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Week Ten

3/27/2018

Ok Go Sandbox to the Rescue

This week was the first week of the last marking period. It was also a short week and the week before Spring Break. As you might guess, students' minds were not super focused on starting new, intense work, nor were they really ready to begin a big project only to have to pause it for a week of break before getting back into it again.

Lucky for me, I have a great teaching partner in the STEM room and we decided to take advantage of this week with a short collaborative based on the new teacher resource: OkGo Sandbox.

I have used their resources before in my classroom; using this resource was a whole new experience. Not only did students get to see the video employ the concept of flip books (which was what we decided to end the marking period on for our 3rd STEAM collaborative this year), they also got extended learning opportunities to discuss gravity, timing, and other STEAM concepts that help make OkGo's videos one-of-a-kind pieces of art. This was also a great way to reflect on the NAEA conference from last week that focused on the theme of Art + Design = STEAM.

Students were excited to work collaboratively on this project, it only took about four days to complete, and we even got a retweet of our activity from the website! Students love knowing their work will be seen by others and you can see a compilation of completed flip books my our 7th and 8th grade Art and STEM students below:

Automata's Complete

STEAM students worked on completing their Automata's this week. It was fun to see them create something that moves through the use of engineering principles in this project. We were also able to connect it to the film Hugo and the book it is based. Again, one of the big points from the NAEA conference in Seattle this year was how art is the intersection of all disciplines in life. This project was such a great articulation of that and my students did such a nice job of working together to create interesting results shown below:

ArtPrize10 Collaboration

In addition to all of the STEAM projects completed this week, we also started our ArtPrize10 collaboration. I am excited to see this project come together, especially since we are working with all six schools in our district. To kick it off this week, students painted a fingerprint of paint and then used a sharpie to create a self-portrait. We were able to discuss concepts about color and abstraction as well as diversity and collaboration in this process. We will be doing more with this once we get back from break!

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Week Nine

3/20/2018

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Automata's

STEAM students started Automata's this week. This is my first time teaching this concept and product. It was fun to see students work on this in pairs and connect their understanding of other subjects with this Engineering concept. Students should be finishing up these works next week. I am very excited with their progress and how they are combining their skills and understanding from a variety of areas to make this work!

Air Zoo Hall of Fame Awardee

It was very exciting to learn that one of our Dual Enrollment students, Lauren Doyle, was awarded the Air Zoo Innovation in Art and Science Award. I am so proud to see this student I first met in my 7th grade Art class grow into her own artist combining her love of Art and Science to create pieces featured above and below. I decided to nominate Lauren when I found out about this opportunity. Her work with electroplating made for a unique opportunity to connect Art with Science and I am so glad she was recognized for making this connection with her work.

Lauren will be recognized at the Air Zoo Hall of Fame Awards dinner in April. We are excited to see what more Lauren does as she finishes our 3D class and starts prepping her portfolio for next year's competition season which will include the Scholastic Art Awards.

Spaces and Places

Students finished their second major themed project this semester using the theme of Space and Place as a jumping off point. Here are some ways they resolved imagery to best explore the concept:

Adam: In this project, I made a canyon landscape out of clay. I made little jagged notches in the clay to give it texture. Also, I chose the materials that I used so that I could challenge myself. Working with clay is not easy. I had to slip and score everything that I put on it. I can compare and contrast this piece to an artist of note. For example, it looks like a Nathan Walsh artwork piece. This is because of the amount of detail I used. To add onto that, I over exaggerated the colors just like in his artwork.

Patty: I decided to draw a mountain with an inspiration of the artist Ansel Adams, because he had a lot of drawings and paintings of nature, in gray scale, so I wanted to draw a mountain, and then use color pastel to add some color to it. The background seemed empty so I added some shade from the outside in.

Alex: For this project I decided to use photography. I used photography to help show how from our point of view, far away, we may not see everything that is in a small place. I would compare my work to the work of Ansel Adams. Like him I used photography to show the space and value in the photographs. My work would be different form his in the fact where I use several pictures and put them into one, and I also take a landscape photo of a smaller landscape to really bring out the texture in the objects I'm photographing.

Jason: I decided to use value pencils because I thought it would be the easiest way to show where the sun is showing and where it is not showing. I pressed harder and used darker pencils where the sun was not showing. I would compare this artwork to Ansel Adams because he only uses pencils in his artwork, which is like mine. In the principles of design, you can see a pattern where the houses get smaller the closer they get to the vanishing points.

Gage: I made this picture on photoshop. I used photo shop because I am good at it. Also I would compare my artwork to David Hockney because it is natural but also abstract and cartoons. I made a tree in the Feld because I like the wilderness.

