An Art Show Connecting Art and Science!

With the theme of "Why do artists need to learn about science?" first grade artists investigated landforms, translated them into lines and placed them horizontally on their paper to create a landscape that shows depth. They used warm colors and cool colors, one scheme for the  sky and the other for the ground. I am not the first person to create these kinds of landscapes with students, they are very striking, but I have not seen anyone tell how they connected these beauties to other learning taking place. This show will be on display at the Regal Cinema 16 in Green Hills (Nashville, TN) for the month of November! I have included some pictures from this Wednesday's opening with the artist and their families! Enjoy!!

This is my daughter! So proud!!

I had students mount them on different colors by class so they would be easy to find at the show and easy to sort afterwards.

I am the concession lady. I usually have a parent volunteer willing to help. Everyone stops for the movie popcorn and pink lemonade donated by the movie theater so I have a chance to chat with parents.

Chalk-it-up 2nd grade!!

We welcomed Street Painter Lee Jones (Chalk-it-up.com) to our school again this year to work with our 2nd grade students. She did a one hour presentation about the history of street painting and went room to room giving a chalk technique demonstration using hard board. The kids were so excited to take their designs outside! We spend three weeks designing new species of butterflies and moths, paying close attention to the parts of a butterfly and how to tell a butterfly from a moth. (They will be studying the life cycle of butterflies in science right after this unit). 

When the day finally came for us to chalk, it rained. Bummer right? Well there was a bright side... the tiger Lee chalked wasn't on the sidewalk this year, it was on hard board, which means we get to keep it forever!! She set up her board on the stage in our cafetorium (nope-not misspelled...it is a cafeteria that thinks it's an auditorium because it has a stage in it). All the students were able to see the tiger develop throughout the lunch periods and when they came to eat the next day, they were amazed!!

Lee was headed back to Florida, but it was sunny in Nashville so I took all 130 2nd graders out into the front driveway to create butterfly compositions. Each box (3x4feet) housed two artists. I demonstrated how to layout the two designs so that they both overlapped and touched the sides of the box to create interesting negative space in the composition. Lee had already taken care of the chalk technique and in two hours we had 130 amazing butterflies and moths!

That's me doing the Demo!!

This is just half the driveway!

That is my son's butterfly in the bottom left!

We peeled the tape up, leaving a nicely defined image!

How great is that?!!