Fall Classes Posted Soon

yesterday

today

I am back from the ocean!

Stay tuned for information about the fall. After school Fall classes will start in October for children from Kindergarten to middle school. The schedule will be posted in the second half of August. I will have an Open House in September. Look in the Arlington Community Ed Catalogue for the adult blockprinting course I will be teaching.

We had a busy and productive July at A Room for Art. See previous post.

Summer Art Camp 2010

The Summer is for immersion in the Elements: WATER, SUN, EARTH and AIR! So here at a Room for Art that was our guiding principle. Each week was inspired by one of the elements.We played with and made products from related materials. We found or made up games somehow related to our themes. Art projects were mixture of 2D and 3D work.

Week 1 Water

We were lucky to have this theme during this very hot week! Water is Good! Children are drawn to liquid. They play with paint, water, soap as artists and scientists learning about the properties of each. It is very useful for an artist to know these physical properties: water molecules are sticky, water flows down hill, the surface of water has tension, different paint moves differently, there are a finite number of layers of tempera you can apply to a piece of paper with out ripping it(this is tested regularly). Painting as a child is about watching paper and paint interact and being amazed by how the colours, the texture, the layers appear as the brush, sponge, fingers are moved in different ways

-water play with tubes and funnels

-big bubbles using string frames

-ice races

-atomizer games at the park

-blue mix collaborative painting

-tempera paint monoprints on plexiglass

-watercolour and crayon resist fish paintings

-papier mache fish

Week 2 Sun/Light

Light and Shadow play a major role in most art. Anything visual is dependent upon light. This week we played with looking at light: how it creates colours in a soap film, how light travels through transparent materials and does not for opaque, how objects create varied shadows outside and played with a shadow screen by making our own silhouette puppets

-light table free play

-big bubbles

-shadow drawings turned into mixed media paintings: pastel and watercolour

-sun paintings using hot colours

-papier mache suns, read excerpt of science book describing composition of our important star, the sun

-food colour mix

-3D construction with transparent materials

-shadow puppets: create characters from Native tale How Grandmother Spider Stole the Sun

-perform the play for parents

Week 3 Earth

The decomposers under rotting ash logs in the back yard were a great inspiration this week. Looking for these tiny, sometimes quick moving, creatures encouraged everybody to look closely. Drawing them was another opportunity to observe. They may be small but they are major players in the creation of soil! They also have fascinating bodies so different from people's. Most artists depend on nature for their inspiration either directly or indirectly.

Using clay as a play medium is a favourite of mine. It allows children to build on a large scale, experiment, stay loose, not expect a finished product, learn about the medium and tell stories. It is kinetic and tactile and tenacious. You can use force with it and it talks back!

-decomposer search in backyard: slugs, millipedes, centipedes, pill bugs, earthworms

-sketch what we find, read A Pill Bug's Life

-read A Log's Life about the recycling of plant material by decomposers

-free play clay- build big with potter's clay, reuse clay

-Read The Salamander Room, model sculpey salamanders

-Paint tempera backgrounds for the salamanders to 'hide in'

-ramps and balls outside (gravity play)

-sew nature journals

-built the earth's surface collaboratively with clay: water, forest, mountains

-plaster casts with clay moulds

-cave paintings like early man: made a rock coloured background with tempera, used charcoal to create a hunted animal

Week 4 Air

We barely scratched the surface of this theme. There is so much beauty in in things that use the air for movement. The wind in the sail of a ship, a bird in flight, a floating bubble, a mobile. we looked at a lot of bird images this week, tried to see the simple shapes that make up the shape of a bird. We played with air through experiments with straws, balloons and streamers. Our big project was the marionette. The construction required a lot of time and unfortunately we only started to experiment with making the marionettes move. I think there is a lot of promise in making functional art, especially the kind that supports the imaginative play of children

-bubble domes on plexiglass- homes for plastic animals

-straw painting- using air to move paint

-worked into dry straw paintings with watercolour and pastel

-bird bas reliefs with cardboard and tempera paint

-air experiments: lift and suction

-sound games

-bird cut paper collages

-papier mache marionettes with cloth bodies- characters that fly

-sew journals called Looking UP- sky sketches, face sketches for puppet

-ramps and balls- giant marble runs

-sky paintings: mix a set of colours- monochromatic blue abstract

Games at the Park: A reason to Run!

-Giant's Cave

-Hawk is Watching

-Car Wash

-Colour Search

-Turtle Egg search

-Element Game

-Bat and Moth

-Oh Deer

-Maple Seed Mix Up

-Birds and Worms

-Hot Potato

-Shadow Tag

-Hide and Seek

Building Big at Bishop

For an invitation to view all the pictures email annwynne@verizon.net

Bishop Clay Project June 9-11, 2010

For three days I had the privilege to work with Ms Martin and all the students at Bishop School on a clay project designed to give students the opportunity to use large quantities of clay, experiment, change direction and get to know the medium a little better. The Greek myths, which Ms Vaishnaw read in library class prior to the clay session were used as an inspiration. (The stories are as BIG, like the clay) No products were kept so clay was reused by each class. It was interesting that most students after building with much effort and focus and producing some amazing forms were quite happy smashing their work. (in fact this has a joy all its own) Student built individually and collaboratively.

The time was short, something that our wonderful art teachers have to deal with everyday. Classes are 40 minutes so a student is lucky to have his/her hand on materials for 25 minutes (getting in, getting out, talking about the project) Even so the classes did a good job of digging in and seeing what the clay can do. Students built Cylopes that fell over and figured out that a free standing figure has to be balanced in some way. Some would start with a grand plan of building a volcano or the temple on Mt Olympus and realize they needed to collaborate to get it done. The process was a continual stream of trial and error. Some persisted with their first idea, others changed direction constantly.

