A Look Back at 2014!

As the New Year rings in, here's a look at some of the greatest moments of 2014.

January:

As the New Year rolled around in 2014, our blog rolled out it's 500 post! To celebrate, we asked former students to compiled a list of Apex Art's 75 Most Memorable Art Moments! Here's a look at the first three...

1. Last year a rabbit peed on someone's real fur scarf, pretty ironic.

2. There was a bottle of Elmer’s glue, a pencil, and a hot glue gun (which was plugged in and hot) sitting on the table between me and another student. Mr. Sands walked up to it, hot glued the pencil to the bottle and say, "Look, its art!"

3. Student asks "Does hot glue wash out of hair?"

Read all of Apex Art's 75 Most Memorable Art Moments!

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February:

In Febraruary we rooled out the Art of Apex Portal. The Art of Apex Portal is an online Knowledge Management Repository responsible for the distribution of inspirational ideas and tutorial based learning...

Wait.. What? Oh, sorry. Let me try that again in english..

The Art of Apex Portal  (currently in production) is a website where students can find art inspiration and easy to follow online tutorials. The Portal is divided into four sections. Read about all four sections here.

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March:

In March, our Art History class was up and rolling. I Was trying to think up a good review game for Art History class and Ms Purtee said, "Why not ask the students?" 

In Art History, the students already write the quiz questions so it only made sense to ask them what game we should play for a review. The first paper I turned over read, Battleship! I knew I had a winner! 

Read all about Art History Battle Ship here!

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April:

When April rolled around we had an exhibit at BLAKE STREET SHOPS & STUDIOS:

Art with Words, 6 to 10 p.m. Runs until April 25. This show celebrates words in art and the art of typography. We'll be exhibiting collage work by Hoop&Stick, digital art by Ryan Miller, giant modern paintings by Joe Wright, and textual elements by the students of Apex High School.

Check out more Text Art here!

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May:

While Hannah, Jessica and Rachel were working on their chalk mural in the courtyard, a teacher approached them about working on a mural in her room. She teaches computer classes and said that for years she'd been wanting to paint a mural in her room to help make the technology classes more appealing to women. She explained that women make great programmers but they often don't chose that course of study because they feel uncomfortable in that environment/ feel as though they don't belong . 

Check out the full mural story here!

June:

While everyone was lounging by the pool soaking up the rays, the crack team of educators were back at Apex Art headquarters diligently constructed an amazing program for the next fall. Elaborate flow charts scrawled across the whiteboard as hot topic ideas spurred fervent debate. 

So what's so amazing that it became the focus for next year's curriculum? Units! But these aren't your Mamma's Art Teacher's Units!

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July:

Melissa Purtee, Kimberly Sudkamp, and Ian Sands spent two days taking part in a think tank with the quest of re-imagine the NCMA's Teens Inspired program. 

The think tank encapsulated two ideas. First, brainstorming ways to transform the Teens Inspired exhibit into a more student centered approach. Second, developing ideas for connecting two schools using the NC Museum of Art as a hub. Read the whole story here.

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August:

So one August morning, around 4:30 AM, Ms Purtee sent Mr Sands a text. It read: Let's have a Task Party today! So Mr Sands, who never, ever likes to change plans and always follows the plan was obviously hesitant but Purtee was persistent and then when Ms Sudkamp got involved  Sands finally agreed. 

Read all about our first TASK Party!

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September:

In September we completed the first of our new Artistic Behavior units. For the final project in our unit Artist Observe, the students were tasked with creating a work of art based on observation. Topics included still life, scientific, figure drawing, landscape.. to name a few. Here are some of the other things that went on... click here!

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October:

In October some people might have been wondering where all the art teacher were one Friday... They went to the NC Art Education Association Conference in New Bern, NC. And not just hanging out but presenting as well!

Check out the whole story here!

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November:

By November, the Units were in full swing with Artist Solve Problems. 

click here to read what students say they learned...

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December:

Somehow Ms Sudkamp talked me into thinking that Artist Destroy would make an interesting topic. she was right and in december we asked students not to create, but to destroy art. Here is what they did...

Happy New Year Apex!

I'm So Punny! Computer Arts Literal Pieces

Clever students of Mrs. Sudkamp came up with these awesome puns on words. As part of their 12 days of Photoshop.  Check them out!

