Blog Archives

Sidewalk Chalking

5/29/2015

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Yesterday, 7th grade students and I went outside to create chalk mandalas. Before heading into the sun-filled sidewalk with our chalk, students learned about radial symmetry, Sand Mandalas, and created one out of paper. If you have not seen a Sand Mandala in process, please take a moment and check out the video below. We also looked at radial symmetry in a variety of places like the Rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral, the Aztec calendar, and evenIslamic tiles.

When students see this process, they are often shocked at the ending. In years past, I have always asked students make their mandala on paper, using a variety of color schemes. This semester, I decided to take advantage of the weather and head outside so students could collaborate. And although students knew their works were temporary, they still worked very hard throughout.

Even though our works from chalk will fade over time, we still enjoyed the process of creating - which is always something I am trying to get my students to understand. Here are some tweets from our time outside:

Adding more #artsed pic.twitter.com/x0X43n0gvN
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

pic.twitter.com/QgpWXniSfB
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

#artsed pic.twitter.com/r39bu3Q794
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

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Old to New

5/29/2015

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Last week, 8th grade students were asked to look through their portfolios and create something new from a past work. Here are some of the results:

Emily H: This is a piece that I redid from the beginning of the year, where I had drawn a realistic heart then attached to it, had a puzzle piece with triangles and the same color scheme as the triangles in this piece. I was trying to go along with the idea of identity, and how each puzzle piece in a jigsaw puzzle is different, but when they all come together, they create the entire puzzle. This can work for humans too; we are all individuals, like the individual puzzle pieces, but when we come together much like a jigsaw puzzle, we are all apart of the bigger picture: the human race. I reimagined this piece by taking actual puzzle pieces and painting a human heart on them, to better exemplify my idea and to make it more interesting.

Eleni N.: This dragon is an adaptation from my 5th grade piece, "Free Draw & Art Club." The original was an angry dragon sitting atop a hill, protecting it. Taking the idea of a dragon in an area caused me to create this. It's a dragon in its cave. I didn't copy this image over to make it look better, but instead stole the idea and created a whole new piece based off of the original one. I decided to keep it black and white due to the original piece being black and white.

Andrew V.: I reimagined a piece of art that I made at Nickels. The old project was a 2-point perspective drawing of a street corner. The way that I reimagined it was by completely changing the perspective. I took it from a 2-point to a 5-point perspective drawing. It gives the effect that the image is in a bubble or drop of water. I also changed the medium/the way that I colored it. This time instead of just using colored pencils, I used liquid spray paint for the background. Finally, I changed it from a boring street corner to a person holding the image in a bubble. The last one was a plain drawing of a street corner which was not very creative however I changed it to a city that a person is holding. The personal connection that I have with this is that I loved this project at Nickels and I am fascinated by the architecture of these giant buildings in cities like New York and Chicago. The reason that I chose to revisit this project is because it was on a topic that I love and the original piece that I did was not very creative and sort of boring. I wanted to go back and change it so it looked awesome and had my own personal flair to it. I made it more creative and unique the second time around.

Evette P.: I really enjoyed this art project, mainly because it gave me an opportunity to revisit my old art work. It also gave me a chance to see how much I have excelled in creativity and artistic talent in the passing time. I created this artwork going off of that I created last year, in 7th grade. My personal connection to my art mainly goes off of the idea of personally seeing my improvement and my usage of different techniques. One of the main reasons why I wanted to revisit this idea was because of how intriguing it looked in the first place, and due to the materials and techniques used. I have used many different materials through out the year but oil pastel had not been one of them. Revisiting a piece of work and but still being able to use new material this year expands my usage of materials and creativity. Looking back and seeing how I incorporated the usage of symmetry and oil pastel in my work gave me the overall idea to do this work of art related to something old, something new.

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WMS Fine Arts

5/22/2015

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Yesterday was our Annual Fine Arts Night at WMS. It has gone through many variations and I think yesterday's might have been the best one yet! It is always hard to know how to make shows like these more interactive and better attended for my students.

