Saturday, June 6, 2015

who needs the gym when you have a slab roller?

Ab and arm toner 2.0

The 3rd graders have been working with clay the past 2 weeks as part of their texture unit. This project was inspired by ceramic guru John Post and his robot jar project. I started out by introducing texture and then we looked at a few jars that John did with his students and looked at the different ways the texture of the clay was altered. I also talked about how the students would need to change the texture of their clay to add on any parts. They would have to score parts (rough up the texture) and add slip to glue parts together.
John's examples.

John used an extruder to make the cylinders for his jars and parts. We do have an extruder, but it hadn't been used in a few years, so when I went to use it (the morning of the first lesson;) I ran into some technical difficulty. So, we ended up using the good ol' slab roller to make lots of thin rectangular prisms to make our cylinders. Whew... as long as you alternate sides when you crank the clay through, it's a pretty darn good ab and arm workout all week long. It brought back memories of my days as a textile screen printer when, after pulling a squeegee all day on some pretty demanding projects, I promptly went to bed right after dinner... but I digress;)

Once students made their cylinders, they were free to add any parts that would make their robot/creature interesting. I emphasized decorating the whole form and not just the front. I  modeled several ways to stack different size parts and I also showed them how they could press tools into the clay to change it's surface and add more decoration. 



I had students construct their parts as a group and then add them to their cylinder, in order to give that shape a little time to stiffen up. 

This week, the 3rd graders glazed their pieces. I let them use a variety of colors. I emphasized making sure to put on 2 or 3 layers of glaze, so their pieces had the proper gloss and color intensity.



she got this technique from me;)

Students move from table to table to glaze.

This week, the kinders also got to play with a little more clay... and I got to continue my slab roller workout regiman;) Last week they made paper mosaics inspired by the work of Jim Bachor and this week they made tiles for real mosaics for each classroom. 

This kinder project was inspired by the clay work of Amy Sanders, who creates sculptural objects with different slabs of textured and patterned clay. 



Each student got 3 pieces of clay- a small square, medium rectangle, and a large square. We used pencils and legos to change the texture of each piece of clay. They used just the pencil on the small, just lego on the medium, and both on the large. The kids thought this was SO cool... especially the lego part:) I showed them different ways to hold each tool to make different types of marks. I emphasized pressing soft enough so that they didn't punch all the way through the clay. 

When they were done and had earned center time, I trimmed the pieces and assembled a classroom arrangement for the mosaic. With each class, we actually made more tiles than we needed, but I made sure to include at least 2 tiles or 2 parts of tiles from each student in the mosaic. 

My plan is to have 1st graders glaze these pieces next week and assemble them on backing board, thin set, and grout the week after that. We may sell a couple as a school fundraiser and others could be installed to add public art to our new kinder building which, as of now, is a blank slate...
from start to finish.


ELA connection.

 4 of 7 class mosaics. each is 2' square.


One last thing... I shared the kinder popsicle project with Jim Bachor and he was thrilled! He was kind enough to send me some postcards and stickers and I promptly used them to recognize kids that had been super respectful during their time with me. He also sent a shirt along to trade with one kindergarten student. The student got a shirt and Jim will get their paper mosaic to hang in his art studio:) So rad!

 proud!

Super stoked!





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