Making Holiday Gifts With A Diverse Group Of Students

Sometimes the most simple solution to a challenge is a good one. I have been in diversely populated school settings in which teachers approached gift making by avoiding it. One example is a teacher I know who abandoned the idea of making father's day gifts because she didn't want to cause any pain to children with absent fathers. Winter is a festive time of year with calendars filled with religious, cultural and ethnic celebrations and holidays. The city in which I live places a high value on social inclusion, which has contributed to my creating art projects and activities for diverse groups of children. I have found that children have a need to make presents for important people in their lives. When a class works on gift making projects together, the children feel as if they are personally engaged in the holiday season. In order to create an open spirit of warmth in a classroom, I have started projects by asking each child to identify, in his or her mind, the recipient of the gift. I have found that in extreme situations, classmates like to brainstorm with members who are unsure for whom to give a gift. The benefit has been that the children who had trouble identifying for whom to make a gift felt bonded to the classmates who had families, and not psychologically separated from them during the act of making presents. I remember one class in which a boy who was in foster care did not want to make a present for anyone. This led to a brainstorming session in which the boy remembered that he really liked his school coach and he thought he could make a present for his coach to give to his wife: he started the gift making activity with the other children on a happy note.
So, what to make? One universal symbol and value is love. A simple heart can be stylishly produced using many artistic methods and materials. This is an inexpensive, easy way to make an heart which has a nice fragrance and looks like a sophisticated piece of thick handmade paper.
Potpourri Flour Dough Heart Threaded with Raffia Ribbon:
Proportions of 1 cup flour, 1 cup potpourri (use botanical potpourri because the pieces of wood chips in other mixtures are hard to manipulate) to 1/2 cup salt & 1/2 cups water in amounts large enough for the group. Add blue food coloring and fragrant oil to the mixture. Refrigerate.
Give each child a ball of chilled dough. Either trace heart patterns on dough, cutting out the shapes with plastic knives, or use heart shaped cookie cutters. Create a thick slab of dough. Pierce holes in which to thread the ribbon in the wet dough. These heart wall hangings should not be too thin for danger of cracking or breaking when threaded. Put an initial on the back of the heart, let dry. String thoroughly dried hearts with Raffia ribbon and wrap in hand made gift wrap.

Art Museum Field Trip To Study Art Fundamentals

If at all feasible, a trip to a museum provides a great benefit to young students. Much of art appreciation happens by physically being in the presence of the art object. The meanings the viewer experiences through his or her relationship to the the scale of the work are not communicated in reproductions, not to mention accuracy of color and detail is lost in photographs. Many times classes make trips to museums to see specific exhibits, as the content of the exhibits and the related museum provided activities/lectures support the already topical classroom curriculum. Another reason to bring a class to a museum is to give the students an opportunity for an exercise to identify the formal elements and principles of art used in the works. Any permanent museum collection would work for this exercise.
Exercise:
Ask the students to select at least three works in the museum collection and spend a minimum of 5 minutes studying each work for a total of 15 minutes of observation.
Ask them to guess how much time it took the artist to create the work. Tell them that some works take months or years to make and can't be appreciated in the time it takes to watch a TV commercial. It takes a "slower" type of observation to begin to "see" what an artist is "saying" in his or her art.
Ask them to record: the name of the artist, title of the work, medium and year created.
Answer the questions: What is the artist communicating/expressing in this work?
How does the artist use the elements of art (line, shape, form, color, texture space) and the principles of artistic design( balance, unity, contrast, emphasis, pattern, movement and rhythm)
as the vocabulary of visual language to express and communicate -(what the student identified)- in the work?
Ask them to share their observations with each other as the beginning point for a discussion about the art they observed that day.

