Two Left

There are only two weeks left of school. And to say that there are two weeks left is being kind of generous. There is actually only seven more times I meet with my students from each of their hours before we say good-bye for the summer. With two more weeks left to go, here is a recap of what we did this week (which was a big one).

Arts a la Mode 2017

We had another great year celebrating the Arts in our school with our culminating activity: Arts a la Mode. This evening that begins with our annual Empty Bowls event and ends with performances and making opportunities for guests is something special that I am proud to be a part of for over 10 years. 

I want to thank Hudsonville Ice Cream for helping us with the ice cream through their Fusion program and all of the volunteers who helped set up, clean up, and help out during the night. It was a great time and we were able to raise over $450 in food and funds for Buist Community Assistance Center which will be used to help feed those in need in our community. 

It was fun to showcase the student talent this year through our large ArtPrize entry (we are still waiting to secure a venue). I also really enjoyed seeing students take leadership roles in the maker space this year and lead printmaking, lego building, and cardboard creating in the STEM room. 

Meijer Gardens Field Trip

I have been taking students to the Gardens almost every year since I came to BCWMS. I love the space and the sculptures offered and the current exhibit of Ai Weiwei was perfect for linking to the learning back into the classroom.

Each year we try something new for our field trip and this year it was all about a scavenger hunt! I have to thank another teacher for this idea (like most I post, it seems they were sparked somewhere else). We did this hunt as a group activity with 5 groups because of the rules of the gardens. Each group was shared what to find in a Google Doc and then they were to upload their responses to the shared document. 

It was fun to see the different things students found and what areas of the park they were able to go to. We also were stumped on a few of the items and appreciate the on-site librarian who helped us track down the answers (yes, I did not know some of the answers when I formed the questions). It was great fun and everyone was a good sport about it. 

The current exhibit was also great and it was really nice to have the space almost to ourselves for it. 

Sometimes I think it is crazy to plan this trip the day after our Fine Arts Night, but it seems to work out great and something I will plan to do again next year. 

Challenge 5: Everything is a Remix

For our final Project Challenge, students worked on rethinking past pieces to make new work and show new skills and ideas. We looked at the concept of a remix and how artists and others have used remixing various ideas to make something new. It was fun to see the variety of ways in which students selected works they were interested in revisiting and how they were going to adapt their new ideas and skills learned from the semester when creating their new work. This is my 

Evan: One similarity that I used in this artwork is that it is the same shoe used in the last nike shoe artwork. One difference is the medium I used is photoshop instead of mixed media. The reason i selected this piece was because I didn't think it looked visually pleasing to look at and I thought I could make it better. One think I did to change it was I mad it more like a piece that Jenny Van Sommers did on a shoe.

Tess: One similarity between this piece and my original Pop Art Piece is that they both use many colors, and they both use a combination of both stripes and dots. One difference between this piece and my original piece is that in this piece there is two people, and in the original piece, there was only me. I chose to remix my Pop Art Portrait piece because I love that it uses a lot of color and that it overall is just a fun piece to make. To change this piece from my original Pop Art Portrait, I chose a picture of two people, me and my friend, to use for the graphite transfer rather than just one person, and I did the entire face, including the eyes, while on my original piece there was glasses over the eyes so I did not have to do them.

Ava: For this challenge I decided to recreate the project I did for the Biography/Autobiography challenge. I mad a face with water color in the background but this one was simpler. I made the background with different colors also and I actually showed the entire face of this girl compared to the other girl in which I did not. I chose that piece to remix because I thought I could best portray and show how I improved on making a face, last time I was too afraid to make the face but this time I did shadowing and made it look way better than my last piece.

Sam: In this piece I showed how I grew from my previous piece of coffee cups. I grew because I showed my understanding of new materials and how I can use then effectively in my art piece. I also grew from my last piece because I chose a more effective topic. Instead of simple coffee cups I told a story with pain buckets that make the audience think about the story. One similarity between the two pieces is that I drew objects are can hold a lot of different things such as coffee, paint or anything in your imagination. Overall that is how I have grown as an artist in this work compared to my coffee cups piece. I selected the coffee cup piece to remix because I did not tell a very good story and with my paint buckets it shows that I can use materials better and that I can show a story through my work instead of just drawing a piece. Overall that is my growth throughout the challenge "Everything's a remix".

Marie: This artwork is based off an observational drawing I did in 6th grade. Growth over the years can be shown by recognizing my increase in observational skill. I chose to remix this piece of art because I thought that the previously made artwork didn't portray my own interest and style. But in this specific piece of work I used a material that I have grown to enjoy using, that being collage. Compared to the work made in 6th grade, this work is different because it provides elements of color, different shades and shape, while the 6th grade work was just simple lines.

Cam: This is a drawing of a whitetail deer by a fence. This is a piece of art I based off the elk I did earlier in the year. I really liked how the elk turned out so I wanted to try and do a whitetail deer. I used the same material as the elk and everything, its just not an elk this time. I used many different pictures off the internet to draw this deer.

Lukas: I created this artwork off of a picture of me kicking a soccer ball into a goal. I used many different colors than they actually were, because the colors of everything didn't pop put as much so i changed the colors so they were brighter and more radiant than the original. I used Tempera paint instead of water color because sit was more easier to use and not as messy.