Wednesday, April 29, 2015

off and rubbing!

We're back! After 4 weeks of spring break, it feels real good to get back in the class and working with our kiddos:)

All grade levels will be focusing on texture as their next unit of study, so I was able to tie in our visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West for the project. Hello, tax write off! ;)

I've been sharing photos of my family's spring break trip with the kids and then getting into the focus of the lesson. I think it's always good to give students a peek into what we do when we don't have our teaching hats on.
The inspiration for the project is the above mosaic done by Clare Boothe Luce (who was a fascinating trailblazer on so many levels in her lifetime). It hangs in FLW's living room space. We look at the different materials that she used to create the artwork- stones, wood, saguaro and chollas cacti ribbing, deer antler and how these were materials that were native to the location of the house. I ask them to describe what this piece would feel like if they were able to touch it. Then we talk about how other things around us feel.

With this project I want students to experience texture and see how it can create patterns in art. Each class starts with 5 sheets of colored paper (I'm having classes use different sets of analogous colors to create variety in visual displays later on. Since I see half classes, each class will have 2 different color schemes to hang in their classrooms and I'll have a nice range to display elsewhere.) They use colorsticks to rub the texture patterns onto their paper- the textures loosely represent our San Diego climate/landscape- flowers, palm tree leaves, ocean waves, tree bark, and desert rocks. 

The energy is quite palpable during class, as the kids "discover" the patterns created by the texture plates. This aspect of texture rubbings never gets old for me to witness and listen too:)

Once they have colored all 5 sheets, I give them a backing paper to arrange their pieces on. At this point, they can cut and rearrange the color shapes to create a unique composition. We have been sticking mostly with geometric shapes in the designs.


I don't give the kids any glue until they have their entire composition laid out. I do this to encourage play- moving pieces around and trying out different arrangements.



This one is so elegant in terms of color shifts and line quality:)



I just love the energy of this one. How the student broke from the frame to give it 
a more sculptural feel.







 Really digging the way the triangles float over the cloud like forms below them.



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