Teaching Patterns and Design In The Classroom

One starting point for teaching the ideas behind creating patterns and visual design is to have four cups each filled with many units of the same object. (For younger students possibly one cup of elbow macaroni, one cup of kidney beans etc., for older ones, possibly boxes instead of cups filled with items of unusual visual interest which have no logical relation to each other such as...who knows.... large nails, hair rollers, empty pop cans, paper clips etc., ) Place four students at a table giving each a cup. First time around, have the first student put one or more pieces on the table, followed by the next student etc until there is a line consisting of a combination of the four items. Then, underneath, REPEAT the same arrangement thereby MAKING a pattern.
For younger children, have them draw contour shapes of the pattern on paper, IE., three kidney beans one macaroni etc., repeating at least three lines of it. At this point everyone should have three lines of the same contour shapes. Introduce the concept of weight and emphasis and some of the ways to visually achieve it by using color, texture, values, scale etc., Have each student choose where he or she wants the visual emphasis to be in the drawing and how to achieve it. Some solutions are based upon color theory- A high contrast design would use complimentary colors, a harmonious one would use colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel, a monochromatic one would use values of the same color. (Two blue beans, an orange macaroni, a blue bean, or a checkerboard of light blue, dark blue, then dark blue light blue ignoring the shapes and only using color, or two plain tonal objects, one with crosshatching, another tonal one etc., ) Try to get as many visual solutions to the design problem as there are students. When the drawings are finished the concept of visual design can be reinforced by asking the students to experience the drawings using another one of their other senses. For example, they could "read the designs and clap them". This would connect visual rhythms to auditory ones. (Three blue could be soft claps and an orange could be loud etc., ) They could "jump and walk the designs" kinesthetically experiencing the visual patterns and designs etc., For older students, the emphasis could be created as a means to convey something artistic through the visual design. They could be asked to communicate "states of being", or virtually anything else through the visual design. They could take the patterns and visually manipulate them any way they wanted (scale, positive/negative space etc., ) in order to express something artistic. For example, "make an agitated pattern, make a lethargic pattern, make an excited pattern, make an exhausted pattern... make a pattern that just learned that its missing brother had been found-IE, how does one visually express joy and elation using a repeating pattern?) Stretch their minds conceptually and they will be forced to use the elements of art to express the invisible. A critique could begin with the discussion of how and what was done in the work to express the intangible. "What was done to this pattern to visually express speed? etc., "

Was Jackson Pollock Random?: A Debate Which Can Initiate High School Art Students Into Thinking About Patterning On A Conceptual Level

Is it possible for humans to be random? Or, after the first action, is every subsequent action part of a pattern? Debating about Jackson Pollock's paintings is a lively way to initiate teens into thinking about patterns on a conceptual level. These quotes represent two sides of the debate:
Jackson Pollock's paintings are not random:
Richard Taylor is a professor of Physics and an artist who is using computer analysis to reveal Jackson Pollock’s paintings are not just random and messy mistakes of paint being splattered on a canvas. Rather, the data he is gathering is proving that within a Pollock painting one can see complex and intricate systems of designs embedded within each other. Taylor’s research has discovered that Pollock’s paintings contain fractals that not only show they are not random splatters, but populated with structures that are tied to specific technique which can be used to identify Pollock’s paintings. http://www.the-means.com/communiques/?p=176
Jackson Pollock's paintings are random:
Re: fractal geometry in Jackson Pollock's painting
hmm im going to have to think longer about what this means. "Can Science Be Used To Further Our Understanding Of Art?" i mean how much more random/meaningless can you get than a drunk guy throwing paint on a canvas? If this displays fractal geometry, then what doesnt?
http://complexitytheory.tribe.net/thread/64f94a25-d2b8-4adf-b22c-e11757b4a72a