Noah: We learned about spaces and places and I put in thee use of cold and hot colors the hot colors poped out and the cool colors pushed in and this made a cool affect so what I did was I painted colors on first blue, green, brown, yellow, orange and last but not least black and then I put tape on the paper so I didn't paint on the c0olors I made and I let it dry and I took the tape of and boom, this came out.

Perspective Bootcamp

Students also had a chance to work with perspective this week. Here are some examples of what they did in only a few days!

Chelsea

NAEA in Seattle

I had an awesome time at the National Art Education Association Conference in Seattle to finish the week. I am so thankful to be a part of the NAEA and participate in such a quality organization that offers the best of professional development opportunities for their members. Even better is the opportunity to attend conferences in cities I may not normally visit and experience the art and culture of that area so I can bring it back into my classroom in ways that are both enriching and relevant to my students. In addition, I get the time to connect with others who know my teaching situation best and compare notes.

I will do a more in-depth write-up of my time in Seattle and the things I learned at the conference next week, but here is a short snippet of the experience with images below:

NAEA registration area was so organized this year and it was great to run into people I haven't seen since 2016 in line.

#teammiddle presentation at #naea18 is in the books! Love my art tribe! pic.twitter.com/qqHggX2Mix
— Holly Bess Kincaid (@ArtLadyHBK) March 22, 2018

This is my 6th year presenting at NAEA. It was awesome to get our group up and moving in an exercise that demonstrates concepts about color.

Hearing from Nick Cave was a highlight. I am a fan of his work and students learn about him in our objects/artifacts themed unit. It was great to also see his work at the Seattle Art Museum.

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Week Eight

3/16/2018

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National Medalists

It is awesome to announce that we have two BCWMS National Scholastic Medalists for the 2018 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Congratulations to Sophia Bentley for her Silver Medal in Jewelry and Tara Rood for her Gold Medal in Sculpture. Tara's work will be shipped to New York City for the traveling show and we will get to celebrate her accomplishment as a Gold Medalist at the National Awards Ceremony at Carnegie Hall in June!

Awards were made on March 13th and students were thrilled to see their works made the cut. It is an incredible accomplishment to make it into the top 1% of all entries! I am also excited for the opportunity to take another student to NYC for the awards and celebrate the 10th anniversary of my first National Scholastic Medalist who received a Silver Medal in Photography in 2008!

Our high school also had a National Silver Medalist. It is always great to see my former students continue their success at the high school level. Harrison Kosack earned a Silver Medal for his Future New piece shown below.

BCHS Jr. Harrison Kosak, received a silver medal from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for his sculpture, Avian of Pollution. With nearly 350,000 works submitted by students grades 7-12, this award puts Harrison in the top 1% of all submissions! Amazing!!! #bchspride

A post shared by Byron Center-High (@byroncenterhigh) on Mar 19, 2018 at 5:05pm PDT

Working on Spaces

Students worked on their Spaces and Places themed projects this week. I am very excited about some of the work I am seeing and already thinking about Scholastic for next year. It has been a real delight to see how many students have opened up their options with new media like 3D printing. We will continue to work on these next week along with a Perspective Drawing Bootcamp to help students gain skills with perspective drawing concepts.

3D At Work

Last week, students worked on their final collaborative by making the camera you see above. It was fun to see them recreate an enlarged version of one of the many vintage cameras you can find in the high school art room.

This week, we continued to manipulate size with the start of the Alter Ego project. For this assignment, students have the option to either create a mini version of their alternative self or a wearable that helps them transform into that self. Most of the students are electing to create the miniature version. We will continue to work on this project for the next couple of weeks then then finish the term with a project designed by each student.

Getting Ready for #NAEA18

I am very excited for the opportunity to present at and attend the 2018 National Art Education Association Conference in Seattle, WA! It is going to be a super fun time that will help me further push myself as an artist and teacher and I cannot wait to meet up with all of my colleagues from across the country to share ideas and art supplies!

I am presenting as a part of TEAM middle for the fourth year in a row. We are going to combine our efforts on Thursday, March 22nd at 2 p.m. to share our work with Technology, Environment, Assessment, and Management in our classrooms. I love presenting with these teachers and even better, I love our custom shirts we wear when we present together! Last year, I presented virtually so I am excited to actually be there this time.

I hope to connect with many teachers while I am there and bring back the best of what I learn to my classroom right away!

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Week Seven

3/9/2018

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Building More Skills

This past week, students were introduced to their next major project theme: Spaces and Places. It was fun to see students shift gears and think about how we can depict different places based on our experiences and interests.

