STEAM Collaboration #3: Artist Rooms
STEM and Art students joined forces once again this year for a new challenge: take an artist from Scholastic Art Magazine and create a room that demonstrates his/her style. I wish I could take full credit for this idea, but as with most things, I came across @QEHSArtDept posts on Twitter showing off bedrooms created by students that looked like artists' rooms and some lovely cultural rooms at the 2015 National Art Education Association conference in New Orleans that sparked this collaborative unit.
In order to get students in the mindset, we showed them this video from the artist duo Nix and Gerber. It was a great introduction to how artists plan, collaborate, and repurpose materials and the fact that they create replicas (which is what we were asking of students) was perfect! Once students got into groups of three, they selected rooms using a Google sign up (so there were not more than one repeat of room), students began searching through Scholastic Art Magazines, finding an artist to use to design their rooms.
After signing up for an artist (there could not be duplicates), students then broke their groups into three roles: The Project Manager, The Blueprint designer, and The Sketch Up Artist. All three students were in charge of creating a model of their design based on the blueprint and sketch up.
By the end of the week, students have a pretty good start on their models, using their plans to help guide them. They will be bringing all of this together next week and present their finished works. In addition, these works will go on display in our library and also be featured in our Arts a la mode/Fine Arts night on May 23rd.
It has been really fun see students struggle towards solutions and grow in the process. There have been interesting design choices and thoughtful narratives to support their decisions as artists and a lot of problem solving as they try to engineer the final product. We have also been putting the 3D printer to work this week as students used Tinkercad to make furniture, accessories, and other objects to go into their models.
Here are some process images from the week:
In order to get students in the mindset, we showed them this video from the artist duo Nix and Gerber. It was a great introduction to how artists plan, collaborate, and repurpose materials and the fact that they create replicas (which is what we were asking of students) was perfect! Once students got into groups of three, they selected rooms using a Google sign up (so there were not more than one repeat of room), students began searching through Scholastic Art Magazines, finding an artist to use to design their rooms.
After signing up for an artist (there could not be duplicates), students then broke their groups into three roles: The Project Manager, The Blueprint designer, and The Sketch Up Artist. All three students were in charge of creating a model of their design based on the blueprint and sketch up.
By the end of the week, students have a pretty good start on their models, using their plans to help guide them. They will be bringing all of this together next week and present their finished works. In addition, these works will go on display in our library and also be featured in our Arts a la mode/Fine Arts night on May 23rd.
It has been really fun see students struggle towards solutions and grow in the process. There have been interesting design choices and thoughtful narratives to support their decisions as artists and a lot of problem solving as they try to engineer the final product. We have also been putting the 3D printer to work this week as students used Tinkercad to make furniture, accessories, and other objects to go into their models.
Here are some process images from the week:
Student Show
Being able to join my colleagues in the BCPS Visual Arts team to do so brings me a lot of joy and pride. At least once each school year our students are able to display their works at the Van Singel Fine Arts Center and represent the excellence of Visual Arts in each of our six buildings and across each grade level. Selecting which works to display from WMS 7th and 8th graders were tough, but that is a good kind of problem to have.
For this year's show, I tried to select student work that reflected a variety of media, demonstrated skill or inventiveness of media, and work whose artist statements were demonstrative of the learning and thought process that took place of the artist who created it.
Because I have adapted a model of teaching that asks students to choose the ways in which they interpret themes (via the media, subject, etc.), the variety in the works on display are both exciting and interesting to view. I look forward to celebrating these works and the rest of our student artists at the opening reception on Monday, March 27th at 5:30 p.m.
For this year's show, I tried to select student work that reflected a variety of media, demonstrated skill or inventiveness of media, and work whose artist statements were demonstrative of the learning and thought process that took place of the artist who created it.
Because I have adapted a model of teaching that asks students to choose the ways in which they interpret themes (via the media, subject, etc.), the variety in the works on display are both exciting and interesting to view. I look forward to celebrating these works and the rest of our student artists at the opening reception on Monday, March 27th at 5:30 p.m.
DOF
Dual Enrollment students finished up another assignment last week that focused on Depth of Field. This term is used to describe what is in focus in an image. Students were encouraged to capture a wide range of subjects and use a shallow, mid, and wide DOF in their images.
Here are some examples of their work:
Here are some examples of their work:
Anna
Anna
Ellise
Ellise
Emma
Emma
Kathy
Kathy
Krista
Krista
There is only one more week until Spring Break. As you can see by my repeat of week nine (since it looks like I missed a week six or seven this go around), I am in need of it. I wish all teachers and students the best as they finish out this week and marking period STRONG!
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