Blog Archives

New Orleans and Knots

3/31/2015

I had a great time in New Orleans. It was quite an honor to be recognized for the work I do with students when I was awarded the 2015 Western Region Middle Level Educator of the Year.

In addition to attending great sessions, I also was a part of four presentations while at the conference.

It has been an exciting end of last week and start of this as my students finished up projects and I spent some time away at the 2015 National Art Education Association Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was so honored to get recognized for the work I do in my classroom, share ideas with other art teachers, and learn so much to help me become even better in my own practice.

While I was away, my students worked on a finishing up their Celtic Inspired Knots. We learned about symmetry, color, and some Art History in this lesson, as well as how to blend watercolors, colored pencils, and create line designs in Sharpie. I am so proud of them and here are some of their images made:

Practice Sheets:

Lily

Students worked on their drawing, value, and watercolor skills for this project by creating practice sheets to experiment on before applying their discoveries to their final large papers.

Students explored how white colored pencil can be used to blend colors evenly and how there are so many ways to apply watercolor to the paper. It was fun to see the varied results as they played.

Nichole

Traditional Media Knots:

After practicing various ways of applying the different media to their practice sheets, students worked on filling their knots with the varied techniques. I used to have specific requirements about where to put color and how, but I recently have lifted those and students are free to do as they wish. The results are spontaneous and beautiful:

Owen

Jordan

Digital Knots

We tied this project up with a final exploration of knots in the digital realm. Students used SumoPaint and the symmetry tool to create the colorful creations below:

Cody

Mason

Interpreting Identity

3/25/2015

The images above are students working on various projects for the Identity assignment we finished last week. It was fun to see students experiment, explore, plan, fail, plan some more, and then reach results like the ones you see below. You can see the full gallery on our Artsonia gallery.

Michaela: For this piece of artwork i used multiple different methods/patterns along with the materials. For the face of this person I used ripped up news paper articles and glued the together onto thick paper with multiple layers of modge podge, after the modge podge dried i used acrylic paint to paints the eyes, eyeliner, and nose. For the colorful splatter I used wet watercolors, i used a paint brush and dabbed it onto the paper and made an affect by blowing it up towards the end of the paper. I used zentangle, the way i used zentangle patterns by drawing it out with pencil, then going over it with sharpie mixing the designs together to make zentangle. The elements of art i used for this project is color, i used dull and very bright colors throughout my whole art piece. I used different texture by having the zentangle texture, paint texture, watercolor texture, and newspaper collage. The principles of designs i used was pattern, i used patterns by the zentangle, i used patterns such as bubbles, flowers, lines, stars, zebra, etc. The reason why i created this picture is because it expresses someones feelings through the water colors coming out of its head. I didnt draw a mouth because the watercolor art already has told enough, the zentangle behind it gives it a bright to dark effect.

Leah: In this piece of art I made, I decided to use a new technique that was introduced into our classroom. The materials I used were watercolor in a spray bottle and different pieces of paper to make a cool effect. A principle of design that is noticeable in this art piece is texture. This is used when I used the watercolor by spraying it and then added salt onto the paint to add an extra effect to it. This relates to identity because each face relates to someone’s true color and everyone is different. Using the spray bottle and salt is a new and creative idea that has not been used yet. I have reflected my artwork off of the art piece from Julian Opie. This is because he reflects off of the idea that everyone is different in their own way yet they all have similar features. Past artists have reflected off of the idea that everyone can get along because of similar features but they still have their own personality. I used this idea by saying that everyone has the same structure (paper faces) but his or her true color shines through. All in all, people shine through when they let their personality show what they are made of.

Jerimiah: For this project I created a gif. In the gif it shows a brain and sparks that come out the brain. The sparks represents personality and I think that is in the same category with identity.

Evette: Shading really allowed me to show what I was wanting represent in this project representing identity. On one side of my work I used different shades of regular pencil to get a darker and blander look, to represent the side of your identity that you don’t want to reveal 100% and kept a secret. Whereas the other half of my work is all colorful and shaded to fit in with the same technique as the other half, but this colorful half resembles the other half of person that shows their true identity. I personally love this artwork, because of the way it represents identity, and how similar to reality it represents peoples identify. Half open and truthful, and the other half locked shut, not revealing anything. Using art is a great way to show the concept of identity, and Frida Kahlo is a great example of an artist that showed identity in unique ways. Identity can be shown through history, social, and cultural ways, but in one of her paintings she used cultural identity shows the religious beliefs and cultural heritages she treasures. It shows two of her sitting in different chairs connected by the heart, but in two different dresses representing her main two cultures. Furthermore, identity can also be shown through history, like artwork of their lives leading up to then. While social identity can show how others see you as a person. Your true identity may still be showing but not all of it, because everyone has part of it kept a secret.

Emily: n this piece, I used watercolor paints for the triangles and the heart, I used sharpie to outline the puzzle piece, and I used color pencil to draw the veins on the heart. Using the heart as representing a person and the puzzle piece as representing the rest of society, I wanted to show how each person has a role in society. Though we are all different and we all have our own likes, personalities, etc., each person contributes to the world in some way, and every person is like a piece of the puzzle; When everybody is put together like a big puzzle, we all make up the human race.