Teaching Art As Core Subject

Last night I attended a school board candidates forum on the arts hosted by a local arts commission. My general impression is that some candidates had more personal experience in the arts than others, all were willing to listen to reasons to support the arts, and given the reality of the system resources, if elected, even defining and implementing short term arts goals would be a challenge none of them seemed confident that they could meet without exerting a lot of sweat equity. Some expressed caution about not wanting to focus on the arts at the expense of core subjects. My question is: why aren't the arts considered to be core subject matter? One reason, I assume, is that when discussing the arts, people focus on the affective, experiential, expressive, social and humanistic aspects of art. I believe that a more effective case for arguing the arts as a core subject in an academic setting would be to discuss the cognitive modalities learned and exercised when students begin to "think like artists" and how these thinking models aren't used in the learning of other subject matter, and yet vital to learn if we want to preserve the brain trust of our country into the next generation. This is one small illustration of students being forced to "think like artists". The cliche, "necessity is the mother of invention" is a basic principle in art making on an individual level, and in the development of the history of art. There is plenty of literature on inventing tools and how it relates to intelligence even to the point that using something in a way it isn't designed to be used is used as a measurement of intelligence on some IQ tests. Problems present themselves during in the execution of art and using what is at hand to create solutions to the problems force young art students to be inventive: learn solutions for problems by inventing the solutions at the moment the solutions are needed. Inventive thinking is a treasure in itself and can have unlimited applications in many subject areas. An example: When building a large cement/mosaic sculpture with a group of grade school students, gravity presented a problem for them. Heavy pieces of glass started sliding down the side of the form before the mortar had a chance to become firm enough to allow them to grip. I intentionally allowed that situation to occur in order to give the students an opportunity to think of ways to solve the problems presented by material weight and gravity. The first warning that there was a problem came from the students who had placed lighter pieces below the heavy ones and were upset that the avalanche of heavy ones was washing away their work. They said, "hey watch it, you're wrecking my pieces". I intervened at that point to ask them to step back and look at what was happening. We then talked about what we could do to "fix the problem". Three solutions were suggested and we used all three of them successfully and simultaneously on different parts of the sculpture. The suggestions to solve the problem were 1) mix a thicker mortar to paste behind the heavier pieces because a thicker mortar might bind better than a thinner one, 2) Eliminate the problem of heavy pieces sliding by only using light ones in areas affected by gravity 3) "inventing a tool to solve the problem!" Some students suggested placing the sculpture in the corner of the room. Use the walls for resistance. Turn chairs upside down against the corner walls and place the sculpture between them. Put sheets of stiff cardboard over the sliding areas to create pressure, holding them in place using the upside down chair legs until the mortar set. The students used chair legs as "flying buttresses" to support the sculpture "wall"!!! That "inventing a tool" solution to the problem was a product of their own thinking. This article "Creativity and the design of tools, and more tools and more tools" http://interactionculture.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/creativity-and-the-design-of-tools-and-more-tools-and-more-tools/ is from the official blog of the Indiana University School of Informatics 1590: Interaction Culture. The article itself provides a great argument for why children and teens should "sketch and sketch and sketch, and draw and draw and draw". If nothing else, arts as a core subject in grade school and high school will ultimately give students a foundation which will enhance their opportunity for acceptance to an intellectually challenging graduate program in computer or any other type of design.

Teaching Art, Science, and History Using One Project

Egg tempera is a medium which both teaches a traditional painting technique and offers a conduit into history and science. I think students enjoy preparing the materials more than the actual painting! During the preparation itself, I introduce some "kitchen science" facts and the importance of "lab etiquette": keeping the area clean and keeping track of measurement is essential for tempera painting and instills habits which can be used in any controlled setting.
I simplify the process by approximating a gessoed surface: the students use plaster poured into plastic plates to create the base. The egg yolk is collected to be used for the binder by rolling the egg yolk on a paper towel in order to dry it enough to control the handling of it, piercing the membrane with a pin, and squeezing the contents into a cup. (Plenty of accidents and laughter. Limiting the number of eggs available reduces error.) The proportions of egg, dry artist pigment and distilled water for the different painting layers and the painting technique itself are available in art instructional books. For teens, I simplify the process by giving them either the choice of two colors, or two distinct values of the same color. I limit the painting to two layers: the floating layer of a "puddle" of paint, and then when that layer dries, a line drawing using a soft liner brush over that layer. After that dries, use a natural egg solution as the final glaze coat. In some cases, depending upon the group and my intention of the exercise (if it is leaning towards a history lesson) , I have them do an "underpainting" on the plaster using a yellow ochre, brown, white, black ink drawing (hatching and cross hatching), then applying the transparent layers of egg tempera over the "underpainting". Globally, people have used egg as a binder throughout history. It is possible to connect the use of egg to almost any culture. The possibilities for using the exercise as an introduction to significant moments in European art history are enormous. The only painting issue I have with teens is that they are impatient "watching paint dry"and want to "scrub" the floating layer of egg tempera in hopes that it will dry faster. Once the puddle is on the surface, it has to dry naturally in order for the technique to be successful. Drying can't be rushed. "Don't touch it!!!" "Go read a book while you wait for the paint to dry". The ingredients of the egg vehicle are egg, water, and vinegar. Combining these ingredients provides a conduit into talking about why they are being mixed together and what happens when an acid and base are mixed. Usually a little rubbing alcohol is used when dissolving the dry artist pigment into a paste. It's very difficult to mix dry pigment in water to make a paste without adding alcohol to dissolve it. Why dry powder doesn't mix well and turns into a batter with dry lumps in it is another avenue for discussion. I've found that simplifying egg tempera painting for classroom use is a way to introduce an important fine art painting technique while discussing a little science and history in the process.

