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Reflecting on the Year

6/17/2018

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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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 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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Happy New Year!

1/6/2018

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SchoolArts Magazine

Ever since I was around eight years old, I wanted to be a writer. I used to create newspapers by hand, documenting stories in my house. When I was in high school, I joined the newspaper staff at school and ended up becoming the features section editor my senior year. With the support of the rest of the newspaper crew, we split that section into two: student life and arts & entertainment. Because of that move, I actually had an award named after me in the class.

I am proud to say I am writer. I write on this blog, I write stories for myself, I write lesson plans and papers for school, and I even write for some publications like the one featured above in this month's issue of SchoolArts Magazine. One of my goals this year is to write more articles for submission to SchoolArts. It is a great way to share processes of successes in classroom management and outcomes and it is a great way for me to reflect on and grow as a teacher. If you are interested in learning how to submit, I encourage you to review the requirements here.

This was a great way to start 2018, especially since the work featured in the article happens to be our ArtPrize 9 piece, "Painting Under Papercuts."

2018 Scholastic Art Awards
West Central Michigan Regional Results

Our students worked really hard this year to try new media, push their ideas beyond the obvious solutions, and work with ideas that explored concepts both personal and universal in theme. I am really proud of the results of their efforts and how they took the creative risk of placing many of their works into competition this year for the 2018 Scholastic Art Awards.

This year seems to have been a particularly tough competition. Our district had 55 works place for recognition:

High School
Hallie Baker: Silver Key and Honorable Mention
Krista Bartholomy: 4 Silver Keys and 4 Honorable Mentions
Leah Cook: 2 Honorable Mentions
Lauren Daly: 6 Honorable Mentions
Lauren Doyle: Silver Key, Honorable Mention
Saige Dykhouse: Honorable Mention
Kennedy Emmons: Silver Key
Harrison Kosak: Silver key
Ryan Lotterman: 2 Gold Keys, 2 Silver Keys, 2 Honorable Mentions
Emma McCloud: American Vision Nominee, 3 Gold Keys, Honorable Mention
Anna Pavlak: Silver Key
Elise Pechler: 2 Silver Keys, 2 Honorable Mentions
Ella Petit: Honorable Mention
Ethan Pipe: 2 Gold Keys, Honorable Mention
Sydney Randall: Honorable Mention
Middle School
Sophia Bentley: Gold Key, Honorable Mention
Ava Bont: Honorable Mention
Leila DeHaan: Honorable Mention
Cade Fortier: Honorable Mention
Chloe Grabowski: Honorable Mention
Evan Granger: Honorable Mention
Sophie Millhouse: Honorable Mention
Emma Pavlak: Honorable Mention
Hannah Reda: Honorable Mention
Tara Rood: Gold Key
Bryanna Tromp: Gold Key, Silver Key

We are so excited for our students whose works were awarded Gold Keys that get to go on to the national competition in New York City. It is extra exciting that we also had a high school student achieve an American Vision Nomination. We will find out the national results later this spring.

To view the works that I helped enter this year, check out the images below. I am so proud that these students were willing to put themselves out there and I look forward to seeing what they make next!

Middle School

Gold Key

Tara Rood

Bryanna Tromp

Sophia Bentley

Silver Key

Bryanna Tromp

Honorable Mention

Sophie Millhouse

Leila DeHaan

Sophia Bentley

Evan Granger

Ava Bont

Emma Pavlak

Chloe Grabowski

Hannah Reda

Cade Fortier

High School

Gold Key

Elise Pechler

Silver Key

Krista Bartholomy

Honorable Mention

Krista Bartholomy

Elise Pechler

Ella Petit

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Week Fifteen

12/15/2017

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This week was focused on celebrating the work students have done so far this year. It is amazing to think that in just a few short months, students have completed and published over 1,500 artworks. Some of those works were showcased at The Van Singel Fine Arts Center this month as a part of the district student showcase.

We had our reception on Monday, which brought out a great crowd. Even better was seeing the growth of student skills through each grade level. This annual show is an awesome demonstration of the work our school does to cultivate creative thinking and encourage the development of artistic skills throughout their educational career.

