Reform School Art

Along the banks of rivers

2012-01-09T23:38:00.000-05:00

What will we do when we no longer have a supply of fresh water? For many in the world obtaining the minimum amount of water for daily usage is a constant struggle. Soon many more of us will find that this will become our communities' most critical challenge.

Since the 1960's artists from all corners of the earth have been engaged in activist, collaborative and ecological aesthetics. A brief list includes: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Mary Miss, Betsy Damon, Basia Irland, Navjot Altaf, Patricia Johanson, Susan Jennings, Jaanika Peerna, Maya Lin and Simon Starling. Museums such as the Hudson River Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art's FLOW White River Festival celebrate and point to the need to protect waterways. Was it last year that the city of Boulder, CO celebrated their Ditches throughout the community including works by 40 local artists? (Note that you can click on names to learn more).

Reading a recent blog by book artist Mia Leijonstedt I learned about Lee Tracy and her World Rivers Project. Participants around the world have taken lengths of white cloth and dipped them into rivers. These are dried and sent back to the artist who embroiders the names of the rivers on them then sews them into a continuous curtain. Having developed a taste for working with fibers since attending two workshops with India Flint my studio contains a lot of textiles.

I walked down to the Northwest Branch during our recent "thaw". I selected this small stream because it is so much a part of our lives. It issues forth at the Quaker community of Sandy Spring where our son went to school and now teaches outdoor education. This meandering stream is in our community's backyard and is a tributary of the Anacostia River which flows into the Potomac River and eventually feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. This area is officially called the Rachel Carson Greenway and Northwest Branch Stream Valley Park.

This is the house that Rachel Carson built near this watershed, and where she wrote Silent Spring. I took the picture at one of their annual open houses. Her work in calling attention to the deleterious effects of DDT was an act of incredible courage and perseverance during an era when industries prevailed over the rights of individuals and communities. The Rachel Carson Council continues her mission at the house today disseminating information about toxins and sustainable alternatives for a healthy world.

A piece of linen was placed in the stream and allowed to float and soak.

If you look closely you can see ice melting under the roots of some trees.

Here is a book that I made sometime ago inspired by another river, the Mino or Minho of Spain and Portugal.

The name of the river is derived from minius or red lead. The pages are monoprints and collage.

Because this blog is about art and education I included this sample work. I was teaching a high school class about content and this was the exemplar that I created. Students selected a painting and then reproduced the composition using recycled papers. Here we see the birth of a very different sort of Venus rising out of a polluted ocean.

Developing art curriculum that allows students to go out of doors and develop a sense of stewardship is critical if we hope to have a world where not just the privileged will have the basic necessities of clean water and air.

Captured by light

2012-01-06T01:10:00.000-05:00

I received a package today from a friend containing a trove of old photographs that she collected in Russia.

I wonder about the subjects of these pictures. Some of the images were shot in studios but most are snapshots. These are my favorites because they record fragments rather than official moments.

The subject is usually a family group enjoying an outing in the sun.

Some make me wonder. Is this child in a hospital? Did she survive her illness? Are these dispassionate people her parents?


What are these Chinese and this man in western clothes doing with this machine?

Cameras record moments now lost. What story can these frozen creatures tell?

A Wonderful New Year

2012-01-03T20:13:00.006-05:00

This is a wonderful way to start the new year, The Liebster Blog Award awarded to Reform School Art by the barnswallow. Liebster is a German word that translates as favorite or dearest. This award originated in Germany and is intended to recognize up and coming bloggers. Those distinguished by this award have fewer than 200 followers.

I am in the process of ending two of my blogs, Abyssal Plain and Patricia Powell Kessler. Now I will have more time than ever to commit to posting about my love of teaching and learning art. So thanks so much, Lotta, Mary Ann and Janice for this award.

I have nominated the following five blogs for the Liebster Blog Award:
Anna Mavromatis: Artists' Books
Furniture
Samartdog
Drucilla Pettibone
Photographs from a White Space

Easy Transition

2011-11-19T00:34:00.000-05:00

As we segue from texture to the final art element, color in our 2-D design class, the students needed an easy exercise. I think that this was the simplest method for conveying the concept of complementary color arrangements.

Collage is stress-free, recycles printed matter and results in some wonderful small pieces of art.

The objective of the lesson was to utilize complementary colors. Students could pick any hue from the color wheel and use it in any of its manifestations. They were to use the complement as an accent or focal point in their work.

They were instructed to refrain from using humans, eyeballs, words and identifiable objects and instead focus on non-objective abstraction

There is always one in every crowd who rejects the "rules of the game". All you can do is laugh out loud.

Eight

2011-08-16T00:25:00.002-04:00

The final project for the Crafts class was to design and print cotton fabric that would then be made into quilt faces. Wild designs made for beautiful textiles!