To get students started, we looked at a variety of artists and then spent sometime on building understanding and skill with two challenges: Fast Collage and Photoshop Challenge 2. Both looked at how we can bring images together to make something new and both focused on students working with spaces by establishing a foreground, middle ground, and background in their work. In both works, students are asked to create quickly. It is always amazing to see what they can make in such short periods of time. The goal is for students to use this understanding of space in their project as they see fit moving into next week.

Here are examples of the work below:

Isaac: I created this by using an abstract collage with various scapes and figures, along with putting an unrealistic twist to the size of figures when looking at depth

Kari: I made an interesting piece of collage. There is a really cool background and the middle ground I had cats and then I had a dog for the foreground.

Bryce: I like this piece because it really shows the horizon and the mountain and also the lake thats in it. This could be one of my favorite pieces of all.

Gage: I made this with photoshop I outlined the mountains and the grass. Then I made the little details like al of the trees in the photo and the twigs on the ground. I liked this because I like to do photoshop.

Madeline: I selected the space challenge because I enjoy looking at the space and see all the cool things out there. I liked being able to create a cool effect with the sense glare and with the stars. It was all cool to see how you could create the planets with different patterns and colors. To see how the project came together to create something a whole image was very fascinating

Eli: In the photoshop challenge 2 I did The space image. This was an intermediate challenge and I really enjoyed it. I Learned many new things with photoshop and how it works. I also use lots of factors of art and the composition to get the whole art work. I really loved how the lens flare and the stars make the space look really realistic.

Olivia: To create this piece I used a graffiti name maker to create my name in graffiti. After that I put it onto a photoshop piece with a picture of the wall. Then I made it look like the graffiti was painted on the wall and had been weathered there over time. This made it look real even though it isn't, and that is why I decided to do this piece. It looks so real and it's really cool to have my name painted on the wall.

Niklas: I created this name using Graffiti Creator. I think the shape of the letters look very cool and I also really like cool colors like blue and green. I think the colors show me as a fun person.

Zander: The hallway I made was made in photoshop and it was made with a line tool, The gradient I used was a cool one that I found and this is what I made

Aron: In this image I have made a hallway. First I took a picture of a hallway, and I used the pen tool to fill in the lines of the image. After that I then used the gradient tool to make the background colorful. Finally I used the extort tool to add some cubes for the background. I selected this project because I wanted to try the most challenging project available, because that is kind of fun and the most rewarding in the end.

Technology-based Work

In my STEAM class, students are focused on technology this week for their second major "Can Do" project. They could make anything as long as it was technology focused. It was fun to see the variety of works students have started to make and how they have employed materials we have obtained thanks to grants from DonorsChoose.org and TangerKIDS.

We will be finishing up these works this week and moving onto the next focus: Engineering.

Mini-Hideaways

My 3D students are working hard as we hit the final stretch of class and our last major projects before we complete the course at the end of April. It is crazy to think of how quickly we have gotten to this point. This week, students finished working on their mini-hideaway projects and took photographs of them on their desired locations.

It was neat to see them completed and on location as well as read why students selected the places they did for their work.

Last Collaborative

One of my favorite components of this course has been the amount of collaborative work students have done along the way. We will be finishing our final one next week, where students are asked to create a large cardboard camera.

My students decided to use this older example as their inspiration and also make it wearable (since our next project deals with wearable works). It will be fun to see this come together in the next week.

Making Connections

This week was also spent making connections with our NIS program through Google Hangouts. It was fun to have students discuss various opportunities to create in our program and answer questions from 6th grade students about what it is like to be in Art and STEM in 7th and 8th grade.

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Week Six

3/3/2018

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Happy Youth Arts Month!

March is Youth Arts Month! I am very excited about all of the things we have in store for Youth Arts Month, including the start of our ArtPrize10 piece. To kick off the month of artful festivities, we finished up some major projects, celebrated our Regional Scholastic Awards, and I even got to participate in an art show!

If you would like to help us celebrate Youth Arts Month, consider donating to our latest DonorsChoose.org project that is getting matching funds from AT&T for digital storytelling or voting for our student-made videos for the Meijer Great Choices Film Festival about Celebrating Diversity and Healthy Choices (you can vote once per day until March 23rd).

You, Me, Everybody

7th and 8th grade students finished their first major projects this week that focused on the theme "You, Me, Everybody." This is the first time that students got a chance to decide their materials and overall compositions for this semester to explore the theme. What is so awesome about this project is seeing the choices students make and reading what aspect of the theme they want to explore.

What is even better is how they use the tools they have been empowered with through the skill-builders we have done earlier leading up to this project. It is always a little hectic not knowing exactly what students will make in my class, but it is so rewarding to see them make choices and reflect on the outcome of those choices in their artists statements.

