Week Eleven

Challenge 3

Students took notes on the artists for this challenge by connecting the work they viewed to themselves, other artworks, and the world.

Students were introduced to a new challenge this week: Treasure and/or Trash. They looked at the work of Joseph Cornell, Claus Oldenburg, and others before coming up with plans for their own piece that looks at objects and how to capture and manipulate them to create art. 

After planning works and getting feedback, students spend a good chunk of this week applying ideas into action through their art. The best part of this new challenge is that students may not use media they have used in the past. This has forced many to try new things and get out of their comfort zone. 

You can check out some of the process below:

Mixed-Media "Speed Dating"

I recently came across a post from another Art teacher about how she used a fast-paced introduction and application method of 2D media and labeled it "speed dating." I decided to adapt that process for my classroom this week by first having students do an observational drawing of either a piece of string or their shoe, focusing in on it so it fills the page. Later on this week, students then took that drawing and went through a five station rotation, spending five minutes on each material (sharpies/gell pens/stencils, watercolors, pen and ink, oil and chalk pastels, and collage) to complete their composition. Each station had the material speak from their point of view to introduce and invite students to use them. For example, at the collage station, the note said: "Hello, I am collage. Did you know I came from a term that means "to glue" in French? Well, now you do. You need to collage at least two pieces of paper on your work. If you want to be fancy, you can collage over your drawing and continue it over top. Please be kind to the glue sticks. Oh yeah, fun fact: I was discovered by Picasso."  

Because this was purely about the experience of both the observational drawing and the application of the variety of media, students felt free to take risks and really attack the picture plane. They will finish up their work by posting it to Artsonia next week. This is a participation piece and my hope is that they will use their experience to make choices in future works.

Here are some images from the process:

Scholastic Count Down

On Wednesday of this week, some of my students and I went up to the High School for our first ever Scholastic Art Awards Critique Session. It was fun to see my students (past and current) share their ideas and get feedback in this forum. We plan to hold two more group sessions like this before our submission deadline of December 15th.