Seven

2011-08-09T23:38:00.002-04:00

If you are going to go to the effort to design and sew a quilt you may as well dye your own cloth.

Procion MX dyes can be applied in paste form to prepared cloth

Students carved their own stamps....

and even printed one-off monoprints onto cotton.

Here are sets of textiles that will be turned into artists quilts.

Now the next challenge is composition. Fortunately we had some inspiration from Karen Schultz's exhibition at Blackrock Arts Center.

Six

2011-08-03T10:19:00.001-04:00

Our second field trip took us north to Germantown, MD to the Blackrock Arts Center to see the recently opened exhibition of quilts by Silver Spring artist, Karen Schulz. Students are carefully examining her techniques and the structure of this particular work.

There was a great deal of discussion about how she dyed and pieced her fabrics and also how stitching added emphasis to the designs.

My favorite series are the peaches ripening on a screened porch , evidently a memory from her childhood.

We learned a lot as we move into art quilts and surface design on fabric.

Onward and upward

2011-07-19T20:29:00.003-04:00

It is summer and the learning is easy...not. I am teaching a section of crafts for the five week, four day per week , four hour a day class meetings at our community college. Our focus is surface design on paper and textiles. With these materials we are creating book forms and artist quilts.

These images are maquettes, as they are plans for

some final, more refined works.

I have started a new blog to post images of student work. Come and check it out:

http://artprocess.posterous.com/two

Shaking things up

2011-07-16T00:37:00.001-04:00

We are at the close of week one of a summer session course in crafts. Our focus is surface design on paper and textiles and the construction methods for making artist's books and quilts. We did a wide range of decorative techniques with paper and won't get to batik for two more weeks, but I couldn't pass up this wonderful opportunity for a field trip.

We traveled by Metro into DC and were greeted by these young women, both trained in dance, at the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia. For one week they are hosting the phenomenal exhibition, Indonesian Batik: World Heritage.

No demonstrations were going on during our visit but there was more than enough to stimulate the senses.

Please feel free to click on each image in order to see the remarkable detail and craftsmanship.

The rooms are dramatic but the floral arrangements brought one's eye down to pieces of cloth so beautifully worked.

A favorite piece.

Puppets!

The Embassy is hosting the American Batik Design Competition.. Click here for details. If you wish to compete you will have to hurry, the deadline is August 1! There are some very remarkable prizes.

The foyer of the embassy is ornate with a Tiffany glass ceiling over the grand stairway.

I hope that the excitement generated by this trip will last for another week when we begin our batik project.

In Shape: Part Two

2011-05-20T23:52:00.000-04:00

When the design class assignments morph from a diet of lean lines to voluptuous shapes, everyone is happy.
Like the art element line, shape can also be classified: geometric, biomorphic, actual, implied or amorphous. Here are two earlier posts about this element:
http://reformschoolart.blogspot.com/2009/11/shape-families.html
http://reformschoolart.blogspot.com/2009/11/taking-leap.html

Students are asked to find shapes in their surroundings. Our classes meet in a renovated factory building with thoughtful and imaginative space.

Executed in inexpensive tempera paint, this student's rectilinear design was inspired by the exposed beams of the interior structure.

Of a piece: Part One

2011-03-16T13:35:00.002-04:00

There are several postings related to the design curriculum that I include in my classes here at our community college. I have written about line, the art element that students begin with in the past.
Seemingly abstract to many of the non-art students, it is the beginning of our journey into dissecting what we see and how we create.

All lines are not created equal. There are the passive horizontals, the strength of the verticals and the power of the diagonal. There is an energy and beauty to curves. Lines have character and we can use them to transcribe the world around us.

http://reformschoolart.blogspot.com/2009/10/ar-103-line.html
http://reformschoolart.blogspot.com/2009/11/horizontal-and-vertical-lines.html
http://reformschoolart.blogspot.com/2009/11/curved-and-diagonal-lines.html

We begin with the line combination of horizontal and vertical.

We then move to diagonal and curved lines combined.

Note the beauty of the implied spaces!

Bits and Pieces

2010-12-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

Earlier this fall we had a wonderful exhibition at the King Street Gallery at Montgomery College, "Beyond Text: Contemporary Book Arts". A popular art form, book arts and more specifically, paper engineering is a natural addition to the art curriculum for all age groups. Yesterday we had a brief workshop with Carol Barton whose work is illustrated in this post.

Barton has been engaged in the process of exploring design through the manipulation of paper for thirty years and she is a natural and talented instructor. Her method of teaching is inspired: no rulers, no rules, quick cuts and folds and there you have it, some delightful results. Her Popular Kinetics website offers up excellent examples of her work, links to other paper engineers around the world and also serves as a gallery and a place where you can order her two books.

The cover of another work by Carol Barton.

Poor photo but the "text" are seed packets.

