Text Art: (just about) Complete

Above: Winnie the Pooh. This 3D sculpture uses a book and sculpey wrapped in text.

The first round project, Text Art, which is one of the only projects everyone in class was required to complete, is just about wrapped up. If we hadn't had so many snow days this week, we would have presented them on Friday for out first Feel good Friday critique day... ok, so lets try that again next Friday.

In the meantime, here are a few of the (just about) completed Text Art projects.

Many students tried their hand at Blackout Poems as short, 1-2 day challenge projects before diving into their final project. Here is one of those poems.

Not completed yet but I like where it's going. Nice contrast between the warm and cool colors as well as the organic curls and geometrical symbols. She told me what it says but I forget :)

Pathing text can be challenging but this piece does a great job especially displaying movement as is evidenced in this black and white version and also depth as is displayed in the version below.

Same piece as above only colorized.

This took an incredibly long time to assemble... and about 15 seconds to burn completely. Below is the video of it burning...

I like the design sense used in this work. The angles of not only the words but also the background.

The person on the swing reading a book, carved in a scientific book. Begs the question, what is the person reading?

It reads: "Silence Speaks Volume"

This project took a lot more to complete than either the student or I expected!

Art History Pop Up Books

In Art History, we dug deeper into the world of art by exploring some of the stories behind the famous art works we've been looking at. What's the best way to do this you might ask? Well, by writing a book... and not just any book... a pop up book.

For example, take the story of Jackson Pollock and the Cockroach.

It all starts when Paul, a cockroach, and his friend Bill, also a cockroach, discovered a mysterious white cloth on the floor.

"What is it?" asked Bill. 

"I don't know," said Paul "but I wanna touch it!"

Bill looked at Paul and shook his antennas. "Don't Paul. It could be a trap!"

Paul laughed at him. "Don't be stupid. It's fine. see?" Paul ran back and fourth across the white space.

As he was running, big, black blogs fell all around him. He panicked and tried to escape but a blog fell right on him.

"Help!" He screamed to his friend Bill but Bill had run off. Paul struggled to get free but the blobs kept falling. Paul was stuck forever and is still there today.

Other stories include How Nefertiti Lost Her Eye

Degas Dancers

Mean Girls Venus and Medusa

and Walter and the Water lilly.

Other stories include: The Eternal Hippo Hunt, Dr Tulp's Zombie Apocalypse and Watson and the Shark...

Not for the Faint of Heart Art Teacher

At the beginning of this semester we rolled out a new idea. The students were free to select (or not select) any unit and in any order they desired. They are not required to follow any particular sequence. Once they have completed a unit, they are free to choose any other unit they wish to explore. 

This idea, along with the units was presented in a previous post titled Art Ed Vision: Open, Flexible, Transparent.

Advice for Teachers

The class is now underway I can will admit I'm a little scared. This type of freedom is not for the faint of heart art teacher. If you like a little control... lets say for example, you like to know what's going on... then this method of teaching probably isn't for you.

Let's see if I can explain a little of what I think is happening....

Well, he decided he wanted to try his hand, or in this case, his foot, at print making. But he brought in a flip flop. Guess what? Those tools that do such a great job cutting linocuts.. well, they don't work so well on flip flops. So he is trying out a soldering iron.

OK, a stencil. I get this one.

She is hammering a lot and she has plans to add string to write the word in negative space.

Next task, untangle, untangle, untangle.

Part of the text unit, she wrote "Shattered" in broken glass and is preparing a board where the glass will be place on glass. It makes sense when she explains it.. so we'll see what happens.

Umh, something about writing the word "cheeky" but painting three butts.. but using her fingers to paint the butts that say cheeky... or something like that.

It's a lot of squares and a lot of tints and shades of green. I think I'm standing to close to see it.

OK, so there you go.

Cartoons...

For our first unit in AOIT Art we are taking a look at cartoons. Each student is creating their own cartoon complete with panels, speech bubbles and of course, a good story.  The style, number of panels and story are up to each individual to decide. Here's a sneak peek of where we're at!

Text Art - Getting Started

When we think of art, we usually think of images that artists draw. People, places and even animals are all common subjects in art. These images can convey emotion or express feelings when the audience views the work. After all, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. But what if you created a work of art without any images at all? What if you only used text?

So what will this unit’s objective be? Student's were asked to dig deeper into the world of text art, exploring how other artists use text in a variety of different ways. They just complete a few small text based sketchbook projects that challenged how they looked at letters, words and icons. That's what this post is about.

Next, they’ll complete their own text based art work... If you're interested, this unit is posted on our Portal. You can watch the video introduction, research more about text art in the Dig Deeper section, or try out a few small text based project in the Challenges section.