2011-2018

Getting stARTed!

8/21/2018

Getting ready to go back to school has been different for me this year. I am starting my 15th year and this year, more than any other, I feel like I am really ready to get stARTed.

Part of that was the amount of preparation I have put into my classroom. I spent the last month cleaning out my main storage supply closet and organizing materials by type in back closets. Through this process, I had to finally let some things go (some things that have been here longer than the building) and get clearer eyes and what I need for my students.

I am particularly excited for some projects that were funded over the summer by DonorsChoose.org and two projects that are near being funded so that we can have resources we need to dive into new art materials and skills! Both of the projects I currently have posted are collaborative in nature, using new media that I am really excited about!

One of my favorite ways of getting ready for the school year was getting to see new and former students and parents at our open house/orientation. It was great to have our ArtPrize piece out for display during the night and to get people involved with adding their own spin to the work with an activity table in my classroom.

We look forward to getting our work to the Downtown Market for ArtPrize and hope we do well in the Youth Collaboration Award category of the competition. This year, there are 20 schools competing for two $2500 grants.

Ready or not, we will be getting to work with students in no time! I look forward to the work ahead of us and both the struggle and successes that will play out during the year.

Every year I start wondering what surprise will come our way and each year I am amazed with the answer. Good luck to everyone starting out their school year and I am so excited to get going with mine!

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Reflecting on the Year

6/17/2018

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At the start of the school year, I wrotethis post that gave an overview of why I thought it was going to be a great one. As we finished up just over a week ago, it has been fun to reflect on those predictions and to consider what became of them as we progressed through a school year that was one of the most successful in my 14-year career.

Here is a review of my five factors of a fun year outlined and predicted back in the fall:

1. ArtPrize

One of the best ways we started the school year was being able to see our work from the prior Spring installed at Monroe Community Church for ArtPrize9. Having our school and program represented in such a great venue was an awesome thrill for my students and me. It was great fun to visit the venue during the ArtPrize festivities and even see the work on the news as MCC was selected for the Juror's shortlist of outstanding venues.

This piece now has a home in our library and I am so excited that students will be able to enjoy it for years to come at WMS and remember how they were a part of this great, collaborative, work! Even better is that this work gave us the confidence to do it again, now with our entire k-12 school. We cannot wait for September when that work will go on display at The Downtown Market! Remember to vote 67314.

2. Robots and more

Since 2011, I have applied for and received over $13,000 in resources from DonorsChoose.org. This year accounts for almost half of that with nine projects being funded. Thanks to the generosity of donors and matching funds from a variety of organizations, we were able to bring robotics, 3D printing, hands-on projects, digital equipment, and more to add valuable experiences for my students in the classroom.

Thank you again to everyone who helped bring these resources into my classroom and positively impact student engagement with curriculum and content. I am currently working on getting Scholastic Art Magazines to help build literacy skills through art. If you are interested in helping us out, please visithere to donate.

3. Scholastic Awards

Since 2008, the BCPS Visual Arts program has had 15 students recognized at the National level for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. To end the school year celebrating student success at the national level again this year was such a great way to reflect on and propel us into the next school year. I know this opportunity is one students will seize again next year because of students that paved the possibility of achieving such honors. I am thankful for everyone who helped make this year possible and am excited to see what next year brings!

4. Collaborative Projects

I love working collaboratively with students and seeing students working collaboratively together. This year was probably the most collaborative year yet. From the first say of school, where students painted rocks to go around our flagpole to the last days of school as we worked on our ArtPrize10 piece, the year was filled with different collaborative works students created.

I have some ideas for next year's collaborative opportunities and am excited to get working on it, especially the works that will be publicly installed!

5. The Unexpected

This year was pretty great. Every year I wonder how it is possible to top the year before. This was a year filled with new opportunities, for both my students and me, to get engaged with art in really interesting ways. Whether it was putting work into new competitions, shows, or connecting with classrooms to make a greater impact, I think this was a really special year and one I will reflect on positively for years to come.

I hope everyone had a great end to their school year and is enjoying a lovely summer. I look forward to taking some time to make art, read books, laugh with friends, and gear up for my 15th start in September!

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Last Week of School

6/7/2018

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Meijer Great Choices Film Festival Awards

To start the last week of the school year, we celebrated the annual Meijer Great Choices Film Festival. It was very inspiring to see so many young film makers share their vision on the big screen and take home wonderful prizes to reward their work.

Two films created in my classroom were awarded in the Junior competition, giving our classroom $400 in grant funds to use towards a variety of projects. It was awesome to see the students who created those pieces be recognized and see their work on the screen. Even better were the conversations the competition started about how they can get involved again next year.

Thanks to your votes, Aron won 3rd place and Blake, Evie, and Zach were awarded a Judges Choice award.

Goodbye with GIFs

As a part of my final exam, I have students create GIFs using younger students' works from our elementary and intermediate schools. I first saw this idea from Ian Sands, who actually did this with my students and his high school classes.