I am so thankful I adapted this teaching practice and built in a variety of ways to for students to find success. I am not saying that it is 100% perfect, but we are going to keep working on it until it is.

Allison: I choose to use Photoshop because I felt personally the end product would look better using the program. My technique consisted of separation, having nothing in common with the other side. Separation assisted me in communicating the difference between adult hood and childhood. It connects to the theme you because all the people that I meet are either embracing their child side or attempting to cover it up, like in the picture when the adult had is trying to cover the child's hand.

Jared: I used pencil shading and I used a variety of pencils.I darkened areas so that it looks like shadow.I did this for the me part of the project and I like nature so I wanted to employ that into my art work.The sun is setting because I like to read at night as in the picture.I'm reading under the tree.

Alex: For this piece I used the printmaking technique, for this I started out by taking a picture and then tracing onto a paper which I then applied to a carving block. From there, I then carved out the pieces I didn't want to have printed and started the actual printing process. I took different inks and painted them on a bench hook with a brayer and also used it to put on the carving block. I repeated this process five times to make the five prints on the piece. This connects to the, "You, Me, Everybody" theme because this is expressing myself just like the artist Frida Kahlo and I only focused on myself through this project.

Avery: For the you, me, everybody project I chose to focus on child soldiers. After learning about child soldiers in English class, I realized that the topic deserved more recognition that it was receiving. By using chalk pastels, I created flames inside two faces. The flames represent children's identities being erased when they are forced to become soldiers. I also incorporated shredded paper into the background to add texture and to create the illusion of the paper being signed I added water color. This shredded paper symbolizes the destruction that the child soldiers are forced to witness and participate in. Relating back to the theme of the project, this piece connects to the "everybody" category. Everyone should be knowledgeable about child soldiers and everybody should do there part to help.

Chelsea: My earrings are related to the “You” part of the you me and everything project. It connects with you because there is one person hanging from the earrings and in the necklace the theme is everybody because there are other people hold each other up to make one piece of art. They are made of gold and colorful wire to show the detail in the arms legs and body. The colorful wire represents a bunch of different people that come together. The colorful wire was easy to turn and move but the little people took a lot of mistakes because it is so small.

Hunter: For you, me, everybody, I chose to do me, this represents me because this is something I am interested in doing and I like making different intricate designs. This consists of circles and like and weird shapes together making it into a big collage of shapes and lines.

Olivia: This artwork connects to the topic because the mug is a very simple person showing that in the end everyone looks the same without the small details. This kind of goes with the theme of everybody because our faces are all the same after you take off the freckles, hair, and more. To make this I used the techniques we learned about clay, like armatures. The materials I used to create this project were clay and glaze, and it made a beautiful mug in the theme of everybody!

Ceramic Forms

In my 3D class this week, students continued work on their miniature hideaways and were also able to upload their ceramic forms from earlier in the term. Not everyone's work has been glaze fired, but it was great to see these completed. It was also interesting to see what reactions were to the glaze choices students. made when completing their forms. I am so pleased with the work from this group so far this semester.

Scholastic Awards

The BCPS Visual Arts program had another strong showing at this year's West Central Michigan Regional Scholastic Art Awards. With over 50 works recognized and one American Vision Nominee, we were able to celebrate this success on March 3rd with our students.

Kendall College of Art and Design hosts our regional show and they did a great job of recognizing students and displaying the creative works of the 2018 Gold Key winners.

It will be exciting to check back on the Scholastic Art and Writing website on March 13th to see if any of our Gold Key winners received National Medals. Good luck to WMS Gold Key winners Sophia, Bryanna, and Tara!

It was also very exciting to see past students soar, like Emma McCloud (pictured above with our high school Visual Arts teacher Greg Reinstein). She received her first Scholastic Awards as one of my students and she is now an American Vision Nominee for our region as a high school student. I can't wait to see what she does next with her work!

The show was a great one! I am so proud of our students and thankful I get to be a part of their art journey. These students are so inspiring and their work makes me want to be a better teacher and better artist.

Art Show

To cap of this first week of Youth Arts Month, I got to see my own work on display as a part of the CAMPUS show at The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. This is a group show featuring faculty members of Ferris State University and Kendall College of Art and Design. Thanks to my work with KCAD as a Dual Enrollment instructor, I was able to apply to be in the show.

I feel pretty proud and overwhelmed to have been able to submit a work and have it on the same space as artists like Kehinde Whiley and Nick Cave (just last year)! One of my personal goals this year is to push myself to make more art and show my work more this year. This show was a great step forward in doing just that.

