it's a block party!

This year’s annual 1st week “almost whole school” collaborative is up in the auditorium. All our 2nd thru 5th grade classes contributed to the success of this large scale public art installation in our auditorium.

I’m going to keep this short and simple because I plan on writing it up more in detail soon for an upcoming Arts & Activities piece as part of my “Alive and Kicking” article series that focuses on using contemporary art as inspiration for your visual art curriculum.

The inspiration for this activity was a block party” quilt by Corinne Sovey- a graphic designer and quiltmaker based in Austin, Texas. 

With this activity, my students had about 20 minutes to design a quilt square that used the geometric elements found in Corinne’s quilt- with the addition of one more as well. After briefly going over my class rules and regs, I introduce the quilt and we identify the shapes in it. After that, we get busy making.

Each student starts with a 6x6 white square, 3 analogous color 3x3 squares, and a black or dark grey 2x3 rectangle. As classes roll through, the colors that are out for them gradually transitions- I usually start with yellows and move thru the spectrum until we end up back at yellow. I had plans for something a little different this year, but it didn’t happen;) The activity provides some student decision making opportunities while also working within certain design constraints.

1- students fold the white square into quarters and are reminded that they can place only one color in each of the quarters

2- students select one colored square to leave as is and place it in one of the white quarters

3- students select one color to turn into a triangle shape. They hold it like a diamond and cut from the bottom corner to the top. They get rid of one piece and place the triangle in one of the white quarters. I model rotating the triangle in different directions in different squares

4- with the remaining colored square, students have a choice- they may use a cardboard stencil to turn it into a quarter circle or they may cut it into rectangles. They take the shape or shapes and place in another white quarter. Again, experimenting with rotation and if using rectangles, they should only use them vertically or horizontally.

5- the final black rectangle is cut into a minimum of 2 rectangles and placed in the last white quarter. Again, attempting to limit themselves to vertical and horizontal positioning.

6- once they have all their parts, I encourage them to look at their arrangement and decide whether it is satisfying. If they need to move pieces, they may.

7- then they glue the pieces down

8- when that’s done, they flip the paper and put glue on the back and head on back to our assembly table

9- students place and press their quilt squares on a large 24x36 white sheet of paper. I encourage them to look at the placement of the other student pieces and respond to it. They may decide the bottom of their design looks better at the top, or they might want to rotate it a quarter turn to join in a more interesting way with another quilt square.

As classes roll thru, I place the working collaborative on my floor, so students can start to get an idea of the overall effect and color transition.

When all classes are done, it install it in the auditorium. The use of 24x36  pieces makes these things much more easy to transport:)

And boom! So many kids have work on display and the install celebrates the elements of unity and variety as well as the community and diversity of our elementary school. 

 

exploring shape with mr. smith

My 3rds have been experimenting with collage and geometric and natural shapes over the past couple weeks. They first created robot collages that focused on symmetry, geometric shapes, 3d shapes, and color value.

The next week they looked at the work of Tom Abbiss Smith as inspiration for a second round of collage work. Tom is a UK based artist who creates digital collages that smartly play with the juxtaposition of natural and geometric and positive and negative shapes. We noticed geometric shapes similar to those we used in the robot designs and also noticed how much he uses a variety of plant shapes in his work. Looking at his art allowed students to contrast between cut and torn edges as well- we talked about how the torn edges can give shapes a more natural feel. We also saw how he used a cut out shape AND the leftover (digital:) paper elsewhere in certain designs.

After viewing and talking about Tom's work, students were ready to play and create their own compositions. I emphasized play here because working with collage lets you move pieces around to different spots before gluing, so that you can see the possibilities that different arrangements may hold.

Students selected a background color and each one started with a large sheet of black and white paper to create natural shapes from. I left a few of Tom's images on my big screen so kids that were stumped to start could borrow from his shape vocabulary. As they started drawing and cutting, I passed out 3 more sheets of colored paper. When doing this, I guided color selection a bit, responding to the color of the background color each student chose.

After about 25 minutes, students could start to lock down compositional elements with glue sticks.

Most students did not finish in one hour, so they saved any paper they might need when they came back. This week has been parent conference week and my schedule has some flexibility in it, so I was able to bring each class back for a 30 minute session to finish and reflect on the 2 shape projects. It was interesting to see how much or how little students added to their designs with this extra time. Some that I thought were near done, continued to add and add, while others had a more minimal aesthetic.