Classroom Auction Projects

For an impressive inspirational display of classroom art projects, visit a link to the Rooftop Alternative School in San Francisco. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rooftop-art/portfolio/auction.html Classrooms with artist parent volunteers can produce spectacular group art objects for their school auctions. I have come across situations in which the parents in charge of classroom art projects were almost forced into the position by default and extremely stressed out by it. The first question is, "what to make". Instead of first looking through magazines and books at other art projects for ideas and asking the teacher and students for input, an alternative is to poll the parent volunteers to see what skills and volunteer time are available to donate to the project, and use those volunteer skills as the basis for selecting a project. Sometimes, it's quite difficult to find volunteers with specific skill sets to help facilitate a project when it is in the process of being implemented. Lining up the volunteers first and selecting a project tailored to their skills, can save a classroom committee parent a lot of anxiety over the year, and make the classroom project enjoyable for everyone. It's likely that some of the parents in a class have basic carpentry, woodworking and tiling skills. This is an example of a project which is not too intrusive on class time, and provides individual distinct student art in the context of a finished piece: a handmade clay tile framed mirror. Ask a parent to place a mirror inside a plywood base. It might be a good idea to install the hanging hardware at this stage. Measure the dimensions of the plywood surrounding the mirror and make dark clay tiles (red clay is always attractive) and cover with white slip to cover the area. (Clay shrinks, so expect a little margin.) Bring the wet tiles into the classroom and have the students do contour drawings through the white slip exposing the dark clay. A variety of nails and paper clips make good drawing tools. A possibility may be to have a theme based motif and have the students draw the images first on paper. After the tiles are dry, have them fired to bisque. The students many then paint a few layers of glaze on their tiles. Fire again. The finished tiles are ready to incorporate into the mirror. Arrange the tiles in a visually pleasing manner. Some will be darker (more white slip will have been removed in the drawing process) than others. Think of the over all balance and weight of the design when arranging the tiles. Lay the tiles in a bed of tile mastic. If you decide to grout, be careful not to cover the face of the tiles with grout, as detail will be lost. Finish the edge with a wood frame stained a color compatible with the color of the darker clay. This is one example of the direction one may go if parent volunteers offer carpentry skills.