ArtPrize10

We had a half day with students on Friday, which meant we had PD in the afternoon. I am so lucky I got to spend part of that PD with my fellow Visual Arts teachers to plan out our ArtPrize10 student collaboration.

Before our meeting, we had a basic idea about what we were planning to make. Now it is much more clear and specific. I don't want to give to much away, but I am so excited to see how it all turns out in the end. I am so lucky I work with an awesome team!

This is what hard work looks like.

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Week Five

2/23/2018

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Working

It was exciting to see student use the smART lab space this past week. I still need to organize items to best fit our needs, but this was a great start!

Students finally began to dive into their first major theme of the semester: You, Me, Everybody. In doing so, they started developing sketches and ideas of what they wanted to create for their work and using the various skill-building exercises, applied the media they deemed most appropriate for the assignment.

This is always an exciting time in the classroom because there is so much happening and so much potential for what can still happen. I am excited to see these works develop over the next week and be submitted to our online gallery for a grade.

Here are some of the works in progress below:

Panels Complete

We finally finished the larger set of panels this week. It was a lot of work to get them completed, but I think the results were worth it. These will now go into the office for display in our conference room.

Miniature Hideaways

In my 3D Design class this week, we glazed our descriptive word ceramic forms and started the miniature hideaway project. We are using celluclay to cover the forms and so far it is working out quite nicely.

I am excited to see these works finish up next week and then get photographed on location.

I am particularly excited to see how students apply the finishing touches and where they decide to photograph their work.

Meijer Great Choices

Finally this week, students were given the opportunity to participate in the Meijer Great Choices Film Festival by creating videos on topic-specific content like Celebrating Diversity and Making Healthy Choices. We had two entries for this year and you will be able to vote for them starting on March 1 by going here.

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Week Four

2/15/2018

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On the News

Monday kicked off with student work being featured on our local news as a part of a segment that highlighted a grant program we received in 2016. It was fun to see student work featured as other teachers are encouraged to apply for the TangerKIDS grant this year. I am hoping to receive another grant this year for a project idea I have to transform our hallways into a gallery for student work.

Building Skills

Since moving to more choices for projects in our classroom, I have found that the beginning weeks of skill-building exercises have been important in challenging students abilities to manipulate materials and work with a variety of concepts in their work. The hope of these skill-builders is to equip students with the tools needed for them to independently develop and work on the thematic works we do in class in a way that is both informed and intentional.

This week, we worked on the use of line and watercolor techniques as we continued to explore ideas of portraits as a way to capture the likeness of others - well, actually maybe the opposite of that. Using blind contour and bilateral drawings, students used their observation skills to draw, but most definitely ended up with very abstract outcomes. We used this opportunity to discuss that as artists, we have the option of how we want to portray our subject. Sometimes it calls for more realism and sometimes it needs to be more abstract or expressive.

It was a fun process to take students through and I will be interested to see if any of them end up applying it to their final works as we get moving on our "You, Me, Everybody" themed projects.

Lexi

Brayden

Olivia

Ellie

Clay in STEAM Class

I am teaching a STEAM class as a part of my schedule this semester. This is my first time teaching STEAM and developing a curriculum that asks students to use their art skills and design thinking to tackle ideas and concepts across other disciplines.

In this class, students have a "Have to" and "Can do" project for each of the letters in STEAM. This means that there is one teacher-directed project and one student-direct project within Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.

For our first set of projects that are Science-based, students had to work with clay and create a piece that could play music/sound. The design of the ceramic works were based on endangered species.

In addition to this, students also had the opportunity to hear from two of our high school ceramic students as they visited and demonstrated their abilities on the wheel. It was awesome for students to hear how they work with the clay to create their works and in doing so, explain the chemistry of the clay and the physics of throwing and manipulating forms on the wheel.

This opportunity to have skills students present to our younger students is something that I hope to do more of in the future. I was very proud of all of the students who asked questions and the way those questions were answered.

It was also a great opportunity for our large Empty Bowls bowl to be created for auction on our upcoming Fine Arts night, known as Arts a la Mode. I am excited to get this piece fired and glazed. I have some fun ideas for how to best glaze it (those hands you see next to it are going in the kiln shortly and have helped inspired some ideas).

From Objects to Art

This week in 3D, students worked on finishing up their object sculptures. Some more will be finished next week. It was fun to see students work with multiples of the same object and create a form from something you would see in the everyday in a non-art way.

I have really enjoyed seeing these students take on challenges and apply their skills and understanding of 3D media in ways that push towards new understandings and inspire new ideas. Students will be moving onto a new project next week where they will be looking at architecture and structures.