Always eager to push my students to do higher level work, I thought I would give this a go a couple of years ago with great success. This is such a great way to finish the school year and test students on some of their basic understanding of how to manipulate images in Photoshop as well as work with animation.

Celebrating at the Scholastic Awards

Over the past ten years, I have helped students submit hundreds of pieces of work to the Scholastic Awards. Some years we have celebrated a lot of success, others not as much; regardless, each time we walk away from the experience knowing more about making art, taking risks, and sharing the stories that are held within each of us through the work that is made.

It was a joy to complete the school year celebrating student success with another WMS Gold Medalist. I am so proud of the work Tara made (her little felted dog shown below) that has earned her this recognition. I look forward to seeing how she uses her voice and skills as she continues to progress in our Arts programs (especially since she will be in my class again next year).

I am also very thankful to the donors who helped make this possible, especially Tanger Outlets and the TangerKIDS grant that helped fund this experience.

One of my favorite parts of the trip to New York is the celebration at Carnegie Hall. It was inspiring to hear from former winner and "Arthur" creator, Marc Brown about how he was able to turn his love of making art into a life-long career. He echoed sentiments I hold dear and reminded us all that everyone needs someone to believe in them and he was lucky to have people in his life that believed in him.

I was a little star-struck to also hear from my favorite author when I was in middle school, R.L. Stine. He introduced Marc Brown for the Scholastic Awards alumni achievement award. I do not know how I would have survived middle school without Fear Street novels in my life.

It was also inspiring to hear other former winners and how they have used this moment to give them permission to live creatively. The night started with film star, Ansel Elgort, getting down into the crowd and high-fiving winners before encouraging them to keep their creativity at the center of their lives.

It was a magical night and one that ends my school year. It is something that I will be thinking about as we start preparing for competition again next year and I will use when working on living my own creative life.

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Weeks Seventeen and Eighteen

5/31/2018

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Arts a la Mode

For ten years our school has hosted an Empty Bowls event. It has gone through a few changes since we began to participate in this program that was started nearly 30 years ago by a group of artists who wanted to use art as a call to action to raise food and funds to combat food insecurity in their communities.

I am very thankful for those who have come out over the years to support families in our community by donating to this cause. This year's even was particularly special because of our band director's retirement. He has been an awesome partner in this project and I am excited for him and his family as he begins a new chapter in his life.

2018 Arts ala Mode - Mr. Klein Recognition (Byron Center West Middle School) from Steve Harryman on Vimeo.

We also got to use a lot of our DonorsChoose.org funded projects during this event. It was great fun to see the button maker we received in action during this community event. It was a HUGE hit! Many students, siblings, and parents made buttons (some more than one) and sported them for the evening.

We also got a chance to showcase our ArtPrize piece, of which I have an exciting update to share!

It was an awesome night to celebrate our Arts programs at WMS. My favorite part of it was seeing students step up in leadership roles and really take charge of the evening. This is something I want to do more of with my students and find additional leadership opportunities for them to share their knowledge and love of Art with others through acts of service.

Thank you TangerKIDS Program!

I like writing grants. I have presented about it at conferences and helped others write their grants and projects for their classrooms. I actually love helping others with theirs (even more than mine). I got started with grant writing because someone helped me and I look at helping others as a way of paying it forward.

Thanks to a more recent effort with the TangerKIDS program, we gained the needed funds to help our National Scholastic Gold Medalist get to the celebration at Carnegie Hall. We are so thankful for the opportunity this grant allows this student and our program in promoting a legacy of excellence.

I am particularly excited to attend the celebration, too, because it is also the ten year anniversary of my first National Scholastic Medalist and trip to NYC!

When Old Becomes New

To finish up the semester, students worked on one of my favorite themes: Something Old, Something New. This theme asks students to go into their portfolios and rework ideas from the past, showing they have grown in skill and understanding since that original work was created.

Here are some of the works students created as a result of this prompt:

Brayden: I did Photoshop because its fun and it looks good. I used a portrait from last year to change and make much better. I did better on craft, creativity, content, and composition. For example, The creativity is a lot better, and it looks a lot cooler and better. Also it is more neat. The last one looked like scribbles, and this one is real, and much nicer. I wanted to do Photoshop because I like the effects of it.

Olivia: In this artwork we had to create a new version of an older artwork we made and I decided to redo my observational shoe drawing from last year. To make this artwork better I made it more creative by spraying yellow water color around the shoe. Another way that I improved this artwork is by the composition. I added more color and because I used complimentary colors I think it added a better rhythm to the piece. I really wanted to revisit this idea because I never really got to finish it last year and I knew that I could make it a lot more creative if I used everything that I learned in class this year.

Alex: This piece of art is a recreation of my continuous line portrait “Tears of Destiny.” To improve this piece I used opacity and different color strokes as a new form of craft. I also used more things to fill the space like the bandana for more creativity. My personal connection to this art was that the original piece of this art was not created very well. I wanted to revisit it to make it better and show that I improved as an artist.

