Artists Are Self Directed: Art Three

In the traditional art class, the teacher picks the project idea, find and demos any tutorials, and decides on the medium the students will use. That might sound like the role of the teacher... but, it's not. That's the role of an artist.


for this first unit, Artists are Self Directed, I wanted the students (AKA, the artists) to decide what inspires them, to seek out 'how to' information when they weren't sure how to complete something, and to pick the media. After all,  I'm not the artist. They are the artists! Here's a look at what the Art Two artists came up with...

Sharpie

Pencil

Sculpey

Mixed media

Pencil

Spray painting

Check out more examples here and see how it all started here!

Artists are Self Directed: in Progress

The first day of the new semester I handed my students paper and colored pencil and said, "We're going to do this tutorial... and we did. When we were done we talked about what my role in the project was. Here were the findings:

I picked the project idea
I found the tutorial
I decided on the medium

That might sound like the role of the teacher. Well, it's not. That's the role of an artist. Artists decide what inspires them, artists seek out 'how to' information when they aren't sure, and the artist always picks the media. So why was I doing it?? I'm not the artist. They are the artists!

First issue was knowing what materials were available. stealing an idea from Jean Barnette, our students went on a material scavenger hunt. They had a list of items to find out about including different papers and different types of paint, they even had to find stuff that they didn't know what it was.

Next, they had to find their own techniques. I encourage them to find a tutorial that they either didn't know how to do or one that improved on a skill they already knew. Then I asked them to do that tutorial.

Finally, we talked a bit about inspiration. What are you concerned about? What are you interested in? What are your passions?

Once they went through all three steps, I asked them to design their first project for my class. They had to decide what to make, they had to learn a new technique or improve on an older skill to make it, and they had to decide what medium to use to best bring their idea to fruition.

The one thing I can say is, I have no idea what's going on! Students are hard at work on something.

They are trying new techniques, new media...

We got everything going on from 3D printing...

To candle making...

To traditional materials like pastels..

To ceramics..

To drawing with fire....

Wait hold up.. drawing with fire! I got go!!!


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Non Traditional Completed

Above: recreating the essence of image using science supplies

For our last unit, Artists Incorporate Non Traditional Materials, the only limitation imposed was the request that they not use any fine art materials that could be purchased from an art supply company. They needed to find some other material in which to create their art. All other considerations were left up to the artists. View some of the works in progress here.

This limitation proved somewhat more challenging than expected. There were many attempts and fails as they explored different non traditional materials. This was due to the fact that, unlike common art materials, one just doesn't know how a rubber band or a bubble or a seashell is going to work.

Birdseed

Legos tree

Fire and wax

Broken CD's

Lipstick

Rubber bands, bubbles and food coloring

Needlepoint and paper

Cake decorating confetti sprinkles

Yarn animation

Non Traditional Materials in the Works

Today's artists don't limit themselves to the fine art supplies listed between the pages of an art supply catalog, Instead, they incorporate a wide variety of materials from shells to seeds to screens. For this project I asked students to consider what they might create using non traditional materials. Here are some of their works in progress.

Layering screen to create a value portrait.

Exploring the effects of painting with Q-tips.

Using yarn as line to produce an animation/

The tedious work of rolling rubber bands

Aligning birdseed to create the image of a bird

Confetti shaped sprinkles to color a pop art painting.

Post Modern Principles

Giraffiti - 

"For this project, I exhibited postmodern principles by creating a hybrid of text art, juxtaposition, and artists steal. But mainly hybridity and text art, this giraffe has the letters in "giraffe" as its spots."

For this unit, Artists Incorporate Postmodern Principles, students were encouraged to explore a range of post modern trends in art. Some of these trends included juxtaposition, time in art, text as art, Net art, and new media in art to name a few. Here are some of the works and the student's own words.

Text Art ..

"What I created was a frame capturing the reality of our society. How they tear us all down on our self image, that no matter what it's never good enough."

Appropriation..

"My project was a painting of the Taj Mahal based on the principle of appropriation. I took a famous monument that is actually completely white in real life, and made it my own by adding a a variety of colors such as purple, pink, yellow, green, blue, turquoise, black, orange, red, etc."

Text Art

"This project, although unfinished, has been a wonderful test of my focus. I took lyrics from Mac Miller and am creating a portrait, drawn in written words. The shading is done by letters/words/lines closer together and the light spaces are done in lighter pencil to create depth."

Appropriation

"Carrying on from the last project of essential question I finally finished my painting of downtown Apex. It just worked out that it fit the next project of Post Modern Principle as Artist Steal. I stole the painting technique of Van Gogh's Starry Night but instead painted downtown Apex."