Primary Art: Teaching A Sense of Purpose

In retrospect, whenever an art project is finished, one can do a sort of forensic evaluation to identify which basic learning requirements were met by the students and to what degree. Some projects, by their very nature, are specifically designed to meet learning requirements. As an artist, my challenge is to keep the art experience free enough so children experience their own creative potential, but structured enough so that there is a "principle/practice" component to each art exercise. I find some age groups to be a challenge when developmentally, they are at a threshold which some members have reached and others have not. One such challenging threshold to me happens in the primary grades when as a group, they are supposed to have moved from the concrete to the abstract. "The age of reason". To date, I have not experienced a primary group in which all the members were either still activity based concrete learners or had that magic mental ingredient which allows for mental constructs, reasoning, making the leap from the intangible to the tangible, and, as it pertains to art, visualizing something before it physically exists. This week I think, judging from the participation of all the children, I hit on a way to include a developmentally diverse primary group into participating in abstract reasoning skills. As the session went on, some of the children with blank looks on their faces said, "oh I get what you're doing," and added their contributions to the discussion. That was feedback for me that I was on the right track. My goal was to target the standard learning requirements related to sense of purpose and the formal art considerations involved in creating an aesthetically pleasing design. I approached the task by starting with a concrete object. I thought that if I went from the concrete, to the abstract and then back to the concrete again, I might be able to reach the learners who haven't gotten to the point of being able to start with the "unformed". I had the feeling that starting with balloons, strips of newspaper and flour paste was not reaching concrete thinkers. I sensed that they could start with raw materials and end up with something while having fun and engaging in the process, but did they use actual planning skills in the making of the object? I doubted it. In retrospect they could discuss their already made art objects, but how could I ever really know what degree of intention went into making them? This is what we did. 1) I brought in a good sized paper mache deer of the cheap craft store variety. 2) I let them paint a white base coat. This was process based painting which they could enjoy without thinking about. 3) While the paint was drying, we discussed deer in general and were we going to make a replica of a deer, or an imaginary deer? 4) They choose an imaginary one. Children aren't boring! 5) We placed the dry paper mache deer against a piece of paper and traced the outline. This was the first step in moving from the concrete to the abstract. The deer is a physical object and the outline on the paper is symbolic. 6) Immediately the concrete thinkers jumped in and said "do you want us to draw a picture of a deer?" 7) I said "no I want to use this paper to make a plan for the deer so that if new children come next week they can look at the piece of paper with the deer plan on it and know what to do to help us make our deer." That comment produced plenty of blank stares. 8) I pointed to the deer tail and asked a girl what color she wanted it to be painted. She said "brown, should I get the brown paint?" 9) I said, "no, take a brown crayon and color the tail on the paper. Next week when you look at the tail, it will tell you to get brown paint and paint the paper mache tail brown. She said, "oh, I get it". 10) The children in this art group all used English as a second language. They were born in Africa and weren't familiar with the qualities of pacific northwest deer, (which was revealed in discussion), or English vocabulary. So, I decided to really stretch their symbolic competence and asked the next child to select a color for the hindquarters. He said the words "bright red". I told him to write the words "bright red" on the paper deer hindquarters. I spelled out the letters of the words and he wrote them. Then I asked the children what he meant by bright red which sent them on a treasure hunt through all the reddish colored crayons and markers. They were actively thinking in order to discriminate the qualities of a color. They discussed the colors with him. He would say, "no that one is too blue, that one is too light etc., until they all decided upon a crayon which matched his mental vision of "bright red". 11) At this point, I showed them the deer and said, "if we keep dividing the deer into sections like a meat market poster, he is going to look like a puzzle. What are some other ways we can think of to divide the form into smaller segments which will equal one big deer design unit which will "look good from all angles" and express something "artistic" about the deer. Who IS this deer?" The "look good from all angles" discussion was based on art fundamentals: weight, balance, color, pattern, visual flow, etc while the "who is this deer" emerged from a design focal point created by the children: the bright red hindquarters, orange hind legs and belly, with flames drawn over the orange hindquarters, and the light blue chest and back with a rain pattern and violent blue hearts drawn over the rain pattern on the chest. We ended the session with a plan to execute next week. The deer design is blocked out on paper. We made many revisions and finished with a balanced pleasing high contrast (red/orange-blue/green) design with one major focal point: the visual tension between the heated fiery hindquarters and the blue rainy sad hearted chest. When I asked the children "who is this deer" they said he is powerful and his muscles are burning to run and it's raining on his heart. They are the artists.... I wondered if this was going to be a Greek tragedy or comedy. Will the deer run in spite of the rain on his heart, or will the rain on his heart stop him from running and will his burning muscles torture him? The children weren't able to put this dilemma into words, but by their facial expressions and conversation with each other, it was clearly troubling them. They backed themselves into a corner by creating a conflict for their deer which they didn't know how to solve. Finally, a boy brightened and said, "I know, we can put lightening and fire on the forehead of the deer!" A girl looked relieved and said, "I want a blue heart on the cheek and lightening and fire on the forehead." After the session, I went back and scanned the essential learning requirements for primary students and realized that I exceeded my expectations in what we were able to cover in phase one of this simple project.