Ellie: I decided to use the technique of drawing, because I have never done it before. I wanted to try it so that eventually I can improve and get better at drawing. I used the art element of color because the gray portrait pops when it is against the blue background. I used the Creativity C because I used a new technique where I put swirls on the paper in washable markers, and then I put water color over them to smear them out. I also used the Craft C because I took my time to make it the best that I can. I decided to recreate this piece because I could see that I didn't do my very best the first time, so I wanted to do another piece that I took a longer time and did my very best.

Adam: In fifth grade, I drew a polar bear that was an okay piece of artwork. This year, I recreated the drawing. This time with paint. I definitely improved my art skills since then. This is because I used craft, creativity, composition, and content to make a great piece of artwork. For example, my craft improved a lot. It took me a lot of effort to draw it, and then paint it. Also, I used content because of the value on the polar bear. The darker colors emphasis shadows and highlights on the bear. I chose to revisit the idea of the polar bear because it was something that I knew I could do better on.

Faith: For this project I chose to remake was from project challenge 2:spaces and places. The piece that I did with project challenge 2, was a sun set on the beach. I really liked drawing out all of the things in that piece and I liked the materials that I got to use such as pencils and colored pencils. Although that piece still turned out pretty good, I felt that it wasn't my best work and I could do better and I really wanted to push myself on this last project. So I decided to take a picture that I had taken when I was on vacation in the great smoky mountains and look at it and draw what was in the picture. Some of the materials that I used in my last piece in project challenge 2 was that I had to draw everything out before I colored all of it. For this project I decided that I really wanted to work with different values with pencils and I thought that the picture that I took would be a perfect one because of the mountains. One of the four Cs that I used when creating this piece was craft. This is true because the way that I made this piece was with all different shading pencils and that was all I used because I really like the way that they looked. One other of the four Cs that I used in this piece is creativity. This is true because I think that this piece was pretty original because of the materials that I used because it seems like there seems to be a lot of pieces that use landscape and draw them. The reason I wanted to revisit this idea was because of how much I enjoyed making project challenge 2 but I really felt that I could push myself to do better then I did the 1st time. The personal connection that I have to this piece is I absolutely loved going to the great smoky mountains for vacation. It was my most favorite place that I had ever been to and I have been there twice and just loved being there and seeing the scenery so I decided that I could use one of the pictures from when I went there and use it in my art work.

Focusing on Math in STEAM

To close out our STEAM units for the semester, I asked students to create a work that employs math concepts in their work. Leaving the door open to a variety of options, I was a little nervous with what students would do for this one.

Students selected so many interesting options for their work and made new connections between math and art concepts to do so. It was fun to see them go through their works and land on finished pieces.

Here is a sampling of their work:

Sophia: For this math project, I decided to do origami because it seemed fun and it was something I have never done before. To make this, I created different sized 3D triangles using different colored paper. Then I arranged them in a frame (not shown in the picture) for a cleaner look. This relates to math because I had to measure the lengths of the triangles to create them and arrange them together using their angles. I like this project because it is clean cut and organized, but also fun.

Khiem: In this art I used angles and perspective from the filming unit. To make a video interesting you need different perspective so I took that idea and used on this one. I try to make it look like from a angle above. The crane is flying by the water and in the hand a person hold one of them.

Tess: To make this op-art piece, I used isometric graph paper to draw boxes in random directions, overlapping and going underneath each other. I did this twice to make two different patterns, then I traced the two patterns to create three identical copies of each. I decided to use complementary colors so each design would be unique, but still match with the other patterns.

Vanessa: For this project I did a tessellation and that means I made a shape out of paper and made a puzzle out of it and to color it I used water color.

Maria: In order to create this origami sculpture I needed knowledge of math concepts in order to be successful. Paper folding, or origami relates to shapes and angles. While creating the three dimensional angular boxes, every angle of each fold had to be exact. If not, each box would not be congruent, and would not represent the 3D shape I was trying to make. Recognition of shapes and designs that would make this project appealing were also useful. Making this project required me to use art ideas as well, such as printmaking, and other collage techniques.

We have a Venue!

I am very excited to announce that we have secured a venue to display our work for ArtPrize10! Our work will be on display on the second floor of The Downtown Market.

It is an awesome place I go to regularly and I know our students will be eager to head to the market and enjoy viewing the work as they also partake on the ice cream, popcorn, barbecue, and my personal favorite of chicken and waffles while there.

We are all still working on our pieces as we look ahead to installing the works in September. This is going to be a great event to kick off the school year in the Fall and get students excited about art. It is also awesome to be in the running for the Youth Collaboration Award for $2500!

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Week Fifteen and Sixteen

5/19/2018

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These past two weeks have been a blur as we have finished up multiple projects, gone on a field trip, made more progress on our ArtPrize piece, and planning our big Art show. I can only assume the rest of the year is going to fly by like this as we get closer and closer to exams and the BIG celebration in New York City for Scholastic!

Objects Complete

Last week, students finished up their objects projects and posted the results on Artsonia. It was fun to see how they interpreted the assignment and even better was that many of them tried new media in new ways because they could not use materials they had used before.