Thinking About ArtPrize10

As we move into spring, we will also be moving into the season we start to think about this year's ArtPrize entry. Last year was the first year our school entered work. This year, we are hoping to enter again and our materials for the work began to arrive this week.

The K-12 Visual Arts team will be meeting soon to hammer out ideas for the overall look of our over 3000 bottle caps when they are painted by students, but regardless of what we create and if it is actually on display in a venue this fall, I am excited we are trying something new and coming together to make it happen.

If you are interested in more information, please contact me (especially if you are interested in hosting our work as a venue).

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Week Three

2/9/2018

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Photoshop Challenge 1

It is amazing to me that in three weeks of seeing this new group of students, they already have three works of art published on Artsonia. For their third work published, students created either a beginner, intermediate, or advanced level work based on a series of choices in Schoology. These series of challenges are designed to help students get a better feel for materials and create works that build skills and understanding in hopes they will be able to select those concepts for their personal works for major thematic units.

It was fun to see students make choices this week as they finished up these works and hear time and again that they enjoyed learning more about how to use Photoshop. Here are some examples of the types of works students created from beginner to more advanced skill-building challenges.

Gibson

Lucas

Zoe

Evan

Artist of Interest

Since moving to a thematically driven curriculum, it has been increasingly important to me for students to have as much exposure to a variety of artists using a variety of methods to create their art. I know I cannot possibly cover them all, or even come close, so one of the activities I engage students in is called "Artist of Interest."

In this activity, students are asked to use our digital subscription to Scholastic Art Magazine to access past issues and select an artist they think is interesting and that may inspire their work. Students are asked to describe the work using an element of art and principle of design, give their opinion of the work, as well as what meaning can be found in it as they write their response.

I do this as a discussion board in Schoology so that students can view each others responses and get exposure to dozens of artists that they might not otherwise see in our projects or challenges. This is also a great way to get students to read non-fiction texts, summarize and interpret what they are reading, and use examples and details to help support their ideas.

Here are two great responses from this activity this week:

Tantamounter and 100 objects

This week in my 3D class, students were challenged to create another collaborative. In this team-building activity, students were told they were going to be copy machines and started by shopping the classroom for what they would like to see recreated. After about five minutes of "shopping," students had to exchange their object with another group and then they had about 25 minutes to make a copy using whatever they could find in the classroom.

Many classrooms have done a similar exercise with great success. It was great to see how students worked together to recreate these objects and how close they were able to come to the original using completely different materials. My favorite of the group is probably the spider below. The group's copy was created by a damaged styrofoam head for the body, a Pringles can and pompoms for the head and eyes, metal tubing for the legs, and felt for the striping details. I am still amazed that the groups did what they did in such a short period of time.

3D students also started their 100 object sculptures this week. This is a project that asks students to rethink non-art materials in new and creative ways. After sketching out ideas, students came prepared with a variety of things (Qtips, rocks, toothpicks, colored pencils, and more) to turn into sculptures.

I am excited to see how these come into form over the next week.

Looking Ahead

Because of the nature of the class, some students are actually thinking about their final projects and experimenting with options for it as they are also working on their 100 objects project. For their finals, students are asked to create a project of their choice. I am very excited to see how and what they decide. One student started experimenting with some ideas this week, using the 3Doodler pen that was recently funded through a DonorsChoose.org project. I think it will be really exciting to see how this turns out or changes along the way.

MAEA Region 9 Show

Thursday was the opening reception of the Michigan Art Education Association Region 9 Show at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It was really fun to see students see their work on display at the museum. It was also great to see the Warhol show.

With 23 works from our k-12 Visual Arts Program on display, it was great to see our Bryon Center Artists celebrated in this way. The works will now move on to the State competition and we will find out the results from that part of the competition in March.

Digital Storytelling Match on DonorsChoose.org

We have had such an awesome amount of success this year getting special resources funded through DonorsChoose.org. I am so thankful to parents, friends, and interested donors for giving to our projects to ensure my students have access to equipment and materials that will push them as creatives in the classroom.

Our newest project is being matched by AT&T because it involves digital storytelling (you can click on this to find out more). We are hoping to get an animation and green screen app as well as stylus's to help students create a variety of digital stories using iPads. We have less than $200 to go thanks to the match.

It is going to be awesome to see how students use these tools to share stories with others and make a variety of animations and film. Maybe we will even be able to enter some into competition soon.

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Week Two

2/4/2018

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Portfolio Names

Every term, I use the design of the portfolio name as a visual way to learn my students names. It is a go-to project to get students started because it also helps me teach some basics about the design process, formulating ideas and planning in our sketchbook as well as practicing various colored pencil and marker techniques before applying them to our final works.

