On the Farm

The kindergarten students and I have been working on texture.  We created these little farms by using odds and ends around the art room.  Way back at the beginning of the year, this group practiced painting by covering an entire paper with sky color.  We used it as a backdrop for our Red Grooms exhibit, and now that the exhibit is down, we recycled them by making our farm sky with them.  Wallpaper was used for the ground.  The rest is an assortment of crafty left overs. 

Red Grooms-Artober

Here in Nashville, an event called Artober has started up over the last couple of years.  It is a way to highlight art events in our fine city, and encourage everybody to get out there and get "Artin".  The art teachers in our district were encouraged to use Red Grooms as our focus artist, and find a way to install work inspired by him in our school.  My K-3 students worked on a collaborative city scene, while my 4th graders worked on Carousels.  The carousels were modeled after Red Grooms' Fox Trot Carousel which depicts scenes and events from our city's history.  As October comes to a close, I thought I'd share how our installation looked upon completion, before the students start taking the bits and pieces home.

Carousels in "The Park"



The Big Finish



One Man's Trash... a lesson on Found Object

My third graders are to learn about found object sculpture this 9 weeks.  Not an easy concept to begin with, and so rather than make free standing sculptures, we made relief sculptures.  Buttons, straws, bottle tops, etc were glued together to create a sun face.  This goes with the enduring theme of "Artists and Nature", as we looked at various representations of the sun. What fun to break the long standing "no smiley sun" rule.  During one session, students assembled their sun, working on the idea that color didn't matter, but size and shape do.  During today's session, they covered their suns with plaster, building up areas as needed.  Next session, we'll paint.  They are dying to have them spray painted, but I am hoping to push them in the direction of painting them with brushes, so that details can be enhanced.  We'll see who wins this.