They wrapped up the process by completing an exit slip that had them comparing and contrasting the 2 projects and describing which piece they liked more and why.

I absolutely love the variety in these pieces. There was a really intriguing range of style from figurative landscapes, to figurative abstractions, to more nonobjective pieces.

cutting with kinders!

The kinders have started their second rotation with me this week and they are cutting and gluing with me for the first time... and it is going wonderfully!

So many of the kids are doing a fantastic job of holding, opening/closing, and following their drawn lines. This is not necessarily the case every year, so a big shout out to kindergarten teachers and families that have got these little ones on their way:)

I'm using the work of Marcos Roman as the inspiration for this project. I've used his work before with a couple different grade levels. He recently did a series of mask portraits for #inktober and has been posting them on instagram as he makes them. We focus on one image in particular and look at how he uses round shapes (ovals) , how he decorates them with patterns, and how one of the shapes looks like a face. We then go through and identify the various face parts in the collage Marco made.

To start the project, I actually pre-draw the oval/egg face shape. We go through and add the face parts and patterns with a pencil (or white color stick if on black paper). I encourage the kids to make choices with each step- what shape will they use for the nose? the ears? the mouth?, and so on.

The classes working on white paper then use a marker to make the lines bold and those working on black go over their lines with white once more.

Students then draw an oval as big as they can on primary color sheets of paper and add line patterns to each.

Then we are ready to cut! I model how to hold the scissors, opening & closing, and using the hand holding the paper to turn it as we cut. Once everything is cut out, we plan where the primary color shapes will go and then where the face will go. I model using a gluestick, how to raise the glue level, how to do the gluing on the paper and not the table surface, and hold to press the parts on.

When everything is done and kids have cleaned up, some classes have had enough time to collaboratively build a few sentences that explain what we did for their teachers. This has been a great way to get many kids involved in using the vocabulary of the day:)

being positive with adrian.

For their 2nd rotation of the year (2 classes), the 4ths explored positive and negative shapes in art. The first project was inspired by illustrations British designer and illustrator Adrian Johnson did for an article titled "You Don't Need to Shout". I have been a fan of Adrian's work for some time. I love his use of shape and color in his engaging compositions. The way I have been spinning the content of the article is that it is an anti-bully piece. You don't need to be aggressive or hostile to get people to like you or to be loyal to you. You can go about it in ways that are much more kind.

After discussing how Adrian has subverted military vehicles or weapons in these illustrations by having them fire items much more cheerful and happy in nature, we address his use of positive and negative shapes in them. We look at the balance between the space the shapes take up compared with the background shape.

Students were then tasked with creating images that were inspired by Adrian's message and use of shapes, but not direct copies of them. To assist students, I provided a handout with some vehicles on it. That way they had more info about the actual shapes and details of these things instead of relying on memory. If they wanted, they could use a different weapon shape and those students could pull up a photo on my computer if they needed more detailed reference images.

Students were to complete at least 2 sketches and then write a sentence that explained why they were choosing one of them for their final design. I asked students to include 2 elements- their vehicle and at least 7 items being shot out of that thing.

Once they were done with this part, they drew out their weapon/vehicle on another piece of white paper. They were to draw it as big as possible and cut it out so they could glue it on a gray piece of background paper.

Students then selected colored pieces of paper to create the objects being fired or launched in their designs. I encouraged them to use a variety of sizes to reinforce a sense of 3d space in their relatively flat collages. We also talked about having the shapes expand outward- going from small to large in a triangle or wedge shape. When they finished cutting and gluing, they could go in with colorsticks to add details to their weapons or happy shapes to make parts more interesting.

Students wrapped up this project by identifying the specific pos/neg shapes in their designs and to think of something they would do differently if they could and why.

The Adrian Johnson project took roughly one class and an additional 20 minutes in the second class to complete. With the extra time (about 40 minutes), we did another collage project that continued to focus on positive and negative shapes. For this I introduced them to a collage done by cut paper artist Eiko Ojala.

Students selected 3 sheets of paper- black, gray, and one color. I demonstrated how to draw a light post, how to measure the light beam, and how to assemble them all together. The choice of character, light post shape, sky details were entirely up to the kids.