Two Room School House

2010-09-10T00:03:00.000-04:00

Catalouchee is a town that no longer exists. Located in the eastern section of what is now the Smoky Mountain National Park, only a few of the original buildings of that town still exist. The park maintains the outward appearance but the insides are in slow decay.

All of the grades met in the same building with one teacher. Today the building stands alone with no houses nearby. The forest and a stream next to it provide the only company of sorts.

Color marks end of semester

2010-05-16T16:15:00.001-04:00

In Two-dimensional Design we end the semester with color. Last week was the final exam. Students used color to explore the four seasons of Washington, D.C. We are located in the temperate zone (sort of). We have a definite winter, spring, summer and fall but most people only remember the summers. These are a bit hard to take....vicious heat and humidity.

The final piece in this posting is not the four seasons but another non-objective color assignment. Again, we are working with inexpensive children's grade tempera paints. We might switch over to using Holbein brand acryla gouache which is a reasonably priced artist grade media.

Value/Composition Exercises

2010-04-22T23:05:00.000-04:00

It is always amazing to me the results that students can obtain with very inexpensive brushes and paints.
This design exercise and the color work that the students are doing now is executed in children's tempera paint. If applied in several thin layers, the surface is flat and chalky. A simple but elegant surface.

Spring Fever

2010-04-06T22:31:00.016-04:00

When the spring weather turns up the heat everyone begins to dream of summer. This kills motivation in the classroom so I just go with the flow.

It is a treat to say, you are all going outside today. We are beginning to study texture and making rubbings is a great way to start. Everyone is given a graphite stick and some newsprint and it turns into a giant treasure hunt to find an array of textures.

Since it is an open-ended assignment the collages that they make in this single class session vary in size and shape. Content also varies from one student to the next.

Collage Again

2010-03-26T22:24:00.000-04:00

The semester is on the downward slide already!

When an extra large snow break collides with the semester schedule teachers begin to worry.

I asked them to use only black, white and gray shapes and no human faces or eyes of any type.

Words were verboten as well.

When Once is Not Enough

2010-03-23T23:43:00.001-04:00

Once the students experimented with making patterns from letters they were set. They created their own naturalistic "biomorphic" shapes. Then, using rotation, reflection, glides, and other symmetries they created their own compound shapes.

At this point in time, they are able to understand how negative is just as important as positive space.

Initial Voyage

2010-03-23T00:19:00.000-04:00

Pattern making is a great design exercise. Using simple symmetric devices such as rotation, translation, reflection and glide reflection, students discover a sort of "magic trick". This homework assignment was to create a letter of their choice and it did not need to be from my alphabet.

The students had to experiment with the letter using the four above named symmetries and then they were to create a design and ink it in. The bold contrast between black and the white made the images all that much more compelling.

This student could have her own stationary designed at the printers.

I love the variety in this design.

This design is made from a letter from the Burmese alphabet.

Yellow is the Darkest Color

2010-03-11T23:01:00.001-05:00

Just home from an evening at the Hirshhorn Museum attending a "conversation" about Josef Albers with design great, Ivan Chermayeff, museum director, Richard Koshalek, and curator, Valerie Fletcher. Currently on exhibition until April 11th is Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration which includes close to sixty works that spans his long career in visual art and design.

Josef Albers

This is the beginning of semester break so this event marks the kick-off! I have not seen the exhibit yet, or the exhibition, Colorforms. I could not pass up this opportunity to see and hear Ivan Chermayeff talk about his former teacher, who was head of the design department at Yale University

My notes in the darkened room are not entirely reliable so I will not use quotation marks. He said that Albers was concerned with magic and opening your eyes. If 90% of how humans learned was through their eyes, hence they need to see well in order to understand the world. He did not really teach theory so much as observation. He also sought to open the eyes of others to emotional content.

Albers allowed all types of students into his studio. His classes were open-ended and enjoyable creative sessions. He related his work to a larger context and cautioned that things are not always what they seem, so look and think. Students should not be easily satisfied and should be willing to reject their own work in order to reach a more satisfactory outcome. Perhaps the most heartening bit of information was that he felt that teachers are only justified in leading students if they themselves are students. Amen.

Effet de Neige

2010-02-10T13:36:00.001-05:00

In 1868, a reporter recalled an incident near Honfleur from the previous year: "It was in the winter, during several days of snow ... It was cold enough to split stones. We perceived a foot-warmer, then an easel, then a man, swathed in three coats, his hands in his gloves, his face half frozen. It was Monsieur Monet, studying a snow effect." (House, John; Monet: Nature into Art; New Haven: Yale University Press 1986.)

Several years ago 63 winter plein air paintings by French impressionists were exhibited at the Phillips Collection in a show entitled, Effets de Neige. This exhibition also traveled to San Francisco, and Brooklyn and lives on in the memories of those of us lucky enough to have seen it at the time. Today, with blizzards raging on the east coast, it is even more meaningful.