Andrew: I chose to use colored pencils and and liquid spray paint. The reason that I chose those two materials is because I wanted to use a traditional material (colored pencil) but add some uniqueness and flare with the paint. These two together, I feel, make the piece pop. The lake drawing has deep connections with my family. We owned a cottage on Green Lake and make a ton of great memories there. We spent a whole lot of time out there together and with friends. My grandparents also have a cottage on a river that we enjoy. For this piece I used inspiration from Rachel Sierra's piece that is very similar to mine. I really liked the idea of another picture making up the face and wanted to use it because I had never seen it before but it looked great to me. In our culture, artists use their art to express identity. They may to too scared to express their opinion and use their art to do the talking. Look at any graffiti artist out there. Shepard Fairey for example used his graffiti to express his opinion. He was arrested multiple times but did it anyway so his voice would be heard.

Empty Bowls 2015

3/21/2015

This past Thursday was our 8th Annual Empty Bowls event. It was so much fun to see our students shine as we gathered food and funds for Buist Community Assistance Center and Byron Ministries. People brought in boxes of food items and we raised $547.76 for the cause! Thank you to everyone who came out to support the cause and to our local Subway for being our partner in this from year one!

We want to offer a special thank you to Jodi Gruner for placing the highest bid on the bowl this year and the Music department for continually offering such great performances and making this event come alive each year!

The WMS orchestra offered several songs for the audience.

Our WMS Jazz Band got the crowd moving and grooving.

The BCHS High School Musical cast performed this year for Empty Bowls.

I had the chance to share this process with teachers from across the State at the annual Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning Conference on Friday. It was great to hear their feedback and I look forward to seeing more teachers engage in these types of service-learning projects with their schools and communities!

Empty Bowls 2015

3/18/2015

Tomorrow is the 8th Annual Empty Bowls event at our school. We have been working all year to get ready and I am very excited for this evening that will raise food and funds to those in need in our community. The event takes place from 5-6 p.m. in the BCWMS Cafetorium.

Bring any donation of food or funds to enter and enjoy entertainment from our Music students, soup and bread provided by Subway, and take home a hand-crafted ceramic bowl created by our Visual Art students. You can even bid on the bowl signed by the BCWMS staff! Donations benefit Byron Ministries and the Buist Community Assistance Center.

Digital Printmaking, Like Andy (kind of)

3/17/2015

Students wrapped up our printmaking unit by creating work on Photoshop inspired by the Pop Art Icon, Andy Warhol. Although he is most known for his screen prints, he was a pioneer in the form of Digital Art as you can see above.

Below are images created by 7th grade students. You can see the full gallery on our Artsonia page.

Nick

Ethan

Brynn

More digital works have been recently discovered by the artist and you can learn more by watching the video below. If you skip to the 12 minute mark you will get to the part where they find his files on the old floppy disk.

And the Winners Are...

3/16/2015

Been There, Done That - Photography by Jordan Cooper

The Necknib - Jewelry by Anna Pavlak

It is with great pride that I share our two winners from BCWMS for the 2015 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This is the first year we have had multiple winners from our school and the first year that any medal has been GOLD, which both students earned!

If you would like to learn more about what it means to win, please check on this post from last year when we celebrated our Silver medalist, Makenzie Reid.

We will find out on March 30th if students are able to attend the event and then will begin the fast and furious fundraising it takes to get there. I am incredibly proud of this accomplishment and look forward to celebrating this success! This would not have been made possible without the strength of our Visual Arts team, support of Administration and the larger community, as well as the support of our Fine Arts Boosters who helped pay for the admission fees of this competition.

Influenced by the Greeks

3/13/2015

This week, 7th grade students worked on printmaking projects inspired by the patterns and figures found in Red and Black Figure pottery from Ancient Greece. It was fun to look at contemporary artists like Michael Stutz and how they are inspired by past works when they are making their new works like the one below. The Kore Figure on the left is from Ancient Greece and Michael Stutz made the one on the right out of cardboard:

7th graders are learning about Ancient Greece in their History class, too. This was a perfect time to examine the past and see how it influences the present.

Your Votes Can Help Us Win

3/12/2015

Dalton's work was named Top 15 among Middle School work in the State.

Ava's work was named Top 15 among Middle School work in the State.

There are a lot of exciting things happening with student work this month. In addition to finding out that two of our MAEA State qualifiers made it into the top 15 for the State, it is also time to vote for the Meijer Great Choices Film Festival.

Last year, we won first place in all of the categories. With your help and votes, we can do it again! Please take a moment and vote for our videos and help our classroom win!

In addition to these great opportunities, Nate is up for Artsonia's Artist of the Week this week. You can vote for his abstract drawing daily until Saturday!

Abstract Faces

3/10/2015

I have more 7th grade classes than 8th grade classes this term, which means that I am employing more traditional teaching methods than I did first semester. I am new to these students and learning where they are at both in skills and concepts.

Because I am still getting to know them and their abilities, it is always fun to throw a few collaborative drawing exercises that prove both anyone can draw and it is fun trying!

First, we had a portrait party where students created continuous blind contour line drawings. From there, students selected the one they liked most and then modified it on another sheet of paper, with oil pastels. Here are some results:

After experimenting with abstraction using oil pastels and drawing methods, students then applied those concepts to collaborative drawings on Photoshop where they combined several faces to create a new one, like these examples:

It is always fun to work on skills and concepts without the worry of it having to look "real." Abstraction is a fun way to experiment with line and color and we had a lot of laughs working on these portraits.

#YAM15

3/4/2015

March is Youth Arts Month (YAM). It is a time to celebrate the great things happening in programs across the country and share the power of the Arts in students lives and what quality Arts education programs can do for schools and communities.

To celebrate, students created their own #YAM15 quotes about what art means for their lives and posted them in our Artsonia gallery.

Here are a few:

This project idea originated from Illinois teacher, Tricia Fuglestad, who posted on her blog. Happy Youth Arts Month to all!