Text as an Element

Beauty and Culture

The Art Three class now follows a four phase process; Initiation, Design, Production and Presentation. The initiation phase begins with a topic and a theme. This project's topic was based on a principle and the project's principle was Text as an Element. We also provide a theme as a prompt to help generate ideas. Our first theme was "Culture". The medium was left open.

Petri dishes filled with recent newspaper article clippings and other cultural symbols

Much of this image is created using written text

Strips of paper with written expressions of culture wrap the hand

Three pieces of plexiglass with written forms of transportation set at different heights and depths

A family tree: the words read grandfather, mother, sister, etc. However, none can be read without rotating around the tree, new words form instead.

Photo transfer of images of Apex culture and different perspectives

Mural painted in the science room. When viewed through a red lens reveals science terms

Our next project will be based on the principle Intertextuality, where this piece will also work :)

Bring a Bunny to School Day

One of our students brought a gaggle of bunnies to school today.. so we could draw them.. sort of. 

Ok, mostly, we Oooooohhhhhed and aaaaaahhhhhhed. Tough boys melted and girls were telling me this was the best day of their lives.. 

The power of the bunny is, well, a powerful thing!

We also had a race. Shelby won hands down.. Turtles always beat rabbits.

Forced Perspecitve Photography

Perspective changes everything.  I thought it might be fun to try something different this week.  The kids have been working on their realism drawings for the past 2 weeks, I thought we'd try something else. Inspired by Ian Sand's post earlier this year we took a shot at forced perspective.  

I introduced forced perspective photography as art that incorporates an opitcle illusion based on perspecitve.  Students even watched a video on how they used this method in Lord of The Rings. If you'd like to see how they were introduced check them out here. 

What's The Point??

This first Art Two project's principle is Contrast. Each work was to show strong contrast. We also provide a theme as a prompt to help generate ideas. Our first theme is "What's the Point?" Art Two has a third constraint, medium. This first project is limited to charcoal, pen or pencil...

Like I said, this first project is limited to charcoal, pen or pencil... ( unless you can talk Mr Sands into letting you try something else which isn't too hard to do :)

Spock has pointy ear... lol!

SchoolArts Magazine Article : Interactive Murals

 

The digital edition of the SchoolArts Magazine article written by Apex students Sarah Muzzillo and John Michael Santos is now online. The article covers the work of Art One students who filled the courtyard of our school with interactive murals. 

Each mural left an empty spot where someone could pose with the work while their friends snapped some photos. In this way the person taking the photo becomes the artists and the photo becomes the work of art. Mind-blowing, I know!  

Read the article to find out more!!

Below, are a few more pics on the interactive chalk murals...

Check out more Interactive Chalk Murals, click here!

Read the SchoolArts article here!

Pinterest In the Classroom

I (Ms. Sudkamp) have had a Pinterest addiction for quite some time. It is a GREAT resource for inspiration, finding artist, and my favorite: tutorials.  This week the Sculpture/Ceramics class completed their own boards for their next project.  

 Each student had to complete a board on Pinterest based on relief work (their next project).   Each board included inspiration, reference photos, and tutorials. The kids had a blast. Want to see their upcoming project on relief work?  Check it out here! Ha ha, you'll even see my boards for the project.

X-ray Vision!

For this first Computer Art project, students combined three photos and used a few new tricks. The objective was to create a self portrait holding an x-ray frame that reveals their bones. Good thing they had the x-ray because there is something else lodged in there! What is it? Take a look!

To create the X-ray look:

Take photo on a white background

Go to Image/adjustments/invert  

Go to Image/adjustment/Hue Saturation to colorize

The New Art Two

If you read the blog post about the new Art Three class than this post is going to seem rather familiar.  Both posts begin with a Mr. Sands (that's me) epiphany . I realized that, although I could come up with some creative lessons, the way I was teaching art was more about the outcome I wanted to see then what the students wanted to create. With this in mind, the Art Two teachers sat down over the summer and developed the following model for teaching Art Two.

Both Art Two and the Art Three classes now follow a four phase process; Initiation, Design, Production and Presentation.

The initiation phase begins  with a topic and a theme. This project's topic is based on a principle. This first projects principle is Contrast. We also provide a theme as a prompt to help generate ideas. Our first theme is "What's the point?" Unlike Art Three, Art Two has a third constraint, medium. This first project is limited to charcoal, pen or pencil ( unless you can talk Mr Sands into letting you try something else which isn't too hard to do :)

During the design phase, students are tasked with creating a list of 20 items related to there theme. From this list, they design 10 thumbnails of possible art projects. The class also partakes in daily warm-ups where students are encourage to explore the different mediums.

From there, students make their final  decisions about composition and media and get to work on their final piece.

For the final phase, presentation, the students will post their work to their blogs along with their personal reflection of the piece. The actual piece will then be presented to the class on Feel Good Friday where students will write comments for their fellow artists to read later.