La Pie (The Magpie) Claude Monet, 1869

Whenever weather is not the usual fare as in the mini-ice age of France in the mid-19th century, (and our current situation here in Washington, DC) our responses are heightened. The art serves as a visual record documenting both the excitement and challenges of the moment.

This monoprint created by a secondary student examines snow in a wood behind his home. Because extreme winter weather is unusual it is memorable. Our senses are heighten by the crisp temperatures, wind, flakes, ice, smells, and warm clothing. The landscape becomes changed and how we act on the land is different.

Having students record their responses to a major weather event especially with monoprints is an excellent way to preserve these complex feelings and responses to the natural world.

Art and Act

2010-01-18T12:21:00.003-05:00

Diego Velasquez's Los Meninas is considered by some to be a modern painting. Executed in 1656, it captures a moment in time. The artist shows himself in front of a large canvas as he paints a portrait of the King and Queen of Spain, whose reflections can be seen in the mirror in the background. Visiting the salon is the Prince Margarita and her meninas or maids. But who is the nobleman exiting the room through a staircase in the background of the painting? Velasquez employs chiaroscuro, light and dark to lead the viewer's eye throughout the image. Below we can see Picasso's abstracted adaptation in black and white. The scale of his artist is gigantic!

Pablo Picasso, Las Meninas, 1957

Eve Sussman's video "89 Seconds at Alcazar" was exhibited at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Pairing a viewing of her work with an analysis of the painting and a recreation of the painting either as a tableau vivant, or as in Picasso's reinterpretation could make for a meaningful unit of art history for secondary students. ~~Please scroll down to see the video.~~ It is stunningly beautiful.

Color Works

2009-12-27T13:40:00.001-05:00

What can you do when you limit your palette? Students were asked to take a high contrast image, preferably one of their own, and transfer it twice. The finished works were rendered using a set of three analogous colors (colors that appear next to each other on the color wheel) plus black, white, or gray. The other palette consisted of a pair of complementary colors, allowing them to intermix the complements, or add black, white, or gray. Getting your values right works every time!

The following three examples include using a simplified image and using four color ways: an achromatic palette of 7 tones from white to black; three analogous hues with the option of mixing in a bit of black, white, or gray; and two sets of tetradic color relationships. Tetradic color schemes employ four colors arranged into two complementary pairs.

When you fail to alter the saturation of color it can be a bit overwhelming...or thrilling, depending on your own response!

Let there be light

2009-12-18T23:34:00.001-05:00

"All perceiving is also thinking,
All reasoning is also intuition,
All observation is also invention."
Joseph Kosuth, Conceptual Artist

Joseph Kosuth, 1965, neon

Color is light and light is energy. We love how it looks and it can profoundly affect how we feel.
Not everyone sees color the same way.
Some people even "hear" color. I once taught a student with synesthesia. Letters and numbers each had their own color. Sounds appeared in her mind as colored textures. David Hockney is a synesthete. He is now deaf. How much of his world is he missing?

Students worked on color wheels and color scales: tints, shades, monochromatic, and complementary color pairs. They were forced to work with the incredibly cheap tempera paints. The end result was often dreadful, but it also bordered on the sublime.

Both of these students broke with the idea of the wheel, instead exploring their own vision of how a system of hues can be mixed and presented.

Cheap Thrills

2009-11-17T13:16:00.000-05:00

Texture, value, shape, composition...collage is the perfect art technique to explore ideas. Finding inexpensive art materials is always helpful. Recycling printed matter is a must today.

Shape Families

2009-11-10T23:27:00.003-05:00

"With the most primitive means the artist created something which the most ingenious and efficient technology will never be able to create." Kasimir Malevich 1879 - 1935

Collage of Student Compositions of Shape Families

We humans enjoy organizing everything in our world and then labeling it. The students work this time around explored shape families...shapes that would fall into either rectilinear or biomorphic categories. Any shape that you would encounter in a geometry class would be placed in the former; shapes found in nature, or having an undulating form are placed in the later category.

Each student was charged with producing two designs including each of the shape families. One could employ values using graphite and the other was rendered with tempera paint. These are small works, approximately 5" x 7".

Rising by Degrees

2009-11-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/latino_college/

"The United States is facing a dramatic demographic challenge: Young Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the population, and they are the least likely to graduate from college. Experts say the future of the American economy is at stake, because higher education is essential in the 21st century economy. Rising by Degrees tells the story of Latino students working towards a college degree—and why it’s so hard for them to get what they want."

Last year my drawing classroom was visited by producer, Emily Hanford, who was documenting the experience of several Latino students at Montgomery College. Katy Sorto, a student enrolled in this class is the subject of one of the profiles. I hope that you will visit the link and listen to or read the transcript. These students face amazing challenges but those who succeed deserve their success.