Hotdog

Basketball

Angelfish

Hairspray

Cowboy & Greenhouse

Novelty (Novel Tea)

FireFox

Porcupine 

Sunlight

Facebook

Hamburger

Keyboard

ANOTHER 12 Days of Photoshop!!

Last season, we released an exciting way for your students to review many of the Photoshop tips and tricks they learned in Computer Art class. We called it the 12 Days of Photoshop! Each day for the 12 days leading up to winter break, students were asked to complete a task. They only had one day to think of an idea and create it in Photoshop. 

The response to the 12 Days of Photoshop was so overwhelmingly positive that we decided to introduce another 12 assignments! And guess what? The Art of Education Online Magazine posted the entire 12! Click here to read the article and see Another 12 Days of Photoshop! 

Here are a few examples from the new set...

Day 1: True Identity:Be it a reflection in a puddle or a shadow on the wall, the objective is to use Photoshop to show an image’s true identity in its reflection. Perhaps you’ll show a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a kitten dreaming of being a lion. Be clever because the true self can only be seen in the shadows!

Day 8: Edible Architecture:

From Ms Sudkamp's class... Have you ever been so hungry that you could’ve eaten a house? Well, with this assignment, you might just be able to! Design a house made out of food. Consider who might live in this house, where they are from, and what type of architecture would be involved.

Day 9: Virtual Graffiti:Using spray paint to graffiti a wall is totally illegal. Using Photoshop to make it look like you graffitied a wall? Totally legal! In this assignment, the students will try to create, as convincingly as possible, a tagged wall or photo of a train.

So click here to see all 12 projects on Another 12 Days of Photoshop. We hope you enjoy and that you have a very Merry Photoshop!

The Art of Destruction!

For this post, I decided to let the artists speak for the work they created.. or in this case, destroyed. The rest of the words on this post were written by the students to describe their work.

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Stop and Smell the Roses

Our destruction project was inspired by the gallery at the Hirshhorn called Damage Control, Art and Destruction; which captivated the beauty of destruction in all different mediums. When we were given the project, I was intrigued with the concept of destroying one piece of art to create a new one. John Baldessari did this with his Cremation Project where he incinerated all of his paintings and made the ashes into cookies which is on display in the Art and Destruction exhibit.

Sticking with this idea, I found a past piece of mine, a poster I made in Art 1 with the quote "Stop and smell the roses", and destroyed it by cutting it into six squares and creating origami roses. By doing this, I took a simple 2-D piece and created a complex 3-D sculpture.

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The Spoon Tree

The spoon tree was a lot of fun to make, but way more fun to destroy. 

When we were asked how we were going to destroy a project made entirely out of plastic, there was only one stand out option. Fire. After we were told we couldn't set the thing in flames, Mr.Sands gave us a heat gun, which was just as effective in melting the heck out of plastic spoons.

It was very satisfying to murder the spoons. Our plan was to disfigure the tree, but it ended up in a pile except for a few of the leaves. 

The symbolism behind the tree is using something man  made, like plastic, to represent something made by nature, and how ironic it is to destroy something that usually lasts for a long time.

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Burn Witch, Burn!

I really like the idea of Artists Destroy. For this project I decided to continue with my American Horror Story theme. 

This time, I picked a character from a season I haven't done art for; the third season Coven. I picked the character Myrtle Snow.

I decided to encase her in ice. I did this by making two layers of ice and inserting my drawing  in between. I then dropped the ice and once the drawing was free, I set the drawing on fire. Ironic because Myrtle was burned at the stake.


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The Pizza

For our artists collaborate my table and I made a big ol' pizza. Each person made their own pizza including one made with magazine clipping pasted on a styrofoam base or another with sheet music and hand drawn instruments glued on. 

Each of us took something that we liked/ were inspired by and channelled that into our pizza piece. In the end, we put all the pieces together for the final complete pizza. We even got a box from the local pizza place, that was big enough to fit our pizza.

For our artists destroy project my group from the artists collaborate project and I decided to "destroy" our project. We decided to do this by first covering the pizza with watered down red paint to imitate pizza sauce and second we put shredded white and yellow paper to imitate the cheese. 

By doing this we were able to take our old piece and turn it into something new. 

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Put Her In The Blender!

This picture of Rapunzel is a work of art that I made at one point in this art class. We had to choose a piece of art to destroy so I chose this one. What I did to destroy this piece of art, was I put it in a blender and blended it. 

Watch her blend!

Then I poured it into a square thing like in this picture so the blended stuff will dry out and when it is dry it will turn into a piece of paper.