The Child is the father of the Man. -William Wordsworth

Throughout my life, the quote from Wordsworth that "the child is the father of the man" revisits my mind at unexpected times to remind me about the weight of that poetic insight. On a personal note, some of my most formative art experiences happened as a child, which has led me to respect the playful work of children. There is meaning in what they do, even if they themselves are unaware of it. I grew up in an art friendly home. My mother is a painter who started her studies at the Chicago Art Institute in her youth and continued as an adult. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine was always in the air. She was able to provide enrichment through conversation, history lessons and art experiences. However, what I remember most is the home atmosphere. I never had the impression that I couldn't act on an inspiration, which is why I probably did act upon them all the time. As an adult, I sketched out a large mural wall and a passerby asked me, "how could you do this?" meaning, "how can you just plunge in and scratch such a large area of the painted wall with a pencil. Aren't you afraid of making a mistake?" My initial thought was that if I ever worried about making mistakes, I'd be frozen stiff and too self-conscious to do anything. I'm used to making mistakes, as I do so all the time. Failures and things not turning out the way I thought they would is a way of life for me. In most cases, I'm able to work with the unexpected and go on, but sometimes failures need to be discarded. I felt that way about the wall. Everything I was doing could be covered with a coat of latex paint if it turned out to be a complete disaster , so what did it matter? Then the quote from Wordsworth entered my mind and I remembered my first exhilarating inspiration upon which I acted as a child, which was to do a large scale mural. I was in the early years of grade school and I saw a Peter Max poster. Somehow seeing that poster caused a flash in my mind that the downstairs bathroom in our house should have GIGANTIC lemons all over it. It didn't occur to me to ask anyone for permission. I got permanent markers, pencils, and acrylic paint. I remember sketching the giant lemons which were physically larger than I was, and flowed around the corners and angles of the bathroom: the bathroom sink became situated inside a giant lemon. I was thrilled to see the giant lemons come to life and to be a small person inside an enclosed room with giant lemons. When my father came home from work I heard him tell my mother, "there are huge lemons all over the downstairs bathroom walls". They both laughed and kept the lemons for years, painting fresh coats of wall paint around them. Whatever that "idea-act on it" artistic sensation I have as an adult was established in childhood. In classrooms and after school programs, I actively look for that sensation in the students. When they suck in their breath and their eyes look excited, I know that they've been visited by a muse.

Creating A Classroom Climate Condusive To Art

What makes an artist? Who are artists? Does everyone have "an inner artist" waiting to be discovered? I don't think these questions matter in the context of art education. I look upon art education as I do any other subject. Throughout grade school and high school I had to take required physical education courses. Never in my school experience did a PE teacher say, "well, only one of you students is potential Olympic material". A child did not have to be an athlete to meet the requirements of PE and health classes. Not to mention, I remember substitute PE teachers who were less than athletic themselves, following the lesson plan to instruct us to run around the gym and do various exercises. No harm was done, and benefit was gained. However, I have observed students with natural artistic ability being separated from their classmates with comments like, "he can draw", "she has a natural color sense", etc., etc., etc., I think that these types of comments place a barrier in the less naturally gifted art students to hearing what the art lesson is about, and give the naturally artistic students the impression that they can just breeze through the lesson without challenging themselves. The first step in presenting a successful art lesson is to intentionally create, by word and action, an emotionally neutral safe environment in which children of all degrees of natural ability can be open and curious to what is being presented.

A Blog For Non-Artists Who Teach Art

Arts Education is both a national and community based topic these days. Collectively, people are beginning to show the signs of realizing the value of arts education by giving some shape and definition to it, advocating for it, developing and refining instructional strategies , and formalizing it through the establishment of learning standards. As a practicing visual artist, my bias is to support artists in education by professionalizing the field of teaching artists, and by creating as many diverse opportunities as possible for artists to directly design and implement programs in all the arts with every imaginable population. There IS NO SUBSTITUTE for an artist when it comes to teaching art. Having disclosed my bias, I realize that there is a push for classroom teachers and others in extra-curricular settings to provide art education and art experiences for children, youth and adults. As an artist who has worked in all types of settings doing many different types of things for over 15 years, I decided to write a blog to encourage non-artists who are timid about the demands made upon them to provide art experiences to jump into the chaos, get a little messy and go for it! Teaching art is such a big topic that I didn't know where to begin to blog about it. Finally, I decided that since there is so much excellent material published on all aspects of art, art strategies, what is art, the fear of art, the benefits of art, advocating for art, art in the classroom etc., etc., etc., that possibly the only useful contribution I could make to the discussion would be to blog about art episodes in my microcosm, and that my descriptions and reflections about the episodes would help non-artists develop their own framework for processing their art teaching experiences.