Appropriation

"In the original piece of art there is a hear balloon. I decided to take that and turn it into a balloon with a real heart attached to it. I chose to do this because I really like Banksy's work and wanted to do something with it."

Juxtaposition

"My project represents juxtaposition by layering the dark gray skull with the brightly colored flowers. I also incorporated juxtaposition in the mediums because the skull is graphite and the flowers are soft thread. The bright, soft, warm flowers encircling the skull make the viewer understand that although skulls may be creepy or dark, there is an element of beauty in the human body and its form."

Appropriation

"I wanted my final product to look like the text style of the other words, but that made me nervous that maybe it was illegal since it could throw off where to go in an emergency. To do this, I knew I needed something that would 100% come off, so I decided to use chalk. When I found out chalk paint was a thing, I used it to better get the effect of a painted look for my project."

Text Art

"The text I used to make this piece was lyrics from love songs and also messages between my boyfriend, Cole, and I. My two best friends just moved away, and he has been so helpful to me and my grieving in this time of loneliness that I'm experiencing. "

Answering Essential Questions: part 2

Our latest unit, Artists Answer Essential Questions asked our students to first consider a word and then ask questions about the word. Once students developed their questions, they were tasked with responding to their own question by creating a work of art. Media determined by the artists. You can view a other responses to essential questions here.

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Above: Banana Corn

"The word i chose was societal standards. Everyone is different, however society likes to put everyone into boxes and label us. We have to know every detail about ourselves, and if they don't fit into the nicely labeled boxes then we have to conceal them in order to fit in. It's like trying to fit a triangle in a square hole. It doesn't work. This poses the question, "How do societal standards effect individuals?" I tried to represent this question by taking multiple of one object and throwing in an object that is clearly different but trying to appear the same as the others." ~ Sarah

 a Target brand crayon box to look like it was Crayola

This image never existed.

The word I chose for this project was temporary, and my question is "Can art truly be temporary if it is captured by photos?" The purpose for the artwork to only last for a short while or only be seen by few people is completely destroyed if that artist keeps a picture of the piece. The medium I used for this piece is a product called Buddha Board which is a surface that turns black when painted on with water. As the water evaporates from the canvas, the image slowly fades- lasting only temporarily. I wanted the concept of ephemerality to reappear in the subject of the piece also, so I drew the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. I grided my drawing of the life cycle and painted each square on the Buddha Board one at a time and then took a photo. Then, I put all the photos together to recreate the original drawing as a collage." ~ Tess

They will never be that exact age ever again...

"For my essential question I came up with, "How is youth captured in photography?". I used water color and pen ink to make the Polaroid camera words and photos. Then I mounted them on a piece on illustration board painted black. I used the baby pictures of multiple people to show how their youth is captured in photographs. And they will never be that exact age ever again except in that photograph." ~Brooke

Change

"The question I chose to use was "What evokes change?". One answer to what evokes change is wanting to fit in and be accepted. To show this, I decided to to use a caterpillar hanging off a branch getting ready to make a chrysalis. This shows the caterpillar getting ready to change. I also chose to put butterflies around the caterpillar to show what influences the caterpillar to change.  Someone said this idea reminded them of the ugly duckling which I agree with." ~ Maddy

No response

"The past couple of months I've been a ball of anxiety and espresso. between school, work, college plans, and planning now two foreign mission trips my to do list has been thoroughly packed and some things just haven't made the cut. one of  those things being art, i didn't put time, energy or the mental capacity aside for doing any art. so when this project was introduced it was another thing i had to do and i disregarded it and put it in the back of the line. 

No i did not have a question to inspire this piece, and i love that. my life and everything i have going on requires questions and/or answers and quite frankly i don't have all of the answers and that stresses me. the reason for this project was to avoid questions, have it clean, simple and organized so the viewer may take it as they perceive it." ~ Rachel

How has beauty evolved?

"For my project, I chose the word "beauty". At first, I wanted to do a portrait of a young, beautiful woman but eventually changed my idea to do something completely different. My question changed to "How has beauty evolved?"; so I decided to do an evolution of makeup from the 1920s to the present day, 2015.

I wanted to do this project because a lot of people underestimate makeup, or cosmetics, to be a kind of art. Many techniques we learn in class can also be applied to the human face; like contouring, shading, value, lines, color, etc. By researching about the different styles of makeup, I applied certain eyeshadow colors, foundation colors, and variations of lines on her face." ~ Poorna

Purpose

"What makes us useless? Are people born useless? Are there objects in life that are useless? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything is useless until given a purpose. I thought of different examples like how a seed turns into a flower or how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly and how they were once nothing special, but now something beautiful and purposeful. My favorite idea was how an ugly, fat pig turns into delicious, beautiful bacon." ~ Girl 2