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.

Oceans of fun with painted paper!

 Painted paper has OCEANS of applications!! This summer, right before we went back to school (the first week of August which is still summer!!) I taught this fun painted paper/collage lesson with our on-site extended day program (Tiger Club). I painted the ocean wall years ago, when I had all that free time before kids and marriage. It is kind of a landmark in our building, but it was designed to be an interactive wall several versions of the curriculum ago and we created sea creatures and added them every year when 1st grade studied the ocean. I decided to revive a new version for some summer art fun!

SO...after I wrapped up a week at the Tennessee Arts Academy, I was so fired up about painted paper I couldn't wait to try it out. Here is a picture of Laura Lohmann in action at TAA!!

My "Tiger Club" kiddos are always willing to be my lab rats so I headed over there to test the waters! Here is what we did...
First we painted two papers each, some did more until the paint was gone. No water just mats to clean the brushes on...it was awesome!!

 

Aren't they awesome!!

 

The next day, we created our amazing fish! Cutting and gluing and sharing all the beautiful papers. No one even freaked out about not having THEIR paper.  Once they finished I had made "water" with craft paper. The dow rods I had fit perfectly into the plastic ceiling hooks so I made a pocket of folded paper at the top of the craft paper with the rod through it. The kiddos brought their finished fish straight to the paper for display. Once they were all finished and layer out on the papers I taped them in place and snapped the rods into the ceiling hooks in about five minutes! They looked pretty awesome!

Mirror, Mirror in my hand...a Frida Kahlo inspired self portrait.

 I love using oil pastels over paint, it is one of my favorite ways to create self-portraits with my students, especially young ones. These are 2nd grade portraits inspired by Frida. Students learned about her live and art before creating their portraits using mirrors. Then we framed them on paper that is shaped like a hand held mirror. (Thanks Phil from There's a Dragon in my Art Room for that idea!) Using crayons they added some motifs that are common in Mexican folk art as well as some symbols that are personal to each artist to decorate their symmetrical mirror shaped picture frame. They look almost as serious as Frida herself!

 This is a quick paint before the artist intro. We whip up the skin color for the head, neck and shoulders, adding the hair last and whisking it away to the drying rack before breaking out the idea books to learn about Frida Kahlo and practicing some front-view facial proportions!

 This way the paint is dry before we add the oil pastel the next week. Day three includes cutting out the portrait, gluing the three papers together and adding the designs on the mirror. You can see more on our Percy Priest Elementary Artsonia.com art gallery!

Picture This...

No fooling...My friend Mr. E scheduled me to teach a workshop this month, on April Fool's Day!! I have to say I was energized and exhausted from NAEA but my Nashville elementary art teachers did not disappoint!!

Children's Literature in the Elementary Visual Art Classroom

Book 1: My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks

So, what did we do all day...well the topic was how to use children's literature to inspire young artists.  Our first author, illustrator and artist was Hanock Piven!! These are Piven inspired self portraits using found objects!! The best part is that every object used not only has a similar shape to a need facial feature, but it also holds a clue to the artist's personality. You may be familiar with the iPad/iPhone app inspired by this artist called Faces I Make! Here are some more created by the art teachers in my class!!!

"How Great Is That!?!!"