mid year middle school art show

Last week I put on a mid-year art show just for middle school. This is the my second year at this school (the school is PK-12, I teach 6, 7, 8). My first year I hoarded all of my students work until the art show at the end of the year because that was the departing teacher told me to do.  Going into this year I had a better grasp of how much the kids would actually produce (more than I anticipated) and how much work I would need at the end of the year all-school show. The other thing I realized was that the parents basically forgot the kids even took art until the end of the year. This year I took on some new initiatives to make my art program more visible to parents and the campus:

-I have implemented Artsonia... it is awesome. 

-I sent home a couple pieces of artwork with each child before Christmas. 

-I held a middle school only art show in February in the middle school building.

Here is the breakdown of the art show projects. 

Our theme was LIGHT. 

Grade 6: 

Birch tree moonscapes

 Acrylic Lighthouse Paintings on small canvases

inspired by Edward Hopper

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Grade 7:

Lamps and Light Fixtures

 Acrylic paintings on small canvases

Inspired by the Rumi quote,

"The lamps are different but the light is the same."

 Interior Spaces using 1 point perspective

Grade 8:

Symbolic Silhouettes using Stippling

Students completed the sentence "Let light shine on _____ because _____." 

They had to choose an issue in the world of importance and should have more light shine on it. They chose a symbolic image to represent the concept.  

In a different room I had a "Special Exhibition" of 8th grade art. 

These were geometric relief sculptures the students worked very hard on.

It was really nice to be able to highlight their hard work and make the 8th grade feel special. 

Detailed posts of the projects will be up asap!!

Chinese Brush Painting and Perspective

My seventh graders are in the middle of an Asian-influenced unit. 

To begin the unit I introduced them to Chinese Brush Painting. 

My school has lower, middle, and upper school are all on the same campus.

So I was very lucky to have the chance to have one of the high school Chinese students,

who had learned traditional brush painting when he was younger, came and did a demonstration for my classes. 

Before we started the main project, for one class session I cut down small 6 x 6 pieces of rice paper for the kids to practice on. They practiced bamboo, trees, mountains, for the most part. I have a few Chinese students, and they showed the kids how to write their names in Chinese characters as well, which they loved. 

Tips:

I had inexpensive chinese brushes on hand but most of us liked to use these size 6 and 8 round white nylon watercolor brushes by Sax instead. 

The ink can be watered down with a little water on a small palette to get dark grey in addition to black. Most of the kids shared a tiny cup of ink and a tiny cup of water. 

The project:

From there we took a break from brush painting and the students learned how 2-point perspective works. After practicing this new concept, they each had to select a photo of Chinese or Japanese inspired architecture that demonstrated 2-point perspective to draw. 

They drew the buildings on 9 x 12 paper. 

Then they placed the rice paper over their drawing and traced the drawing in ink. 

This part of the process was the least time consuming and only took 1 to 2 class periods. 

To give them a finished look, we back them with construction paper and popped them in pre-cut mats. They look awesome and the kids learned so much! 

Color - Positivity - Inspiration

I wanted to share some sources of inspiration I'm working with at the moment that you all might be interested in! All of these things promote hope, positivity, and celebrations for the world we live in and humanity, which I (and you might) really appreciate as we are being bombarded by never-ending negative campaign ads for still two more weeks.

First of all I finally looked through and read "Awesome Book of Thanks" by Dallas Clayton today.

It is pretty fantastic. I think I'm going to read it to everyone in the school next month and base a pre-thanksgiving lesson on it. The watercolor & drawn illustrations are great. (Mr. Masse at Zamorano I have a funny feeling you especially will dig them.)

Next-- I am lucky enough to have worked at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston for the past six years- there is a fantastic show there -Os Gemeos- who I have had my eye on for years. They are identical twins from Brazil who work together and are phenomenal examples of street art that is positive and FOR the public, I will elaborate on this in posts to come.

 

I went to an amazing gallery talk given by the curator of the show this past weekend and am taking my sixth graders on a field trip to see it in two weeks and I'm putting together a pre-visit powerpoint overfilled with info and context. I will share some of my insight with you as I get a little further along and collect my thoughts. BUT - just google their work for a second so you can get the colorful gist of it...

To go along with Os Gemeos- I came across Pikaland today and this really interesting post on a public artist in Detroit - the Heidelberg Project. Again, public art that is for promoting ART and positivity in the world.

 

greyscale cityscapes

Fifth Grade cityscapes and monochromatic color mixing expedition!

Fun Stand Up Buildings... for the little ones

Last but not least I thought I would add on one more architecture variation.
This was introduced the same as Crazy Architecture but was also a twist on Stand-Up City Bags.
I did this project with first graders at a museum class and they did a great job!

 This was my original sample for this lesson:

Architecture continued...

This was another version of the Crazy Architecture project.  In this variation we created the buildings out of paper cuts shapes and added details with metallic markers.  

We also created rotation symmetry designs influenced by stained glass rose windows on small pieces of metal.  The students used a circle for the start of this project.  They could cut them into a circle, cut them up, or keep them square.