For the past four years at least one of our National Scholastic Medalists' works have been a result of this prompt. I think the main reason for this is that when you are forced to go outside of your comfort zone with new media, you are more willing to try creative risks you might have otherwise avoided.

Here are some examples of the creative risks students came up with for this assignment:

Avery: For this project I created a bracelet made of many different materials. By using wire, magazine clippings, and clay I was able to compose a decorative wrist piece. This bracelet connects to the project theme because jewelry is often used as family heirlooms and can be very sentimental. I also based my artwork after Mitchell Feinburg's work because he uses ordinary objects and hides a deeper meaning within them. This bracelet has many hidden meanings such as, diversity, awareness, and recycling. By creating this artwork I hoped to show that even small objects can make a difference or impact people's lives.

Chelsea: For the projects “Objects” I chose to do a tray of sushi because it is one of my favorite foods. The sushi rolls are made out of felt and wool to add texture to make them look real. The tray is made out of clay and it has flower designs to make it look more realistic. My artwork relates to Mitchell Feinberg because I used a 3D material and made a piece of food. Mitchell also had art focused on food. I liked doing this art project because I got to work with new materials.

Gabby: For this project I chose to choose an object that means something to me that was given to me from my grandma. In order to execute this I chose to block print to put an emphasis on the necklace and my grandma passing it down to me. This piece relates to both Jim Dine's robe piece because of all the different lines making up the art and also Mitchell Feinberg's piece where he imprinted bags and other objects into flower just like with what you do when block printing.

Aron: I took some paper and put it in a plastic mask face thing. Then I drowned it in glue, and after a few days of waiting I got a mask. After that I took a piece of paper, painted it red, cut it into shapes, took a reflective sheet, cut some shapes, and glued it together with the red paper. After that I glued it all together, after hole punching spaces to put yarn, so that the mask would be wearable. I believe this artwork is sort of like Audrey Flack because she uses a lot of color in her work, and I believe that this mask uses color.

Olivia: For this artwork I created my own scratch art paper and scratched out my glasses onto it. To do this I used oil pastel and drew my image out with that. Then I painted black tempera paint over this and because water and oil resist I was able to scratch off the the paint. Now you can see the image of my glasses with scratched designs. This artwork relates to the theme of objects because it shows an object but in a fun way. My piece relates to the works of Wayne Thiebaud who draws lots of objects but in simple ways that interest you.

Madeline: I like to make things that is out of the box, not just a typical painting, even though those can still be powerful. Gumball machines are in lots of stores and it seems like they are never empty, yet many people get them. I chose this material because it helps convey the message that every quarter you leave behind for the gumball, helps the store that it is in. Like Mitchell Feinberg my art shows things that get left behind but, in his picture of cigarettes that shoes how they effect the earth. In my artwork the quarters help the earth, so in a way they have the same idea of things getting left behind.

Caden:I used block printing for the first time. This technique was good for making the object pop out at the viewer. I carved out a block and applied paint to it. Then I put the painted block to a piece of paper. I used the brayer to apply an equal amount of force to get all the paint from the block, onto the paper I think my art relates to Audrey Flacks art because I used a lot of color in my art piece. Audrey used lots of color in all of her art pieces too. Each color used in this piece of art makes the object visible in a different way.

Issues

After students turned in their objects projects, we focused on the theme of Issues. Students looked at Wordless News by Maria Fabrizio as inspiration before doing some research and creating works that went into a topic or issue they thought was important to highlight with art. This was a very quick project, so students were limited to 2D media. We also got to use the iPad cart with new apps we received thanks to a newly funded DonorsChoose.org project! This has been a great resource in our classroom so far and I am so excited to utilize it even more next year!

Here are some of the results:

Jeffery: This work is about being stressed out about school and everything you have to do.

Allison: The inspiration for this piece was the world issue fracking. Fracking is the act of forcing a high concentration of gasses and chemicals into the earth to make it crack open to get to natural gasses and oils. The act of fracking causes an immense amount of damage in habitats and the earth in general. It was also inspired by my English class where I read a book talking about the issue. This images was aquired for PBS LearningMedia teachers and students from Getty Images. Provided by: Science Source.

Hannah: I decided to do my issue on anxiety, its something I have dealt with for such a long time now.Many other people deal with anxiety as well,I decided to do photography because it can capture the real meaning and the time.I decided to do my pictures a bit blurry and crazy,because people with anxiety knows how it feels durning an attack.I wanted people to see what it was like.Alot of people are scared to speak up about there anxiety or just don't recognize they have anxiety, but I have a voice and I want people to know there not alone.

Alex: I chose homelessness as the issue for this project. Homelessness is a problem across the U.S. and people walk by it as if these people don't matter. However, they may have a mental issue or never got the chance to learn education or have enough money to even start for a job. This piece of work can be related to the hardships we learn about in history class and how that has made things increasingly more difficult for people. I was able to really understand this topic by looking at a video on PBS learning media which had a video from 2017 about a student athlete who didn't have a home.