It was fun to see the student names develop over the week and then be published on our Artsonia gallery. Here are a few of the results:

I really like sports so I used a baseball and a basketball for the letter E's. Three of the letters were some type of plant because I like nature. The letter L turned out really good in my mind because it was the first time I attempted to draw a hand.

This project was really fun. I chose many things having to do with sports or professional sports teams because that is what I like to watch and do. I also did a pencil because I like to sketch and draw. I liked this project because I got to show the things that I like by writing my name

I put the Fishing pole with a fish because I fish a lot and really enjoy it, and I also put a paintbrush with paint , because I really like to paint. My favorite sport to play is ping pong and that's why I put a ping pong ball and paddle to include the types of sports that I like to play and what I like to do in my free time.

I choose these objects because I like the underwater sea life, drawing, ice cream, and nature.

Logo Designs

So, for the first time, I am actually seeing a group of students for a FULL year as a result of a new STEAM class I am teaching. As a result, I decided to change up the portfolio name to a logo design. This was fun to do because it got students thinking about branding and how logos are developed by designers. Because these students have had me last semester, it was also nice to see how quickly they jumped into the sketching and brainstorming piece of this challenge before setting to work on it.

Here are a few examples:

This logo is Charlie B. Golfing. The C is formed into a golf club and the B is formed into a golf ball on a tee ready to be swung. I picked golfing because I really like golfing and it is very chill and a fun hobby to do during the spring and summer.

In this I did a circle and inside the circle I did a C with a softball stitches in it, To finish the other half of the circle I did a pencil because I love art and lastly in the center I did a volleyball.

While designing my logo I thought about things that might represent me. My logo represents a crown as well as the first initial of my name. This is because I like to consider myself a queen or a princess. I chose to use colors like yellow and orange to represent the gold of a crown, and black to emphasize the letter M.

Starting Photoshop Challenge 1

Students also started their first Photoshop Challenge this week after they completed their portfolios. I have accumulated five choices over the years that students can select to complete as a part of this challenge. They range from beginner to advanced. All focus on the subject of portraits or people.

As we finish these next week, it will be interesting to see which levels students selected to challenge themselves to create and if they continue to elect to use Photoshop as a tool when we get working on our first major Project in the class.

Still Painting Those Panels

We are still working on the WMS panels... hopefully they will finish up this week and actually work out. Right now, we are debating on how to outline the shapes. Do we outline everything, are we selective, or do we just paint over everything and start over?

Adjective Forms

In the KCAD 3D class I teach as a part of our high school's Dual Enrollment program, students worked on their ceramic forms this week that were inspired by adjectives. We were inspired by a variety of contemporary ceramic artists like Zemer Peled before going through lists of adjectives that would help inform the direction of their work.

Students were encouraged to hand-build or combine wheel-thrown and hand-building techniques. It was interesting to see how students developed their sketches based on the words they selected and then translated those sketches into forms.

We will not see the completed pieces until these are fired, glazed, and fired again later this month.

MAEA Region 9 Results

BCPS has a great showing at this year's MAEA Region 9 Adjudication. K-12 students from our district had over 20 works accepted and all will move onto State competition. The work will be on display at the Grand Rapids Art Museum through this month before heading to the next competition.

Here are the winners from WMS:

Oliver Modderman

Tess Bainbridge

Lindsay Mlejnek

Serenity Metzger

I am excited to celebrate this accomplishment with students at the opening reception this Thursday as we also get to enjoy the rest of the exhibit at the GRAM.

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Week One

1/27/2018

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New Semester with New Students

This installation was completed by over 200 students in our school. It encircles a tree that was planted years ago to honor our veterans and is also next to the entrance of our school and flagpole.

Our Art classes run in semesters, which means I get to greet new students after 18 weeks and start over again with them. It is fun to see how this new set of students approach the content already covered by first semester and bring their own experiences to the table to complete various pieces of content and creation.

One of my favorite things about this first week, was getting to finish our installation of painted rocks inspired by the story "The Dot," by Peter H. Reynolds. I have been using this story for at least the last five years with my students to inspire legacy projects in our school. We have made paintings, paper globes, and now these painted rocks as a way to make our own mark on WMS.

Each year I do this, I am usually doing something with my students for the first time and not 100% sure how and if it will turn out. I openly share this with my students and explain that taking creative risks is one of the duties of an artist and it is up to all of us to be courageous in this class with the work we make. I am very pleased with this year's outcome and look forward to seeing what legacy project we come up with for next year.

Here are some thoughts from the students on their work:

Avery: For this project I created a rock that displays an abstract pattern of dots. I decided not to focus on a specific pattern in order to incorporate the Dot story. The Dot story talks about about how all artists work is unique and anyone can create art. My piece, and all the other rocks created in class, are different in order to represent diversity and beauty in art.