It is one of my favorite events because it allows me a chance to meet with parents and students, my colleagues, and former students and offers opportunities to connect these groups together in meaningful ways. The conversations with students as they have gone through our program have been instrumental with the continued development of curriculum. These events help foster that and I am so proud of our students for showcasing their work.

Scholastic Entries

This was also the week students submitted works to The Scholastic Art Awards competition. It was a crazy time getting works screened, finalized, uploaded, forms printed and signed, and payments sent to our regional affiliate. I am so proud of our entries this year and know that we will have some luck thanks to the hard work and dedication of so many towards this process. We entered work in 11 categories this year, ranging from Film and Animation, to Sculpture, to Mixed Media, and more. It will be fun to find out results on January 5th!

Here are a few of our entries:

I am also excited for the works I entered with our high school teachers, too. Here is a sneak peek at some of those:

It will be fun to see how students achieve this year. We have a lot to live up to, with our school usually being in the top tier each year and routine national medalists. Even so, students continue to amaze at the lengths they will go to push themselves to try new ideas, experience with media in new ways, and grow into artists in their own right.

I could not think of a better way to spring into the last week of school before break, nor a better way to start out 2018 with finding out the results!

Good luck to all who participated this year!

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Week Nine

3/17/2017

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National Silver Medals!

Since 2008, I have been proud to enter student work in the Scholastic Art Awards. During these past nine years, we have had numerous regional winners and now nine National Medalists with the recent addition of this year's winners! Congratulations to Lindsey Peters, Magnus Smith, and Clay Brown for earning National Silver Medals! I am very excited to add your names to the list of Cam Schuelke, Ethan Pipe, Anna Pavlak, Jordan Cooper, Mackenzie Reid, and Amanda Strayhorn as previous BCWMS winners!

What is even more exciting than winning this recognition is the conversations from each of this years' winners already planning what to make for next year. I can't wait to see it made!

Where are you going? Where have you been?

Students finished their second major challenge this week and explored various ideas about where they have been and where they would like to go. Some students took the prompt literally, while others more figuratively. It was fun to see them go through various materials of their choosing and draw on the artists we studied for this project as inspiration.

Here are some of the results:

Kenzie: I chose to do this place out of all my thumbnail sketches, because I thought it was different. In most of my sketches I had chose a place that was tropical area with a sunset or a city. I decided to incorporate both in my finished product of Cuba. I responsibly used water color, sharpies, and metallic colored pencils. I used principles and visual characteristics in my artwork effectively, and I fully understand how to use them. My final artwork shows craftsmanship and many techniques such as mainly shading. The materials I used appropriately fit my artwork. I used media to get an idea of how to correctly draw buildings in Cuba. My artwork is similar to Red Grooms, because I used buildings in a busy area which is most likely to be similar to Red Grooms.

Samantha: The theme of this challenge was to create an art piece following "Where are you going, where have you been?". For my interpretation I created a piece about places all over the world that are very popular for tourism. I used pencil shavings to create individual places such as cities, beaches, and even amusement parks. I drew a big long road and everyplace connects there. I also have a big globe with red drop pins on certain places. This art piece follows the theme because it talks about all the places in the world but it also shows that all the places are connected through the roads on the globe. I used a lot of different materials including watercolor and chalk to create different textures and colors on the art. My art reminds me of the artist Eugina Loli because she uses a lot of different places in one image and this is exactly what I did. I created a lot of different backgrounds and connected them all through the globe and a road. My art is significant to me because it talks about places all over the world and a lot of these places I would love to go someday.

Arianna: My choice in materials represents my trip to Hawaii and shows a distorted effect to it. The puzzle effect shows that there are two sides to every environment. One can be dull, and one can be bright and flourished. I have been to Hawaii and saw different and unique landscapes and photographed them. This shows my interpretation of the theme by the materials I use. I connect to this artwork because I have been to Hawaii and everywhere I go there is different in many ways. The flourished image is the ocean and rocks. The duller image is when we visited the Big Island’s main volcano. This shows two extremely different landscapes even though it’s the same environment/land. This artwork is similar to the artwork created by Eugina Loli because we both use a distorted and abstract effect.