STEAM projects

The past two weeks have been busy in the Art classroom. In STEAM, we go through five units (one for each letter of STEAM) that have two parts: a "Have to" and "Can do." "Have to" projects are projects I direct students through that connect with the letter of focus for the unit and "Can do" projects are student developed. Students completed their "Can do" projects earlier this week and uploaded them to Artsonia.

t was fun to see students work through a variety of solutions. To help them brainstorm, I directed them to the "Hands-on Projects" section of our online subscription to Scholastic Art Magazine. This helped many students gather ideas and take bits and pieces to make their own project.

It was so much fun to see students develop their own ideas and implement techniques from their "Have to" videos that they shared the week before. It was even more fun to be able to make additional artist connections to students' works and help them develop the creative courage to take bigger risks in their own art.

Sophia: The artist that inspired me to do this artwork was Robert Rauschenberg. He does colorful printmaking and layers the things he prints on top of each other. For my artwork I did 2 different block prints of Paige in black. Then I took two different pieces of paper and put colorful mono prints on it, and did a collage background. Lastly, I printed the faces onto the collage background and put frames around them.

Evie: For my project of choice, I decided to try felting again. I tried to do something similar to this last year, but I ended up with far less details, the work being smaller, and just lower quality art. Revisiting this, I had more materials and more time to work on this, which helped me make it far better from last time. The art work also has more personal meaning behind it which made me more passionate to complete it, something that makes my work far better than when I'm just doing it for a grade. I got to use buttons (which I forgot last time) and I made two (which I wanted to do last time) instead of one. While some parts were more rushed and look not as good, I feel like I did a lot better and I'd love to keep working on my felting skills.

Jenna: For this project i did mono printing and cut the prints in to shapes and glued them down.The spots that didn't have a shape i used a stencil and a pencil to fill it in.

Khiem: One of the thing that I learn through out this steam years is a mood board. So I organize my past art with some changes in them into a mood board because I think it would be a good way to end the marking period, is to include most of my art in to one with some extra idea or idea that I have before I created my final art. So to round it all up I use the mood board design to organize my art or sketch that I have over the year to remember what I accomplish.

Marie: In this piece of work I was inspired by artist Tom Friedman in Scholastic Art Magazine. Friedman developed a piece of artwork made from corners of cereal boxes. In his work, he put all of the geometrical triangles together to create a cereal box sculpture. With my own work I used the idea of 3 dimensional triangles formed together in order to create larger piece of work. But instead I used paper folding and origami techniques, as well as mono printing and mixed media ideas.

Ashtyn: For this project I made a wire hand, because in STEAM we are on the art can do and Mrs. Campbell said that we can do what ever we want as long as it is art related. I made a wire hand because I have never used wire before and thought it would be interesting to try out, and it was.

Students also worked on their Math "Have to" projects this week with a look at radial symmetry. We did this in a variety of ways: first we worked on making buttons, then we made chalk art outside, and finally worked on digital works. This lesson was adapted from Liquitex and I will also be sharing this on Instagram in hopes of winning a $1500 contest I found out about at NAEA in Seattle. Wish us luck!

Trever

Jenna

Sophia

Kenzie

Chloe

Meijer Gardens Field Trip

For the past ten years, I have been able to bring students to the Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture park. It is one of my favorite parts of Spring and we could not have had better weather for our trip!

Students were led on a tour of the Japanese Gardens (which is a new addition to the park) by docents and learned a lot of information about how they created this part of the park. They were also in the process of installing a new exhibit with cranes that lowered sculptures into place, which was exciting to see in action.

Getting Ready for Arts a la Mode

This week is going to be another action-packed one! We are so excited about Tuesday and hope to have a great turn out for the events planned and look forward to sharing the results in our next post!

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Week Fourteen

5/6/2018

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Show and Tell

This week in STEAM class, students moved on to their Art "Have to" project where they were asked to team up and work on videos that explained how to use a variety of materials. We were even able to use our newest DonorsChoose.org funded project with pop-up green screens for this assignment. My hope for this project was to create a pool of videos I can post for other students to use in our classroom (which will be so great for kids who need reminders, are absent, or joining our class mid-way through the term).

In addition to demonstrating use of material, they also needed to show where to find them, care, and an artist who uses it in their own work.

Here are a few of them:

Working With New Materials

Students worked on their project that centered on the theme of Objects, Artifacts, and Things You Leave Behind. One of the challenges of this assignment was that students were required to use media they had yet to implement in a project so far this semester. By requiring them to go beyond their comfort zone, students turned to a variety of alternative methods which is resulting in so many exciting outcomes.

For the past four years, a National Scholastic Medal has yielded from this prompt. My guess is that because I am requesting/requiring students to try something new in their art making, they are taking bigger risks and being a little more bold with their creative expression. I also think they are more than half way through the curriculum in the class at this point, so they are more open to experimenting with ideas and have seen so many examples of other artists making bold choices with big rewards to show for it.

Regardless of the reason, I am excited to see students trying new ideas and get excited about the work they are doing in class. Even better to see is the resilient nature in their approach to the process and pushing through blocks by finding alternative routes or improvising along the way. The finished works will be posted on Artsonia by the start of next week.