With the music classes involved, it is more of a no-brainer. The kids perform and parents show up. With Art, it can be a little more passive which has not helped with attendance. This year, with the help of the STEM teacher, we decided to run workshops and offer students the opportunity to bring family and friends in the STEM room and experience a taste of our classrooms. This was probably the most participation I have been from my students than any other year.

Art activities included a collaborative painting and Gelli Arts Monoprinting and STEM activities included designing and launching bottle rockets. All of the activities were student-led and super fun. You can check more out from the evening in the video below.

It was such a fun night and I am excited to do more of these types of interactive workshops in the future!

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Collage and Value

5/20/2015

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Earlier this week, students finished their collages and value drawings and turned them in on Artsonia. It was fun to see them experiment with methods that ranged in scope that included realism and abstraction.

For inspiration, we looked at the work of Chuck Close and Noli Novak. I also came across the work of David Lock, which is perfect for this assignment and I will make sure to reference again in the future with my students. Here are the works I saw last weekend from his Misfit series, currently on display at the GRAM:

I really enjoy discovering new artists when I go to a museum, especially when they are so connected to curriculum already being explored in the classroom. I immediately shared these works with my students as they finished up their collages. I have all kinds of ideas on how to connect this type of work together next year.

Speaking of making connections, I made sure to include Noli Novak in on the creative process by tweeting her some pictures of the students in action. She was gracious enough to respond, making my students feel encouraged and special.

@campbellartsoup happy to see that! They are amazing!
— Noli Novak (@NoliNovak) May 14, 2015

Here are a few process pictures of the students working on each piece simultaneously. I find that when I am offering more than one process at a time, students move freely between them and make decisions on which they would like to spend more time on and which will be completed first.

Here are some completed works of both the collages and drawings. You can find more work on our class Artsonia gallery.

Katie H: I first found the features of the face: eyes, nose, mouth. and then I found skin and hair then I found colors for the background I pasted them in small strips. I like this a lot. what I really like about this work is the background because one that is what i took the longest on and that is also the thing that I think brings out the piece the most.

Porter S.: To make this artwork I used a variety of magazines and put them together to make a face that looks realistic. I think it turned out better then I thought it would. I think that because I thought it would be very plain and simple but I found out it was fun so I started having fun with it and experimented with it and mixed and matched until I was satisfied with my work.

Hannah L.: I think that my work is abstract as most of the pieces are but i suppose it is one of the more "realistic" pieces. So i first started off by finding different pieces for the background then glued them on. And then i began looking for skin tones to use for the face and the neck and glued that on top of the background. After i did that i found eyes, a nose, and a mouth and glued them on to the face on long with the hair.

Kaitlyn V.: I was inspired by Noli Novak and her idea for drawing with dots and not using lines. I had the opportunity of doing this and making in into this piece of art. For the background i did a new technique where I scrape oil pastels on water and it changes everything up. I think that this was a fun piece that I had the opportunity to make and was glad I could make it.

Jordan C.: In my artwork, I used value by having an imaginary light in the top left of my paper. I used darker shades for the spots that wouldn't be touching the light as much. I love this artwork, and the reason I did a colorful background is so it will make things pop out more. I think I did an amazing job at shading were I should have and should not have shaded as darkly, Overall I think it is fantastic.

Jewel R.: I used many different values in my work, Light dark, middle. The usage of a pencil can create so many different things, light, shadows, ext... I was looking forward to do a shading project and we finally did. ^-^ I really love this piece of art work and learned that shading with your pencil isn't the only way to show value. I will definitely try stippling again. Hopefully get as good as Noli Novak!

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A Time to Shine

5/19/2015

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I am pretty lucky to work where I do. I have great students, a supportive community, and a team of teachers that are the best in the business. Yesterday proved all of that when we presented the accomplishments of our K-12 program to the BCPS Board of Education. Below is a copy of our presentation. You can see for yourself that it was a remarkable year for our students and we are so proud of what was accomplished.