Everyone wins when these students succeed.

The Bones

2009-11-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

We can live without color but we cannot see without light. Values formed by moving from light to darkness form how we view the world. How artists weave values into their compositions can be the support for the image itself. This foundation can help the viewer make their way through the picture plane. They can also cause the work to be memorable.

When we look at art we often search for meaning. Some viewers are discontent unless they can discern the subject of the work. Sometimes the formal construction eludes us, or it is overlooked in favor of a thirst for content.

Taking a Leap

2009-11-05T11:11:00.001-05:00

Everyone was happy to leave the realm of lines behind. They had learned a lot about composition and design principles. Their grasp of vocabulary and also use of media had improved. Of course I am showing you exemplary works, however, even the learning disabled students had made great progress.

Shape is sexy. There is so much more to see and experience. It is visually far more enticing. We began by thinking about rectilinear and biomorphic shapes. Students were asked to create designs inspired by something that they could see in their world.

Can you guess what the inspiration for this one is? A stalk of brussel sprouts.

Here we see a very balanced apple tree.

More about shape after the weekend!

Curved and Diagonal Lines

2009-11-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

The transition from the severe diet of horizontal and vertical lines to the more robust world of curves and diagonals is like adding sugar and salt. For many, it is a relief from the restrictive atmosphere of becalmed horizontals and rigid verticals.

We all require a little fat in our diet, and the voluptuous quality of the curves combined with the powerful movement of the diagonals kindles a burst of energy in the designs.

As you can see, there is a hunger for shape.

Horizontal and Vertical Lines

2009-11-01T19:12:00.000-05:00

"With your unaided eyes you can look into a pond and see clear water. With a magnifying glass you look into the same water and see thousands of small organisms. With a microscope you see bacteria and detect viruses, and with the most sophisticated tunneling electron microscope you can see the atoms that make up the water and the creatures in it." Edwin Schlossberg, Interactive Excellence

Please note: The artwork in this posting was produced by my students this semester. Please contact me should you wish to use it so that I can get permission.

I am teaching two sections of two-dimensional design this semester at the community college. Students from all of the various programs must take at least one art course in order to fulfill their curriculum requirements. Therefore, I teach students from every discipline, and since our population is so diverse, from many parts of the world as well as different ages, cultures and backgrounds.

Design is the grammar and the beginning of the spiral is a point. A line is made up of points. Our brain can register an implied line by viewing a series of dots lined up in a row. The points in the illustration above show distribution, variety, and dominance.

We start with the line combination problem of horizontals and verticals. This is a natural set of groupings because much of art is made up of horizontal and vertical relationships. Students put together designs using this combination which is the most common sort of directional relationships in art. Of course, they first have to learn how to create thumbnail sketches and test out their ideas in order to generate ideas.

The illustration above shows a design that mirrors itself but with different weights of line and even an implied set of graduated lines on the top left.

So when does a line become a shape? Is it merely a question of proportion? We have a lot of arguments
about what constitutes a shape.

AR 103 Line

2009-10-30T13:19:00.001-04:00

Collage of student work with the art element Line.

"A line is a dot that went for a walk." Paul Klee

Every 2-D Design classes starts out the same. Our curriculum introduces the fundamentals of art elements in conjunction with the organizing principles of design. The course spirals upwards starting with a discussion about subject, form, and content in art, and also the drive to art that humans have always had.

Students then begin to explore the art element of line with all of its qualities of dimension and direction. Perhaps the most difficult thing for people today is to learn hand/eye coordination. It is incredible that many people no longer know how to use a ruler and do simple arithmetic.

Living Small: Sustainable Architecture

2009-10-15T02:01:00.002-04:00

The three-dimensional design class at the private high school began the semester with the regular curriculum...creating wire sculpture to explore line, and hand-building clay masks in order to gain an understanding of ceramics, shape, and various cultures. In my final year there I decided to tackle architecture...green building for the largest portion of the semester.
I felt that it was critical to help students who are going to be living and having their families in the new century come to terms with sustainability in a rapidly changing world.

These drawings were the result of some of the teams' first explorations using Google Sketchup

A growing awareness of environmental issues is promoting change in architecture and all other aspects of the design world. Our mission was to work in teams to learn about how to reduce energy consumption and promote sustainable methods and products in the construction of a house with a footprint of under 1,000 square feet. Students learned how using the sun to heat, and having excellent indoor air quality is beneficial to occupants. They also discovered how using land and natural resources responsibly would insure that something would be available to others in years to come.

Fortunately many of the students had visited The National Building Museum the previous year to see the exhibition, The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design, and some had visited the National Mall to see the Solar Decathlon in previous years. By the way, the EPA competition is in it's fourth iteration and twenty teams from around the world have houses open to the public until Monday, October 18. I believe that Team California won the competition this time around!