One interesting outcome in one of my 7th grade classes was the collaboration you see below. One student created the pencil and sharpener and two more wanted to join in on the oversized fun by making the notebook and eraser. Seeing students view other students as artists and partners in the creative process is what I am always striving for in my classroom, so this was a real delight to see. Anytime you get kids excited about what others are doing and then want to make more art because of it, is a win.

Connecting to Careers

One of my favorite things when I attend a conference like the National Art Education Association gathering is connecting with professionals in my field and those who have benefited from strong backgrounds in Art Education. It is awesome to connect with colleges and universities that offer teachers great resources to share with students who are thinking they would like a creative career in the Arts.

I was able to add to my collection of informative posters this year by hanging up two I have collected from multiple conferences by Ringling College. As soon as I put them up, students we a buzz with the companies where graduates of SO many varieties of Arts-focused areas worked. They were especially interested in Epic Games (which is the maker of the very popular "Fornite"). I am excited to see my students excited and thinking about how they can turn something they find enjoyment in doing into a career they can make a living doing.

Students love these @RinglingCollege posters I got from @NAEA #artsed #dowhatyoulove #startswithart #k12ArtChat pic.twitter.com/L7SNiFLvig
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 4, 2018

ArtPrize Progress

We are continuing to work on our ArtPrize piece. This week was all about sealing the mirrored paper and getting more portraits created on the bottle caps. Next week, we hope to have all of the sealing complete for our panels and begin to focus on placement of the caps. The goal is to have this ready for our May 22nd Arts a la Mode Empty Bowls/Fine Arts Night at BCWMS. We also hope to have a venue secured so our work can compete for the Youth Collaboration Award! If you are interested in learning more about that, you can visit our ArtPrize page.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week! Although I appreciate the week of appreciation that is to come, I would feel even more appreciated if we have a good turn out for our students and community at our annual Arts a la Mode Empty Bowls/Fine Arts Night on May 22nd.

If you are are student who would like to volunteer, visit this form. If you are a parent interested in volunteering, visit thisform. We are getting really close to this year's event and I am pretty excited about it and hope to see a great turn out for the evening filled with celebrating the Arts.

Out of the kiln for Empty Bowls! pic.twitter.com/hd5YRmEqbu
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 1, 2018

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Week Thirteen

4/27/2018

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Last STEAM Collaboration

Students presented their last STEAM collaboration for the year this week. For this challenge, students were asked to design and create structures that represented spaces we use like schools, businesses, homes, and other architectural works.

It was fun to see students from both classes work together to create a variety of buildings using blueprints, digital renderings, and physical models. The pieces are currently on display in our Library until the end of the year.

DE is DONE

Another semester of DE is in the books. It has been almost 8 years since the last time I taught 3D and I am so thankful I was able to come back to it with this group. These kids were amazing to work with, full of so many ideas, and willing to push themselves to try new ideas and techniques.

I was really excited to see their final exam projects complete and how they took the opportunity of designing their own prompt with their choice of media. It gave students to try some things they were interested in doing or revisiting ideas left undone from the past. Here are a few of the results:

For our final farewell of the group, we met at the Meijer Gardens to complete a scavenger hunt and sketchbook activity. A special thanks to The Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters for sponsoring our trip!

Building More Skills

Students also spend this week building skills by learning about printmaking and observational drawing. Our newest themed project asks students to examine the objects we interact with on a daily basis and make art that focuses on that relationship. In addition to that, students are also being challenged to use a different media to work with for this piece.

Next week we will spend time refining ideas and finalizing media for use to work towards project goals. Here are some works in progress so far:

Arts a la Mode Prep

We are getting excited for our annual Fine Arts Night on May 22nd and starting to put the finishing touches on our preparations for the event that includes Empty Bowls, Performances, Art Displays, and STEAM activities (two of which were funded with DonorsChoose.org requests earlier this year).

We are also in process of gathering volunteers for the night, asking students and parents to help out. If you are a student or parent at BCPS and would like to help, please contact me for more information.

Finishing touches on bowl for May 22nd Arts a la Mode event at BCWMS. pic.twitter.com/ztubEqKIdC
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) April 26, 2018

ArtPrize10 Update

We are continuing work on our part of the ArtPrize piece this year. I am so excited to see it coming together, but know we still have A LOT of work to do before it is complete. This week was spent cutting a lot of reflective paper and then figuring out how to place it on the work.

Hopefully next week we will be able to get our profile up and running and start to secure a venue. If you would like to connect, please visit our ArtPrize page.

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Week Twelve

4/23/2018

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Finishing Up with DE

Students in my KCAD 3D DE class are working on their final exam projects as we get closer to the end of the course. With only a week left, students are at different points of progress when it comes to their final works. It has been an awesome time seeing students select what materials they want to work with for their final projects and how they can adapt the skills and ideas we discussed throughout the term into something that is uniquely their own making.