Katelyn: My artwork shows a space landscape. From the bottom left to the top right the planets get smaller. While it necessarily doesn't getter smaller as it get closer to the background, as usually used in composition, I chose to present it at a vertical angle and put my vanishing point in the top right corner. I started by drawing the planets and taping then, then I painted the picture plane black added purple accents to create an outer space appearance. Next, I sprinkled white paint over the plane with a paintbrush, adding stars. When I removed the tape from the planets I colored them in using water color pencils and blended them using water. Finally to add a more dramatic effect to the planets I shaded the left sides with black chalk pastel and tinted the right side with white chalk pastel. On some of the planets, I drew people standing on top of them. I have traveled to a lot of places in my life and met so many different people. I personally think that when we go places it is all about the people we encounter who influence us the most. The world is full of different unique people and personalities, and each one we meet, influences us, even if it is in a small way. So, looking out from where we are from, you never know who you might find, and who might just change your life.

Ethan: I choose clay to make the piece of art out of because clay is my favorite material to work with. The reason I made yellow stone is that me and my family have spent a lot of time there and now we cant.

Tess: For this piece, I first used pencil to draw the coral onto the carving block, then I used a carving tool to carve out the design. I chose black paper for my picture plane because I wanted the printing ink to really stand out. A couple of years ago, in fifth grade, my family went to Hawaii, and my favorite thing was all of the coral that we saw. Unfortunately, I later learned that a lot of the coral in all of our oceans is becoming subject to coral bleaching, and I wanted my piece of artwork to highlight this issue. My work is similar to Andy Goldsworthy's because it involves nature, but while he directly uses his environment, creating pieces out of snow, leaves, stone, and other things, and then photographs it, I simply created a picture of nature.

Ella: My art for this section was created from an old pair of jeans, using fabric as my main media. With this piece I cut each piece of felt to create every patch on my jeans also created roads from the paint that made roads connecting my life. I thought jeans would be a good media for they will always be part of my life I have grown up making whole in my jeans from falling down in the side walk to falling off my bike. They are worn, torn and lived in no matter what the age. I could go on and on about the jeans and each path but for easy means something new. I added a sun and clouds for that is my favorite weather when I sun just peaks out from the clouds and makes the perfect temperature. I also created a diploma for when I graduate high school and hope to be high in my class. The mittens represent the state I live in, Michigan, with the great lakes. With this art work I have branched out into several pieces of my life and also used parts from Faith Ringold and made a piece using fabric as I looked at her piece it made it easier to make mine looking at the parts and small additions she added to her quilt help me make mine.

Kheim: I this art I thought of book ad some other thing I do in English which is write something and I usually write in first point of view. So I came up with the idea for this. I usually I just get to the final art but this time I realize that I have try this out before but it doesn't work so I sketch out ton of perspective and more. I took some idea of some other art like a draw of the forest, room and much more so I use the room idea. I thought of my room so I draw my room. I use shading pencil just like my other art. It's about your teen life like how teen have more freedom than a children and more. In the end, I think my work is pretty similar to Georges Seurat art because my art use perspective to show how far the object and shading to show is 3d. The different is that my don't use a ton of don't Georges.

Hannah: This a cardboard collage with magazine objects overlaid on cardboard to create a 3D effect, there is also a watercolor flower and 2 drawn objects. I call this "Dream Objects" because I have a little artist in me, my dad is in the military, and I was born in oklahoma. Throughout all the trials I face I can always come back to my dreams wherever I go.

Isaac: The composition and materials that I used for this artwork are supposed to show a quiet nighttime setting, but with vibrancy as well. I also tried to use texture to give a feel of depth to the art. I can connect to this art personally when looking at how it portrays a vibrant, even exciting feel, and I can also connect this artwork to Red Grooms by thinking of how we both used a 3D effect, along with depth, to give a sense of reality in our work.

Next week we will continue this investigation of how place can shape people and the way they use it with our STEAM collaborative.

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Week Eight

3/10/2017

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Celebrating Scholastic Winners

Last weekend students were celebrated in the West Central Michigan Regional Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. We will find out next Tuesday if any of our Gold Key winners received National recognition. If we do, it will be the 5th year in a row that a BCPS student has!

It was pretty amazing to celebrate the success of BCPS Visual Artists and the other winners from around our region.