Beginning with measuring our carbon footprints and listening to a TED Talk with architect William McDonough in order to help create awareness, students had to research products and issues associated with sustainability, and also research and write about a "green" architect. We had a virtual field trip to Dubai to see the building boom of architectural fantasies and pleasure domes in this oil-rich culture. The students developed a sophisticated vocabulary and understanding of many of the dimensions of sustainable building practices while also questioning greenwashing products and rhetoric.

I brought in a lot of Dwell magazines, and books such as: The Big Book of Small House Designs; Christina del Valle's Compact Houses; 500 Ideas for Small Spaces; and Lester Walker's A Little House of My Own as well as architectural and design product samples and brochures to familiarize them with the bewildering array of issues. We learned about the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification System. We learned a lot about the need for stewardship as well as the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Only then did the real work begin for the students. Now that they knew why they were designing houses with a small footprint, and having decided how they would like to plan out their less than 1,000 square feet, we all had to come to terms with a computer aided design program.

This team incorporated a green roof as well!

Google Sketchup is amazing. There are excellent tutorials available to help get you on your feet and building the house of your dreams, and then situating anywhere in the world. Not only can you design the exterior of the building but you can also design the interiors, furnish them and then move throughout the rooms! Teams of students taught themselves how to use the program and together they designed houses. Despite slow computers, a teacher with no technological ability, and team logistics all of the students were successful in becoming architects of their dreams.

Form, Function, and Beyond

2009-08-25T01:13:00.001-04:00

In 1940 Pablo Picasso was one of the first dignitaries to be invited to tour the recently discovered caves in Lascaux,

France

. His critique of the artwork of the ice age artists that covered the rocky surfaces of the caverns, "We have discovered nothing". He knew perfectly well what we should all know, that the lack of illusionist representation in artwork does not equate with the idea that an artist lacks imagination and creativity.

All artwork in this posting is from collections housed in the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Artwork found in museums, literature, and in commercial galleries is frequently grouped by culture. According to art historian, Deborah Root, in her book, Cannibal Culture (1996): "When ethnology constituted itself as a science in the 19th century, it appropriated as its object of study traditional, generally land-based people living outside of European and North American cities--in other words, people classified as nonwhite, defined as un- or semicivilized, and incidentally subject to European colonial authority..."

Over eighty years ago, anthropologist, Franz Boas, pointed out that the differences between art of "primitive artists" and "western artists" were due to constraints by culture rather than lack of ability, "...each culture can be understood only as an historical growth determined by the social and geographic environment in which each people is placed and by the way in which it develops the cultural material that comes into its possession from the outside or through its own creativeness."

In his seminal work, Primitive Art, Boaz refers to the work of Ernst Grosse, among others, who felt that the work of tribal groups "...is by origin and by its fundamental nature not intended as decorative but as a practically significant mark or symbol, that is to say as expressive...this practical significance implies some kind of meaning inherent in the form."

Sometimes the end use of an art object determines the form. Often, too, the works relate to religious or other ceremonial rituals. The stylistic elements of an artwork extend beyond its aesthetic effects. Susanne Langer, wrote in Problems in Art (1957) "...I think every work of art expresses, more or less purely, more or less subtly, not feelings and emotions which the artist has, but feelings and emotions which the artist knows; his insight into the nature and sentience, his picture of vital experience, physical and emotive and fantastic."

Seated Figures, 2nd century
Earthenware, pigment
34.9 x 19.7 x 14.6 cm (13 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 in.)
Gift of Lewis K. and Elizabeth M. Land

Artists from all societies are able to create work that evolve as they produce them. How can we help students construct knowledge based on the work artists from the global visual culture?

Sydney R. Walker outlines B. Stephen Carpenter, II guidelines for teaching performance arts in Teaching Meaning in Artmaking, 2001. His suggested seven steps include using the body and representing ideas in a respectful way. Students will need to research knowledge about the culture in order to use symbols, movements and words authentically and substantively. Performance pieces need to be planned with preparatory sketches and scripts that are reviewed with the teacher. The work should be timed and rehearsed with a defined beginning and end.

If I were to teach high school art programs today I would introduce students to the costume and performance work of Chicago-based artist Nick Cave. His response to materials around him and also movement would be exciting to adolescents, and I am supposing that this would be a fabulous way to introduce performance based work.

"As we manipulate, we touch and feel, as we look, we see; as we listen, we hear." John Dewey, Art as Experience

Pursuit of Color

2009-08-01T21:31:00.016-04:00

Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952

Note: this was posted sometime ago and I am changing the title from pursuit of pleasure to pursuit of color. I think too many people were coming to this site for the wrong reasons!