I have been so impressed with the students from this term and cannot wait to see what they land on for their final works. I am also excited to see many of them return as a part of our program and even more excited and proud for those who will graduate and begin their next learning journey at the college level!

Architecture Almost Complete

Students continued their STEAM projects this week that worked at designing an building models based on architecture. Students will finish up and present these works on Monday/Tuesday of next week. I have appreciated seeing students work together in groups for this effort and discover skills and talents using a variety of tools.

These pieces will go on display in the Library of our school for the remainder of the school year and we look forward to keeping some as examples and decoration for our classrooms.

Working on ArtPrize10

Working on our @ByronCenterPS #ArtPrize10 Youth Collaboration piece for @ArtPrize collaboration today pic.twitter.com/YVc7kmdfDC
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) April 17, 2018

Students were busy at work last week getting the background for our panels painted for ArtPrize10. We are so excited about this installation that celebrates diversity and how we can come together as a community to work on this statement. Now that we have our backgrounds decorated, we need to finish up the portraits on the bottle caps and apply those to the panels along with reflective paper.

It is going to be amazing to see the other schools' work, too. Especially when we put them all together. I am also looking forward to sharing our completed panels at our Arts a la Mode/Empty Bowls/Fine Arts Night celebration on May 22nd!

LOVE the additions students made to our #artprize10 Youth Collaboration entry as a part of the @ByronCenterPS @ArtPrize work. Hoping we will find a venue this year to showcase our work! More to do tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/3NaBoCOBmh
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) April 18, 2018

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Week Eleven

4/13/2018

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Acting Like Designers

For our final STEAM collaborative of the year, students are acting like an architecture firm and creating spaces using a variety of tools. To begin, students get into groups of four and assign roles: Project Managers are responsible for collecting images of the work, writing a purpose statement for the work, and creating a presentation of all of those items; Blueprint Designers are responsible for sketching out the way the building will look and the layout of the structure; SketchUp Artists are responsible for creating a digital rendering of the structure; and Maquette Builders are responsible for creating a physical model of the piece.

In STEAM class, we are working on thinking like Design Engineers and creating concept sketches of products. To get them thinking about product design, we watched the video below:

Afterwards, students started to brainstorm products that currently exist as well as those that do not that would help resolve frustrations they have. It was fun to see students come up with ideas and then getting feedback from others through a roundtable sharing process.

Before working on their final designs, I also took students through the act of creating a "Mood Board" to help better define their product. They combined images and words while thinking about their product and consumer to give an overall feel for their design as well as hone in on their point of view as the designer. I had never done this before with students. It is such a quick and easy activity to do and it helps secure their idea before finalizing their sketch.

Here are some of the results:

I am also super excited that the latest issue of Scholastic Art Magazine fits right into this project. I made sure to spend time yesterday going over their interview with Nike Chief Design Officer, John Hoke with my STEAM students.

Sometimes I think the people at Scholastic are reading my mind. This issue could not have come at a better time!

Alter Egos

We are nearing to a close for our Dual Enrollment class and students worked on finishing up their alter egos before starting their final exam projects. It has been fun to see students interpret a variety of media and concepts throughout the term. I am excited to see that students took a lot of liberty with their alter egos. Some used clay, others used wall paper and wire, and some used hot glue. With only a couple of weeks left before we finish final exam projects and say goodbye, here are a few of the solutions from this last project.

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Spring Break!

4/6/2018

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Always time for Art

When people go on vacation, I am sure their goal is to get away from their jobs. It is my experience that when Art Teachers go on vacation, their main priority is to find the Art wherever they are. My Spring Break started with the opportunity to tour the Cincinnati Art Museum. In all my years of traveling south for this vacation, I had yet to visit this place. I am excited to say that is no longer the case.

Driving up to the building that overlooks the city, I got to play one of my favorite games: guess the artist. It is this silly thing (and probably obnoxious to some) I like to do when I see a piece of art from a distance. I simply guess who it is before I see the tag/plaque and then check to see if I am correct.

To my delight, I saw the giant statue of Pinocchio and instantly knew it was by Jim Dine, a native of the city. There is something so fun about reaching within your own knowledge base and testing it out in new environments. I was able to do this time and again as I saw works by Miro, Chihuly, LaMonte, and Warhol throughout the space.

If you have yet to tour this space, I cannot recommend it enough. The staff are friendly, the fee is free, and the collection is well balanced with a mix of pieces from historical periods as well as contemporary works. One of my favorite things I saw while I was there was the positioning of the education area as well as interactive tablets for people to use as they explored the collection. It is clear that this museum prioritizes the experience of their viewers and wants kids to get into the action and start learning about, appreciating, and interacting with art at a young age. I was also inspired by the layout of their space in the education area and will try and find some ways to bring that back into my own classroom sometime soon.

Take a Hike

A lot of people use Spring Break to catch up on sleep, catch up on their tans, binge-watch their favorite shows, or hike up a mountain. I am thankful I have the ability to venture to places like the Smoky Mountains and use the resources available to better connect with nature and in turn, myself. I have been hiking up mountains for almost two decades and each time it is a challenge. I am thankful I have the ability to keep climbing and the will to complete each trail. Remember, you can sleep when you are dead.

