Elementary:
Balanced Abstract Sculpture: Let's Get Abstract
Throughout a six week period students learned about abstract sculpture, color theory, art history, 3D vs. 2D, environments, balance, and the artist Louise Nevelson.
Art Through Music: Recording the Sound
Using color association with "warm" and "cool" colors, students reacted with their emotions to four different songs throughout one class period.
Found Object Sculpture: Collaboration
For this second grade class I introduced the concept of constructing sculpture from everyday found objects. For inspiration I presented the contemporary artist Tara Donovan, along with images of installation sculptures she's produced over the years. Students worked collaboratively throughout the project.
3D Pop Art: Pick Your Food
This unit focused on Pop Art, 2D design developing into 3D sculpture, and what it means to be Popular Culture. Students were given guidelines, and expectations throughout the project with the responsibility of choice taking a 2D design, ad conceptualizing it into a 3D form utilizing found objects.
This unit focused on Pop Art, 2D design developing into 3D sculpture, and what it means to be Popular Culture. Students were given guidelines, and expectations throughout the project with the responsibility of choice taking a 2D design, ad conceptualizing it into a 3D form utilizing found objects.
Cubism: Self Portraits & Animals
Approaching the Cubism art movement, two fifth grade classes followed the same guidelines for two very different outcomes. One fifth grade class created Cubist animals, while the other created Cubist self portraits. Using several mediums to fill their compositions, students broke down their work into various shapes, and rebuilt their images.
Pointillism & Color Theory: Puzzling Memories
Through three scaffolding lessons, students created Pointillist artworks utilizing nontraditional tools and materials.
Pointillism & Color Theory: Puzzling Memories
Through three scaffolding lessons, students created Pointillist artworks utilizing nontraditional tools and materials.
Fauvism: Self Portraits
For this unit students learned the history of Fauvism along with various Fauvist artists from that era. Utilizing knowledge of color, self expression, and stylized mark-making, students placed into motion their self portraits in which they learned how to properly construct facial feature proportions. Students learned how color meaning coincides with emotion, and how to transfer their own emotion through various colors using chalk pastel.
High School:
Painting 2: Night Scenes
For this project students had to leave behind any notion of painting techniques learned in the past. They learned about night scenes, directional light sources, paint textures, contemporary and traditional artists, and grounds. Each student was assigned to take a photograph of a night scene including angles or architecture to use as their reference.
Painting 2: Night Scenes
For this project students had to leave behind any notion of painting techniques learned in the past. They learned about night scenes, directional light sources, paint textures, contemporary and traditional artists, and grounds. Each student was assigned to take a photograph of a night scene including angles or architecture to use as their reference.
Photography: Architecture Angles using Smart Object Filters
Students received the assignment of shooting 20-35 photos of three structures that were defined as something you could walk through and interact with. Each structure had to have examples of the six angles taught in class considering lighting, focal camera settings, and framing. Students in class altered their best angle examples in Smart Object Filters within Photoshop making sure to keep an original of each. They learned what enhanced and what destroyed images, and a small measure of what Photoshop has to offer.
Photography: Textures & Patterns
Students received the assignment of shooting 20-35 photos of textures and patterns, both manmade and organic. They had to consider lighting, cropping, using their Macro settings within their cameras for zoom, indoor vs. outdoor images, as well as composition when taking their photographs. In class they uploaded their best eight examples into Photoshop to learn how to colorize, overlap, alter opacities, color theory, and create interesting and contrasting compositions.
Ceramics: Canopic Jars
The original Canopic Jars were apart of the burial process in Egypt where the deceased would have four jars buried alongside them that had the heads of the Jackal, Baboon, Falcon, and the likeness of the deceased. Each jar contained an organ that were considered the four most important organs of the human body. These deities were the keepers of the organs, and were believed to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. With this concept, students chose an animal or person to represent their jar. The objectives were to unify the two parts (head & body) through design, figure out how the head would look like as a three dimensional form, whether or not they would use the technique of sgraffito for realistic texture or environmental design, and how they would make the stopper on the head to keep it from tumbling off. Students constructed these jars using coil building.
