poppin.

and lockin.

no, not really, but the 3rd graders ARE making some popsicle inspired art this week. We looked at the art of Sean Finocchio and the pop cart, Chiquita, of local pop shop Viva Pops as inspiration.

Sean is an LA based artist at 33 Stewart Avenue and makes art about what he sees in the neighborhoods around him. He likes to take different routes home from work to see new and interesting things. I love that! He likes to capture stuff that has a 70's flavor to it and as a child of that era, that holds a lot of appeal for me:)

Viva Pops is a local popsicle shop owned by Lisa Altmann. They have amazing pops, a cool spray paint mural in their shop, and a cute little cart called Chiquita.

The classes and I look at Sean's painting of a pop cart and the cart of Viva. We talk about what makes both images look 3d... the use of consistent diagonals.

We talk about seeing these types of carts in our neighborhoods and at framers markets. After that i explain that we'll use a pop cart as the focus of our project... and that we'll be using spray paint to help us create our work. At this point the kids tend to go a little bonkers:)

I share a finished example of the project and then I share one that isn't glued together so they can see the steps involved, in reverse.

The first thing we do is fold a 9x9 square into a triangle and then fold it again to quarter it. Then we draw a few, or more popsicles on the triangle. When students cut the shapes out, I ask them to save the cut out pieces so they may use them later. What's left is our stencil, basically a popsicle flavored snowflake:)

Then we go out and spray.

When we come back in, we draw the cart together on a smaller white sheet. Using cylinders and rectangular prisms to make our carts look 3d. When adding color to the carts, I ask students to press hard on one side of shapes and light on the other to make them look even more 3d.

Once the coloring is complete students cut out their carts and place them on their spray painted paper. They also arrange some of the pops they cut out  on top to make the composition even more engaging. I stress placing everything on the paper before starting to glue. This is their rough draft. If they are satisfied with what they have, then they glue everything in place. If not, they move stuff around until they like what they have.

I'm about halfway through the 3rd grade classes this week, the results have been really cool, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other classes do.

something sweet?

Popsicles and painting anyone?

There is a store in San Diego called Viva Pops. The owner, Lisa Altmann, makes the most delicious popsicles my family has ever tasted. We have been there a couple of times and the organic flavors she combines in her pops are just delightful.

In her store is a fantastic mural by local muralist, Isaias Crow and his collaborative team called  the Prizm Process. The painting takes up the entire length of the west interior wall of the store. It's as much a visual delight as Lisa's pops are a tasteful one.

The last time we visited, Lisa was kind enough to give me contact information for Isaias. I knew that I HAD TO do a project based on the mural with some of our students. We have been in touch several times, and it is my hope that we can have him visit Zamorano in the near future.

I showed the 4th grade students a number of murals Isaias has completed and they were blown away by the scale, the color, and the style of the works.

Isaias and his team use mostly spray paint and some acrylic paint to complete their large scale murals.

I then showed a few photos of the Viva Pops mural, both in process and complete. When I said we would be making a popsicle work there were roars. When I mentioned that we would use spray paint to add a finishing touch, mouths dropped.

Before jumping in, I also talked about Isaias's use of natural shapes in his work. This was a good contrast to the geometric shapes students used in the Dalek designs. We also identified that the popsicle flower looked more 3d than other parts of the mural because of the use of tints of colors to create areas of light and shadow. The students had used tints in their previous Dalek designs to add variety to their image, but not a 3 dimensional element. We also looked at the rotational symmetry present in the popsicle flower.

Instead of using complementary colors in this project I pointed out that we would use a color family, or an analogous color scheme, to start out with. The students would be able to add other colors later on in their images, but the large pop and flowers would be in a selected analogous color scheme.

The project was broken into to sessions. In the first, student made the large pop and flowers by using collage, cutting and gluing paper.

The second session involved adding pattern and decoration to the 2 flowers on the pop, creating the popsicle flower, and adding a spray paint pattern element at the end.

1. cut drippy popsicle bottom and glue to large base sheet

2. use a brown construction paper crayon to add one or two popsicle sticks

3. cut 2 or 3 slightly different size or shape flowers and add to large pop

4. add patterns to flowers using construction paper crayons

5. draw out pop flower, add color with crayons, pressing lightly to make tints

6. cut out pop flower and glue to big pop

7. cut wax paper stencil to add spray paint pattern element

8. spray paint pattern on to large pop 

The spray painting was done outside. Students placed pattern on their image and blocked out areas that they did not want painted. I did the spraying to facilitate consistency. The students loved seeing the gold on their projects. 

There could be class management issues wit this last step, since some students are outside, in line, or inside finishing up, but I was very pleased with how all the classes monitored themselves in the classroom. I think my classroom was the cleanest they have left it all year, and we used a lot of different supplies that needed to get picked up and re-sorted.