Gage: This is like in the story the dot because we started with one dot and we began to do more. Also it represents that anyone can be creative. Finally, it was the first project of the year.

Brady: I made this amazing piece of art because of the book, The Dot. I just made one dot and went on from there. This rock was made from a bunch of random dots and then I made more.

Katie: In this artwork, I started with one big dot--the sun. It popped into my head as soon as we started. This connects to the book because starting with one dot made a bigger thing called art. It connects to real life because we are leaving this artwork behind just like we will have to leave other things behind as in our legacy.

This is a more complete view of the work.

Empty Bowls

For years, I have engaged students with clay on the first day. This semester, I switched around some activities and actually started with paint and waited until our third day together to work with clay.

When I informed one class that we were going to work with clay, it was greeted with a "Woo Hoo!" I know that not all of my students will choose art as a career, but I do hope that they will continue to create and appreciate art as grow up and react with a "Woo Hoo!" during those experiences.

It was fun to see students work with clay in this way and for 7th graders to create bowls for our annual Empty Bowls night. Even better will be once these are fired and we get to glaze them in a variety of colors.

Henna Hands

Something new was tried with my 8th graders for our first clay experience. Instead of making bowls like they did when they were in 7th grade or the leaves like last semester did (because it is January in Michigan and there are no leaves), students created Henna-inspired patterned hands.

Inspired by this post and henna-painted hands, I decided to try this out with student and see how they turned out. For the most part, there has been success so far (only a few repaired fingers along the way). In the future, I would probably have students keep their fingers closer together or use the slab roller in order to avoid some of those issues.

I am excited to see how they finish out and what happens when we apply a glaze treatment to them. This was a great alternative to the leaves and students seemed to really enjoy the process of creating patterns.

Collaboratives

Collaboration is something I am passionate about in my classroom. I feel strongly that success in team format is much more powerful than individually. It takes much more skill and understanding to work with others and find common ground than it does to go it alone.

For the first day of our STEAM class, we brainstormed ideas that show what we value at WMS: Academics, Arts, and Athletics. These symbols were then drawn by students on canvases with WMS on them and a grid. Every time a shape changes on the grid, so does the color (keeping cool colors for the backgrounds and warm for the letters/objects).

We are more than half-way to our end goal with these works (once they are done they will be showcased in the office) and we hope to complete them next week. This is my first time teaching STEAM as a class, so it will be a learning experience for both my students and me this semester!

Can you see the WMS?

Drawing in Space

For our second collaboration in 3D, students had the opportunity to explore the concept of drawing in space by using wire. In teams of two and three, students selected an object and then sketched out the object using contour lines. After, they turned that line drawing into a sculpture using wire.

It was interesting to see that multiple groups selected cameras as their object. Below are some process and final images of particularly successful attempts.

#FirstMillion Funding

On January 25th, our latestDonorsChoose.org project was funded thanks to the matching funds from #FirstMillion, celebrating the first million funded projects on the site. I am so thankful for the additional materials we will now have due to the generosity of others.

If you are interested in helping fund a project, I recommend visiting their site and seeing a variety of opportunities to do just that!

Woo Hoo! Thanks @DonorsChoose #FirstMillion pic.twitter.com/DK8mBl6Wbv
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) January 25, 2018

This week was really packed with a lot of amazing things. I am so thankful and excited that I get the opportunity to be a part of all of it.

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Ok Go Sandbox to the Rescue

Automata's Complete

ArtPrize10 Collaboration

Automata's

Air Zoo Hall of Fame Awardee

Spaces and Places

Perspective Bootcamp

NAEA in Seattle

National Medalists

Working on Spaces

3D At Work

Getting Ready for #NAEA18

Building More Skills

Technology-based Work

Mini-Hideaways

Last Collaborative

Making Connections

Happy Youth Arts Month!

You, Me, Everybody

Ceramic Forms

Scholastic Awards

Art Show

ArtPrize10

Working

Panels Complete

Miniature Hideaways

Meijer Great Choices

On the News

Building Skills

Clay in STEAM Class

From Objects to Art

Thinking About ArtPrize10

Photoshop Challenge 1

Artist of Interest

Tantamounter and 100 objects

Looking Ahead

MAEA Region 9 Show

Digital Storytelling Match on DonorsChoose.org

Portfolio Names

Logo Designs

Starting Photoshop Challenge 1

Still Painting Those Panels

Adjective Forms

MAEA Region 9 Results

New Semester with New Students

Empty Bowls

Henna Hands

Collaboratives

Drawing in Space

#FirstMillion Funding

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