Here goes another posting on teaching color. Why do I love it so much? I think that it is one art element that everyone needs to understand and that everyone can utilize. I forged a unit using the standard art education components- art history, aesthetics, studio practice, critical response - into several units on color for the painting and printmaking class at the private high school where I taught for four years.

It was important to me that the students experience the visceral thrill of working with color, not just memorizing the basic organization principles of this complex art element. We went on a field trip to the National Gallery of Art where we were able to see the Helen Frankenthaler painting that started it all, as well as other types of abstract and color field paintings.

student water color diptych

Washington, DC has only hit the top of the charts, art history-wise, once. The apocryphal story of the birth of the Washington Color School goes something like this: DC painters, Morris Lewis and Kenneth Noland, using an introduction from the critic, Clement Greenberg, visit the young Helen Frankenthaler in her studio in NYC in 1953. They are stunned to see the stain painting techniques that she has developed by bypassing primed canvas in favor of raw canvas. They were so in awe of her painting, "Mountains and Sea", that they scurried back to Washington and began unfurling canvas literally everywhere and inventing new ways to spread color.

When we returned from the museum we were able to work with watercolor on paper, pouring colors, using sponges as well as brushes, and also salt crystals to achieve different textural results. Later we worked on small unprimed canvases off the stretcher, again working directly with the paint. When the canvases dried, they learned to stretch them onto stretcher bars. I am sorry that I do not have photographs of these works.

We then studied the hard edge painting of the Californians know for their post-painterly abstractions. At this stage of the game the students really understood that painting could be about color relationships. While our art materials were not on the scale of the works of that era, they managed to make some powerful images with very poor brushes and student grade paints.

Along the way we reviewed aspects of color: saturation, hue, temperature, color wheel relationships, etc., etc. Students also had to write about their work and the work of other artists.

Using pre-stretched and primed canvas panels and various drawing tools such as French curves allowed students to develop compositions quickly.

They also were mindful of how color could be utilized with formal art principles to achieve a unified vision. The final project was silk screening. I am sorry that I do not have any photographs of those images. They were really into achieving "flat" surfaces and enjoying the concept of minimalism by that time.

Finding trees outside the forest

2009-07-25T01:24:00.013-04:00

The Pacific Northwest is made up of one part water, one part mountain and one part forest. We now know that water can be damaged in so many ways. Even mountains can be diminished and literally taken down by mining operations. Trees can be logged, burned in forest fires and destroyed by disease. We need trees to help cleanse our air and they need to be respected and cared for. Artists help convey the message of stewardship throughout the region.

I was thrilled to find this display in the Safeway grocery store in downtown Bellevue, Washington. The artwork by children filled an entire wall and was accompanied by professionally designed text. Thumbs up to those fifth-grade students and teachers involved in the National Arbor Day poster contest, Trees are Terrific.

Mosaic column by Peter de Lory, Sea-Tac Airport

Seattle photographer, Peter de Lory produced this glass mosaic column in Sea-Tac Airport's newly renovated facility. In fact $12 million dollars was allocated from the multi-billion dollar ten-year building project. Jolene Cullen, Sea-Tac's art program manager explained, "We do it to enhance the passengers' experience." The airport has long collected art but now it shines.

Here, here! For those of us caught in airports for hours on end it is a treat to have a wealth of artwork to explore and enjoy. Click on the title to take you to Visualingual's blog about the nine columns. Her photos are fantastic!

Envisioning Art in the Everyday

2009-07-06T00:45:00.017-04:00

William Eggleston (Copywrite Eggleston Artistic Trust)

I visited the Corcoran Gallery of Art yesterday to see the Maya Linn exhibition (check out the posting on Abyssal Plain) but also to see the show of William Eggleston photographs.

Though not a photographer or a photography teacher, I have mentored students in photography. If I were to ever work with young students again I would introduce them to Eggleston's democratic vision and aesthetic. His egalitarian eye and interest in technology elevated color photography as an art form. This body of work should eliminate any lingering doubts that anyone might harbor concerning the legitimacy of photography as a form of fine art.

Washington, DC, July 5th, 2009

When Drawing Changes From Verb to Noun

2009-06-26T17:24:00.007-04:00

The first summer session is over at the community college. I love teaching at this time of year. The classes meet four days a week for four hours. The student body becomes even more diverse because students home from their respective colleges come here to take electives, and also the hard working nursing students fill in the gaps in their curriculum.

The final exam is a list of problems designed to test the range of skills, knowledge and ability that the students have amassed in the five-week period. It helps me if they have prior experience, or even "talent".

What I enjoy seeing is the range of "answers" to each problem. Each student pursues their own interpretation.

I have been working on team building within the classroom but I have to say that the summer sessions by dint of the time frame, naturally results in a copacetic cohort. Everyone cheers each other on and helps each other out.