Here is a list of the winners from our 7-12th grade program:

High School (45 awards):
Krista Bartholomy (Gold Key, Drawing; Silver Key, Drawing)
Abigail Brouwer (Honorable Mention, Painting)
Leah Cook (Gold Key, Drawing)
Emmaleigh Crumback (Honorable Mention, Photography)
Lauren Daly (Silver Key, Ceramics)
Lauren Doyle (Silver Key, Jewelry)
Kennedy Emmons (Honorable Mention, Ceramics)
Alyssa Jones (2 Silver Keys and 4 Honorable Mentions, Ceramics; Honorable Mention Art Portfolio)
Emma McCloud (Honorable Mention, Digital Art)
Alexis Perdock (Honorable Mention, Ceramics)
Ethan Pipe (4 Gold Keys, Digital Art; 1 Silver Key, Architecture)
Thomas Sadler (Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mention in Photography)
Tristan Sharp (2 Gold Keys, 3 Silver Keys, 1 Honorable Mention in Ceramics; Silver Key in Art Portfolio)
Tian Ruoxi (Silver Key, Digital Art)
Anna VanderLaan (Silver Key, Photography; Honorable Mention, Digital Art)
Kennedy VanLierop (American Vision Nominee, Digital Art; Gold Key Art Portfolio, Gold Key, Photography; Gold Key, Digital Art; 2 Silver Keys, Photography; 3 Honorable Mentions, Photography; 2 Honorable Mentions, Digital Art)

West Middle School (30 awards):
Damien Afienko (Honorable Mention, Painting)
Alayna Arms (Honorable Mention, Jewelry)
Hannah Barney (2 Honorable Mentions, Fashion and Painting)
Brandt Bobeldyke (Silver Key, Film and Animation)
Abby Boyle (Silver Key, Film and Animation)
Clayton Brown (Gold Key, Film and Animation)
Carmen Davidson (Silver Key, Mixed Media)
Kenzi Feuerstein (Honorable Mention, Film and Animation)
Matthew Garbarino (2 Honorable Mentions, Digital Art)
Avery Heron (Honorable Mention, Jewelry)
Samantha Kitchen (Silver Key, Film and Animation)
Maddie Lange (Honorable Mention, Film and Animation)
Shelby Lubbers (Silver Key, Film and Animation)
Sophie Millhouse (Honorable Mention, Architecture)
Ella Perry (Silver Key, Film and Animation)
Lindsey Peters (Gold Key, Fashion; Silver Key, Photography)
Ella Petit (Silver Key, Sculpture)
Jenny Phung (Honorable Mention, Film and Animation)
Magnus Smith (Gold Key, Film and Animation)
Colton Sommers (Silver Key, Comic; Honorable Mention, Mixed Media)
Merrick Susan (Honorable Mention, printmaking)
My Tran (2 Honorable Mentions, Photography and Jewelry)
Justin Walter (Honorable Mention, Architecture)
Corinne Wayman (2 Silver Keys, Mixed Media and Drawing/Illustration)

#WIP

Students are working on a new theme this week that deals with the questions: Where are you going? Where have you been? After taking some notes about landscapes and working through sketches, students settled on ideas and began to get to work. It was fun to see students easily dive into this project now that they have one already under their feet.

Help Our Classroom

If you find these posts of mind helpful, I would kindly ask you to help us in a couple of ways - don't worry some are simply a click of the button.

First, we have three student films up for competition in the Meijer Great Choices Film Festival. Unfortunately, I got my dates mixed up and missed the whole first week of voting, so we are VERY behind. Please take a moment and help us catch up by voting daily until the 24th. Videos with the most votes can earn grants for their classrooms. To vote, you will need to login through Facebook and then use the links below to vote by clicking on the vote button.

Here are links to the three videos:

Snacking Nightmare:
http://k8.meijergreatchoices.com/gallery?entry_id=224827

What is Character?
http://k8.meijergreatchoices.com/gallery?entry_id=224803

Stronger:
http://k8.meijergreatchoices.com/gallery?entry_id=292501

The other way you can help is by donating to our current DonorsChoose project that is acquiring resources for our upcoming Fine Arts Night. Donations made were being matched by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and now there is only about $375 left to go. Any amount will help, so please give what you can!

