won't wear very well outside (especially since they are made out of paper), but they can still be very stylish and functionable.  I will post pictures on the day we walk across the commons area with them.

Op Art Cubes

These op art cubes belong to the high school Art 1 class.  My only true rule was that they had to try to make them up on their own and not to copy from the internet.  So each side of the box should have a different design, except for the one student who decided to make the box look like ribbons that wrap from all sides.

What they know...

You spend all year trying to cram info and knowledge into their heads and you never know if it sticks or not, until you come to the final project.  For my final Art 1 project, I have the students do a very large Art History collage that they have to research for, and then re-create on paper.  I have them look up artwork from 12 artists that they have to arrange into one cohesive project.  At first they whine, mumble and complain but then they eventually get started.  This is where I am always shocked about what they remember.

All of a sudden I get questions like, "who was that artists that painted with the dots" and "who made the large sculptures" and "who painted that wavy sky with the big rock looking thing."  Some are harder to decifer what artist they are talking about others...that last one was Starry Night by the way.

But I am always amazed by the questions that are more just asking for reassurance that they are right like, "So was it Georgia O'keefe that painted the large flowers" and "Georges Seurat painted the Sunday Park picture, right?"  Well that one was close, but I am giving them points for getting that close.

Even though they may be disliking the final project, and dreading the drawing part of it, it is good to know that somewhere during the past nine months they learned something. 

Patience

How do we teach our students PATIENCE??  I have learned to walk away from a student who is frustrating my patience, but I am running really low with all of my high school art students who just want to tape everything together instead of just waiting a moment for glue to dry.  In some ways this is how technology has destroyed our kids. They live in an era where they have to have instant everything, and the process of waiting for glue to dry takes just too long.

How do I explain to them that the glue will dry in the time it takes them to take a couple of deep breaths and relax.