Many students, but especially the younger ones, were completely absorbed in the way the clay felt. We joked about spas that offer mud baths and how some children would willingly jump in for full immersion! One of our challenges was to keep the clay moist enough to work well so we had to introduce water and that was a pleasure for these students. Students experimented with slip (a mixture of water and clay) for joining and smoothing.

Most importantly students got to play! I think it is important for children to have rich materials that allow them to express their own ideas. Versatile media like clay let children make their ideas concrete – physical and three dimensional. This grounding in the three dimensional (literally clay is the earth) gives them models for the more abstract work with words and numbers that they are asked to do at an increasingly early age.

Thanks to Robin Cassel, Alison Vaishnaw and the Bishop PTO, Deb Martin, Deb Chisolm and the students of Bishop School.

Hurrah for children! Hurrah for clay!

The following are my notes for the classes

Class Agenda

Introduction-

I’m happy to be here as a guest in Ms Martin’s Art Room at the Bishop School. I am a Brackett parent and I teach art in my home studio in Arlington Heights.

As Ms. Vaishnaw has told you in library you are going to work with clay in art class- lots of clay. You’ll start with a cube like this and I’ll give you more if you need it. See what you can do with this medium. See what the clay can do (demonstrate)

Can you make something tall, flat, round, long, thick, thin, rough, smooth, hollow, solid, layered? What other textures can you make? Artists know the properties of the media they use. Here are some ways you can change the shape of clay and I'm sure you will invent more. (roll, flatten with heel of hand, squeeze, rip, pound, poke, attach)

The Greek Myths are our starting point. They are stories about BIG things

-big land formations

-big gods

-big battles

-big revenges and secrets

How can we make these images in clay, 3D?

Have fun, experiment

Limits

-the only thing small about this project is the time we have. When it is time to stop you will have to stop.

- clay stays on the boards

-you can work alone or together if everyone is happy with the arrangement

-at the end of the class you will gather the clay to the center of your board for the next class to use

-hand washing will be outside in the water bins (can’t use the sink with clay) Use the towels to dry your hands

Materials

-clay cubes in plastic bins (200 lbs-clay boards

-bins for hand washing (5)

-towels

-scrapers

-cups for hydrating at the end of the day

-key images from myths

Images from Myths:

Mount Olympus

Gleaming palace

Gaea Mother Earth

Uranus Lord of the Universe

The Titans and Titanesses

Mountain thrones

The Cyclopes

Ugly sons of Uranus- 50 heads and 100 arms

Tartarus- deepest darkest pit

Cronus and Rhea

Pontus-boundless seas

Volcanoes, Trees, flowers, crevices, sprites, beasts, early man of Mother Earth

Cronus swallows his children

Zeus is hidden in a cave

Amaltheia- fairy goat

Siblings of Zeus- Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Hera

Weapons- trident, sickle, invisibility, lightening bolts

Cronus eats his children

What else do you remember?

Summer Camp! and Fall Classes

Summer

The end of school is near and the time for camp approaching! Thank you to all who have sent in their registration packages! There is still room in the July 6-9 weeks and the July 26-30th week. For a description of the camp scroll down to the February posting below. I'm looking forward to it.

Look who is living in the backyard! A red back salamander. He has moved under the logs away from the paint this spring!

Fall

I will be posting the fall class schedule in August. I will continue to do afterschool classes on all or some of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. I might do a combination of every other week classes and a series of a 4 week class that comes every week and completes one specific project. It's helpful to me to know interest ahead of time so let me know!

Sometimes One Colour is Enough

A few weeks ago we read Jack in the Beanstalk for a painting inspiration in the K- Gr 2 age classes. I was thinking about magic seeds-small and dry that hold potential life curled up waiting to expand and grow. Seeds each spring continue to surprise us and remind us about the magic of new life. Jack had a bean that became a pathway into another magical place. Anyway this didn't work too well with a number of classes then with one class I read the story but also showed the children images of vines. Then we brought out the paint.

I gave them a limited palette blue, yellow, black and white and asked them to see how many greens they could make. The mixing was popular. Then they painted vines. Here are the results

Anatomy of an Art Project

Summer Camp July 2010 Update:

There is still space in week 1 and 4. Scroll down for more information

Magritte- Inspired Magazine Collage 4/28

As for all projects I poke around for inspiration suited to the group at hand. My class of students from Gr5- Gr7 had just finished transforming a clementine box into some kind of assemblage and the Surrealists were one inspiration. I like Magritte' s paintings as an invitation to play with scale and strange pairings of objects. So we continued with his ideas of inside and outside being mixed up, physics being defied to create crazy dream-like environments. This time we used magazine images and other paper on a background of watercolour wash. The magazines are very attractive because they scream popular culture, sometimes it's a challenge to remember we are making collages and not just cutting out all the images we like. That is where Magritte helped us focus on choosing images that, together, would make a whole that surprised, raised a question, presented a mystery. Any kind of cut paper exercise is great for allowing time for composing elements on the page. Composition is a combination of a few rules and a lot of intuition. One teacher I had in a life drawing class said good composition is being intentional(I'm not sure this is a complete definition) So we spent two classes on this project.

1Looked at images of Magritte's pantings and cut from magazines, forming seeds of ideas

2Painting backgrounds suited to our plan, drying them and arranging and finding more images

3Gluing! (finally)

Spring Session

The Spring Session of children's classes starts the week of March 22. Classes are every other week on Tues, Wed or Thurs. from 3- 4:30 pm or 3-5:00 pm. Children are grouped by grade level. K/Gr1, Gr 2-4, Gr 5 and older. The current schedule is Tues K/Gr 1, Wed Gr 2-4, Wed Gr 5+ and Tues K-Gr 2