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Week Seventeen

1/6/2017

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GAP that Portfolio

Coming back from a break can be hard. I need just as much easing into it as my students. Instead of starting out with a new project right away, I decided that I would use that first day back as a way for students to reflect on all they have accomplished by GAP-ing their portfolios. I also wrote this activity for the MAEIA project and you can find the more detailed step-by-step instructions on their website.

What is GAP? It stands for Good, Average Poor. Students simply empty the contents of their portfolios (which is also great because I get things returned to me that have been hiding away in there) and sort their work into piles based on their assessment of the work.

Before we GAP, students write down the 4 C's (Creativity, Craftsmanship, Content, and Composition) in their sketchbooks and how we use the 4 C's to evaluate work. Here is a great video, too.

Once we discuss how we determine what is "good" art, with an understanding that everyone has a different idea of "good" and that is okay, students start to sort. After about five minutes of sorting, they determine which work was the most successful and which was the least and then put all works, other than those two, away.

Afterwards, students wrote down characteristics of their works using a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast and then we did a gallery walk before putting them away. This was also the time where I selected several works for upcoming shows and displays.

This activity is one that I have done with students since I learned it from my mentor teacher, Jean TerMeer, at Corunna Middle School back in 2004. It is great for getting students to think critically about what they have made in the hopes they will use that thinking again as they continue to make future work.

Everything is a Remix

For our last challenge of the semester and of the class, students are being asked to use the idea of remixing and apply it to their work. Students watched the video above and viewed work by Kehinde Whiley before planning out remixes from their own portfolios, using Artsonia Classroom mode to look back years and years ago. Student work will be finished just in time to start reviewing for exams next week! View some progress below.

2017 Regional Scholastic Winners

Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University announced the 2017 West Central Michigan Regional Scholastic Art winners this week. Once again, BCPS Visual Arts students were able to shine and earn the recognition in the various categories offered in the competition.

I am excited that WMS had 30 winners across 12 different categories this year. It was also exciting that two of the works that won were printed on the 3D printer! The high school had 47 works that earned recognition, with one placing as an American Vision Nominee!

Here are the winning works from WMS students below (good luck to the Gold Key winners, whose works will now go onto the national competition):

Gold Key

Lindsey Peters, Fashion

Clayton Brown and Magnus Smith, Film and Animation

Silver Key

Abby Boyle, Ella Perry, Samatha Kitchen, and Shelby Lubbers,
Film and Animation

Carmen Davidson, Mixed Media

Lindsey Peters, Photography

Colton Sommers, Comic Art

Ella Pettit, Sculpture

Corrinne Wayman, Drawing and Illustration

Brandt Bobeldyke, Film and Animation

Corrinne Wayman, Mixed Media

Honorable Mention

My Tran, Jewelry

Damien Afienko, Painting

Matthew Garbarino, Digital Art

Merrick Susan, Printmaking

Sophie Millhouse, Architecture and Industrial Design

Maddie Lange, Jenny Phung, and Kenzi Feuerstein, Film and Animation

Avery Herron, Jewelry

My Tran, Photography

Colton Sommers, Mixed Media

Hannah Barney, Fashion

Matthew Garbarino, Digital Art

Justin Walter, Architecture and Industrial Design

Hannah Barney, Painting

Alayna Arms, Jewelry

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Week Fifteen

12/16/2016

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Game On

The second STEAM collaborative started at the end of last week. Even though we had a snow day and a two-hour delay this week, students stormed full force into their projects and worked to make playable games.

As a part of the design, students needed to work in pairs and come up with a concept that linked to education and create all of their original art for the game. Students used Scratch to create their games and many used Piskel App to create sprites and even some backgrounds.

Games will be playable next week and we will be having a mini Game Con so that students can experience each other's creations.

Students took a break from programming to hear from Ben Lambert, an iPhone Developer and Designer at (i)collective idea out of Holland, MI.

Ben got his start in 2D animation and graphics and began programming games after teaching himself. His game, Hungry Munchers, is available on the App Store and he is currently working on a game that should be available within the next year.

He shared a lot of tips on how to get started with developing games and students enjoyed the time he spent working with them on their games.

Scholastic Submissions

This week was the FINAL week for students to create and upload work for the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards. Here are some of the worsk we hope to do well this season. Good luck to everyone who submitted work this year!