On Sunday, January 15 (Noon to 5 p.m.), pay what you wish all day at the High Museum of Art. Adult, children, seniors, and students may pay whatever they wish for admission during regular Museum hours. Go out and see the Picasso to Warhol show while you still can!
Do you know about Paper Slide Videos? Paper Slide Videos are a quick, low-tech way to create a video. Students and teachers can use them to create projects based on specific themes they are learning in class. They also make great assessments! Google this idea and you will not be disappointed.
Here is a PSV I made today with another art teacher in our Technology Leadership Forum. I love learning new ideas I can apply in my classroom instantly. We made this in about 1/2 an hour and it is a short biography of Jackson Pollock. What do you think? Would you use this idea in your classroom?
Fun! Fun! Fun! That is my take away from the Dale Chihuly sculpture lesson I just finished with my 3rd graders. They loved studying his work and using it as the inspiration for their own sculptures. We looked at Chihuly's work and after our initial discussion on the differences between form and shape we watched a video of Dale Chihuly making a piece of art from his Macchia series. It was great for the students to see first hand how a piece of blown glass art is made.
Students then planned their piece of sculpture using colors and spontaneous drawing the way Chihuly does.
When students were done planning they transferred their designs to white coffee filters using washable markers. Macchia means spotted or stained in Italian and that was the basis of the inspiration for Chihuly and my students. When their coffee filter designs were complete they used paint bottles to form their free form sculptures.
When they had their sculptures in the form they wanted we sprayed them with spray starch and left them to dry!
They were then mounted on some matt board scraps in order to be displayed.
I think they are stunning and my little artists are so proud of their work! Want a fun sponge activity using technology for your students? Go here!
I love to plan art lessons around some of the great shows that are going on locally at The High Museum of Art. Right now there is a great show featuring works from The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Having grown up on Long Island I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to go to MOMA many times, but I never get tired of seeing these amazing paintings! The show is called "Picasso to Warhol - Fourteen Modern Masters" and I am trying to teach many of these artists to my students this year. Kindergarten studied Jasper Johns!
Here are just a few of our finished pieces. They are all on display as a big installation in our front hallway.
There is nothing I enjoy more than painting with my students. I would paint all day every day if I didn't have such a rigorous curriculum to cover. I just finished a Folk Art lesson with my 1st graders. We studied the art of John "Cornbread" Anderson. Cornbread was born and raised right here in Georgia. Growing up on a 40 acre farm, he spent a lot of time exploring the fields and woods around him. He fondly remembers his yard full of guinea hens and the wash tub near the wood-burning stove where his Mother cooked all of their meals during his childhood. You can see his memories of his childhood reflected in his paintings today. Students were inspired by his subject matter and created paintings of their own. Look for their use of horizon line and how well they used shapes to create their animals.
My K, 1st, and 2nd grade art students are knee deep in our 3D clay unit. It is a fun time and the students are really enjoy it. Right now we are studying the artist Yayoi Kusama in 1st grade. Do you know anything about this Princess of Polka Dots? She uses repetition as the focus for her art installations - making many of the same thing with the same design!
This art lesson focuses on creating ceramic objects using pinch construction and textured surface design. Look at their pumpkin forms below. Can you see the texture?
When our pumpkins are fired we will glaze them with polka dots inspried by Kusama!
Isn't this narwhal just the cutest thing? I have always had a fondness for narwhal. I love them so much I think my kids should all make narwhal projects from now until the end of time. Or.....maybe this statement is just merely silly. Why would my students want to make projects about something that is important to ME? Why wouldn't they want to make art projects about things they love? As a teacher who is fortunate to see many other art teachers teaching on a regular basis I often find myself asking the question - where has the creativity gone?
It's gone to the birds. I think I may scream if I see another owl project! No offense to owls everywhere. But why owls? Do these projects teach texture? Are we studying the order Strigiformes and then using our new found knowledge to do a John Homes Audubon lesson? In most cases I would say "no"! I think teachers are teaching owls just to make owls - they're cute and the clay ones are easy for the students to make. If you were actually studying Audubon would it be a far stretch to let your students choose their own bird subject? Would it change the lesson on texture if you did?
I know I am on my soapbox tonight and for that I apologize but...as art educators I think we have a responsibility to promote creativity in our classrooms. I cannot tell you how many times a day a student asks me "like this?" about a project I am teaching. It is not that my directions are unclear that this question is asked, rather it is because my lesson is open for choices to be made and for creativity to happen. By 2nd grade students are already uncomfortable with that concept! They want to be told what it is supposed to look like and exactly how to make something. How did this happen? Ask yourself (and I will too!) that question the next time you see your students making the proverbial "owl" in your classroom and then see if you can create narwhals instead.
.JPG)
Posts
