art ed digested

Here are some thumbnails of the finished tapestries on the loom, with and without embellishments. The images on the left are from the elementary students, the ones on the right are from preschool.

Our One-Drawing-A-Day exhibition was even more successful than I could have hoped. Jazz music filled the air, students and their parents mingled with teachers and sipped sparkling grape juice. Each participant had a comment sheet next to their work, and our guests were specific and generous with their compliments and comments. I am so proud of everyone who took the challenge!

_{Photo Copyright © Sarah Haskell}

Sarah Haskell has just arrived at Kingsley to begin her Artist-In-Residence weaving for the month of February. The students at the preschool building went wild for the new loom and the colorful materials we’ll be using.  It’s always exciting to see very young students dive into an array of bright, textured mixed media materials… despite the minor chaos that ensues.  I enjoyed making little clothespin people with the elementary students and watching the details they chose to add. One student gave her clothespin person a mohawk made of felt, another made a shirtless boy with a fishing pole, and one even made a  scooter out of pipe cleaners and shirt buttons for her clothespin person to ride.

I started a time-lapse video of the whole process, and will be slowly compiling two movies, one for the preschool building and one for the elementary building. We’ll see if I’ve got enough gigs on my laptop to continue this for the next two and a half weeks! If I can pull it off, it should be a lot of fun to watch, although I won’t be able to share it on the web, for the privacy of my lovely students.

This is a group of finished gargoyles made by the second grade, and I still cannot get over how amusing they are! I’ve taken them out over and over the past few days and just giggled.

More remarkable, is that some of the most grotesque of the gargoyles were made by the students who are very soft-spoken and sweet tempered. This makes me wonder what’s going on under that serene demeanor! Kids are complicated creatures.

We have just completed our Hundertwasser Illuminated Landscape project, in which students abstracted the forms of a landscape drawing to warp and twist it into something dream-like and surreal. They then applied their knowledge of color theory to working the drawing in oil pastels, finally using gold paint to add small areas of emphasis.

I love introducing Hundertwasser to students who have never seen his work before.  Without fail there are awed “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” throughout the room.  These oil pastels, however, give me the same emotion.

I love looking at these, the combination of saturated color, black background and gold highlights is so rich!

For full sized images, check out the flickr gallery.

Check the flickr link to the right for more work!

Download:

And now, as promised, some wonderful paintings by my first graders:

Our third graders started their stop-motion preparations today, making backdrops, creating storyboards and dance moves for their puppets. Here’s a very quick example that using one of the student puppets and my demo puppet:

(includes what not to do- my hands make too many cameos! must practice more!)

I’ve been adjusting my teaching style for my new students, who are aged 3.5-4 years old. Behavior and progress are very abstract concepts to them, so it is difficult to keep a my students aiming towards a goal throughout the day.

This chart has been very helpful so far in inspiring students to try their best all day. Each dolphin starts in the sand, and is moved up a level to the coral, seaweed, bubbles, and finally jumps out of the water each time a student does a good job listening, helping friends, cleaning up etc. When their dolphin jumps out of the water they are rewarded with a special sticker, activity or job to perform.

September is always exciting to me, especially when I begin to plan my day-to-day lessons.

This year I’ll be teaching pre-school, ages 3.5 to 4.  While it is not art, I believe this position will be energizing, rewarding and challenging.  I look forward to finding new ways to present information and facilitate exploration for younger children.  This particular age seems to be effortlessly affectionate as well as curious and open to new experiences.

What more can a teacher ask for? I know I’ll be coming home from work with a smile on my face this year.

Art camp is progressing more smoothly lately, both in behavior and in creative energy. I’ve noticed that with the growing camper roster, each child seems more comfortable trying new things and working beyond the baseline to make their artwork outstanding.

I theorize that within a larger group dynamic, the individual egos and self-consciousness of children slowly dissolve. The spotlight is shared, and thus they feel free to improvise and innovate without the stagefright.