In the RAD

In addition to our hiking adventures, we also took time to enjoy art in Asheville, North Carolina. I was fortunate to be able to plan a meet up with my friend and fellow art teacher while we were there and we enjoyed the vast array of Street Art and studios located in the River Arts District (RAD).

If you get a chance, visit this art-filled place and enjoy the visuals (they also have a great array of eateries to try, too)!

Spring break was a time to connect with nature, with art, and even with colleagues. I am very thankful for the opportunities I have and use them to help make me a better teacher in my classroom for my students.

More from NAEA

After a week to really go over materials and the variety of items I brought back with me, I have a few key take-aways from this year's conference:

Stop Searching for Perfect Solutions

One of the most impactful presentations I attended was actually the first breakout session I went to about Design Thinking. In this presentation, they discussed a concept I haven't really thought too much about before and that was the idea of finding a solution.

As they shared their stories about students working with materials to develop items that could help communities in the developing world, they stressed the idea of using resolution rather than solution to discuss the end game with design thinking. By saying solution, we infer that there is only one ending that will work and in reality, there are many. In addition, solutions are impacted by resources.

Through this presentation, I started to think about my own approach to making art and how I might need to approach it with my students as they are making art. If I stress a single solution to a problem, rather than the best was to resolve it, I may be shutting the door for some students on their thinking and ability to push past roadblocks in their own learning. Learning is about a continuous path. There is not a straight line that goes from one thing to the next. There are peaks and valleys and short cuts and long hauls. This presentation helped me refocus on that and I am excited to bring it back into my classroom.

People Make the Difference

For me, the conference is not just about sitting and getting information. It is about the interaction with my colleagues and hands-on engagement that occurs through discussion, creation, and presenting to others. I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to attend this year and had the opportunity to learn from my colleagues about how they adapt learning for their students. This was done in many of the medley's and conversation with colleagues sessions I attended.

It was also done in the session I had the joy of presenting in with my fellow Middle School Art teachers. Every time I have presented with this group, I learn something new. Because we come from diverse areas, we are able to share our unique perspectives with an audience of teachers as well as with each other.

In addition, being able to connect with various vendors and see product demonstrations and hear from those who know best is so valuable for my own understanding and what I can bring back to my classroom. I am so appreciative to the vendors for their generosity (both of time and materials), which help advance my ability as an artist and teacher. Working in the exhibition hall with make and takes and other samples is also a great way to connect with other teachers and share tips and tricks that we use with various products in our own classrooms.

These personal connections are what makes a conference successful and it is why I am so thankful I was able to attend in person this year.

I am so lucky to be able to connect with other teachers from other schools at the conference. Being able to experience the sights with friends I have made as a result of my participation in MAEA and NAEA is something that has helped me grow as a person and better serve my students. It is so awesome to be able to spend time with other people who get it. They understand what it is like to be obsessed with Art and they share that obsession in the most unapologetic way with you during these events.

Collaboration Is Key

I have been a big fan of collaboration for a long time. It is silly to work in isolation and it is unrealistic to expect our students to always work alone when they are creating art. It was awesome to go to places this the Seattle Art Museum and the Chihuly Garden and Glass to see that spirit of collaborative work in action.

One of the pieces I was most moved by at the SAM was the large installation by John Grade, titled "Middle Fork." Rather than explain it, here is a video short that explains the work and how it is still in progress and still being created by a collaborative effort.

There were a lot of favorites during this conference. One of them included going outdoors and viewing glass artists at work in the hot shop at Chihuly Gardens and Glass. Again, working collaboratively to create large works is innate to artists and I will be sure to keep that in mind as my students begin their final collaborative STEAM project when we return from break.

Here are some additional Art sights from both places:

As a final note, I wanted to share some of the goodies I brought back and awarded to students who had completed a coding challenge from CSFirst. Finger feet and the Seattle Art Museum pen that looks like a paint tube for the win!

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<<Previous

1. ArtPrize

2. Robots and more

3. Scholastic Awards

4. Collaborative Projects

5. The Unexpected

Meijer Great Choices Film Festival Awards

Goodbye with GIFs

Celebrating at the Scholastic Awards

Arts a la Mode

Thank you TangerKIDS Program!

When Old Becomes New

Focusing on Math in STEAM

We have a Venue!

Objects Complete

Issues

STEAM projects

Meijer Gardens Field Trip

Getting Ready for Arts a la Mode

Show and Tell

Working With New Materials

Connecting to Careers

ArtPrize Progress

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Last STEAM Collaboration

DE is DONE

Building More Skills

Arts a la Mode Prep

ArtPrize10 Update

Finishing Up with DE

Architecture Almost Complete

Working on ArtPrize10

Acting Like Designers

Alter Egos

Always time for Art

Take a Hike

In the RAD

More from NAEA

Stop Searching for Perfect Solutions

People Make the Difference

Collaboration Is Key

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