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Sooper Art 2015

5/16/2015

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This year marks the fifth year for the annual Sooper Art Competition. This environmentally themed competition asks students to render works based on concepts and ideas inspired by nature. Out of 400 works submitted from 29 schools in the state, BCWMS had four winners from the 48 awarded! It was fun to see the five student works from our district recognized and also enjoy the works on display in the current exhibition at the Grand Rapids Art Museum!

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Meijer Gardens 2015

5/16/2015

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Thanks to funding from the Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters and support from administration, the STEM teacher and I were able to take a group of our students to the Frederik Meijer Gardens on Friday. In addition to viewing works from Jim Dine, Louise Nevelson, Juame Plensa, Deborah Butterfield, and many other notable contemporary and classic sculptors, we also learned about various eco-systems within the gardens and how environments support the capacity for life in various ways.

One of my favorite moments was when the students took over and lead our tour of the outdoor sculptures. Each group selected a sculpture of interest using a shared Google Document and then shared their findings once we arrived at the sculpture. I first did this last year after reading about how Theresa McGee did this with her students.

I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to take students to the Gardens at least once every year for the past nine years! It has been fun to see the amount of growth that has occurred each year in terms of both sculpture collection and habitats at the Gardens and to share these experiences with Art with my students!

It was a great day with great art and (almost) everyone walked away with a chance to interact with work in meaningful ways.

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Art Show Fun!

5/12/2015

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May is one of the most fun months because it is a time when we get to showcase and celebrate student accomplishments and growth at our Visual Arts District Show in the Van Singel Fine Arts Center. I decided to do something different this year with the display and select the works in my area rather than display it all. It allowed more room for the individual works to breathe and it also allowed students the opportunity to have their work displayed with a nice finishing border. I think when I plan for next year, I will work to have more uniform sizes of art, so we can offer those borders to more students.

One of my favorite parts of the show is seeing the progression of student work from grades K-12. I work with a stellar team of teachers and they do a great job of preparing and pushing students to their highest potential of learning. I also am excited when former students take a moment to talk with me and my students about their work and plans for the future. Below are a few highlights from the show:

We had a nice crowd of students, parents, and teachers for our show.

It was fun to see students get excited about their work and those of other students!

Our high school display was an impressive mix of media and very inspiring to see.

High School students offered the younger ones a chance to ask questions about their work and ideas.

And of course, what is an art show without a bird?

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Art from Objects

5/12/2015

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Students used objects as their point of inspiration for the project we just finished up in class. Whether it was the absence of the object, the transformation of an object, or the assemblage of many objects, students looked at a variety of solutions when tackling the topic of "Objects, Artifacts, and Things Left Behind."

Devin M.

Michaela B.

Andrew V.

Nick V.

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DE is done!

5/8/2015

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This has been an awesome semester with my High School students as we explored manual settings on a camera to create an array of images. From exploring shutter to aperture, DOF and painting with light, students really pushed their cameras to the limit to create images that explored a variety of ideas and concepts.

For our last class, students shared a presentation that compared their work to the work of artists we studied in class and also presented their final series that explored a larger concept or theme of their choice using techniques explored in the previous assignments. We also finalized our Spring display in the Van Singel Fine Arts Center that showcases the BCPS k-12 program.

Tara: The Littlest Zoo

In her series, Tara explored the transformative quality of these small plastic figurines when placed in various scenarios. Here are two examples from her series that capture the essence of the project.

Jason: deflated hapiness

In Jason's series, he had a model pose with a yellow balloon acting as the face put on regardless of true feelings. Here are two from his collection.

Holly: "Youth" by Daughter

Holly used a song to inspire her final work of images. Each picture represented a part of the song, illustrating the lyrics through the use of light, shadow, and motion. Here are two examples.

Denise: Night Lights

In her series, Denise went downtown and captured the city by night. Here are two of her pieces in the series of eight.

Sarah: Identity Lost

Sarah worked with the theme of identity and addiction in her series of clouded visions of her model in various stages of being overwhelmed. Here are two from her series.

Kenton: Mood Music

In Kenton's work, he used friends and church members to highlight his love of music. Using an array of warm and cool tones in the work, Kenton also used color to express feelings he found in his subjects. Here are two from the series.