The biggest thrill is when the student with the least experience reveals their final works and everyone congratulates them for their progress and development.

Spilling Ink

2009-06-14T11:16:00.021-04:00

"Flow" is what we crave. Finding that wonderful space where action, movement, and thought all come together soothing our senses and psyche makes for true satisfaction.

Another idea for decorated paper that is inexpensive, could involve teams, and could be linked to an Asian Studies unit, or is just fun to do at home on a Sunday morning is Suminagashi. This term translates as "spilling ink" and resembles marbling, but is a lot safer to the environment and you.

Three examples on paper of varying quality

Suminagashi
Tutorial
Everything you ever wanted to know about Suminagashi links
An excellent reference: Suminagashi: The Japanese Art of Marbling: A Practical Guide by Anne Chambers

Roland Flexner
French-born artist living in New York creates rounded forms by blowing India ink and soap through a hollow brush stem onto paper. "The aim in all this is to make it clear that the questions raised by art come from everywhere."...Anne Tronche, Double Visibility, 1:1 Roland Flexner

Shinichi Maruyama
Exciting images of Maruyama "using" ink in athletic gestures that result in photographic imagery.

Paste Paper

2009-06-12T23:46:00.025-04:00

Paste paper made with graining combs and sponge.
Metallic paint added after the paste dried.

Do you know anyone who did/does not enjoy finger painting? Of course there are always a few in every crowd, but moving right along... Creating paste decorated papers is a lot like finger painting, and it is an activity that can be enjoyed by a diverse range of people. You can create pastes inexpensively; cheap colorants can be employed; and expensive paper is not necessary. I find that dollar stores are perfect for cheap large brushes to spread the paste; lidded containers for different color pastes; and plastic to line surfaces. So what is not to like?

Multiple colors can be brushed on...and for those who prefer it, glitter can be added.
These designs were made with Lego pieces.

In middle and high school classes with some pretty tough characters I have had success. Maybe it is because I supply the tables with Lego pieces, wheels and model sports cars to drag through the wet paste. The classes are usually happy to help clean up and to iron their papers when they are dried.We then create covers for flag or accordion books based on their own interests.

One student created a book based on the profile of his track shoes. The accordion pages include a photograph of team members and his best times.

Since our region is so diverse, I encourage students to use their own languages and create books about their "other" lives.

These two images show different views of architecture and bas relief.

Once when I held a workshop in a brave soul's elegant dining room, floor and table protected by plastic shower curtains, one of the middle-aged women attending afterwords remarked that this activity made her feel better than after a session with her therapist.

I have also conducted this workshop with senior citizens including those with Alzheimer's. The saying goes, "Art saves lives!", and I think that activities that involve color, movement, texture,
and are failure proof make everyone feel successful.

Check out Claire Maziarcyzk's elegant selection of paste decorated papers. Richard Miller's page has more recipes than you will ever need. The only hazardous aspect is transporting the wet papers to locations where they can dry. Please note that the papers might curl when they have completed drying. Use newsprint to line your ironing boards and to protect the iron and then press them flat.

Colorful Experiences

2009-05-26T22:44:00.018-04:00

A collage of red in some of its many variations

American poet, Carl Sandburg's poem, "The People, Yes" includes the following passage:
Clink on the link above to hear Sandburg recite the poem in its entirety.

"The blood of all men of all nations being red
the Communist International named red its banner color
Pope Innocent IV gave cardinals their first red hats
saying a cardinal's blood belonged to the holy mother church.
The blood color red is a symbol."

In this multicultural world each hue is heavy with meaning and everyone has their own opinion about what is a "good" color and what is not. Setting aside the issue of "color blindness", color is a great element to start a class discussion because everyone has knowledge about color from their personal experience and cultural perspective.

Color evokes emotions and serves as a powerful communication element. Even the quietest crew will find quite a lot to say about the purposes and meanings of color. Out of all of the art elements, understanding color and knowing how to communicate with it may be one of the most important skills that can be learned in an art classroom.

Analogous Colors

Changing my Tune

2009-05-24T12:01:00.014-04:00

Papier Mache by Ben Kessler

Bread & Puppet Museum
Last summer's vacation took us northward on a road trip through western New England and into Quebec. We stopped at the Bread & Puppet Museum in Gower, Vermont (see my posting on Abyssal Plain for more images and information!). This was a life changing event for me and has caused me to rethink an entire curriculum.

For many years the 3D Foundations class included an introduction to ceramics. The subject matter that seemed to work the best was masks. I would start the unit around Carnival time (Mardi Gras) and the students would find a culture of their choice to explore online. They wrote a brief paper on the celebratory customs of one of the regions in the world that participate in this rite. You would be amazed at the diversity of festivals. We would discuss culture and religion and how local beliefs can influence more universal belief systems (the Catholic Church).

We looked at PowerPoints on how masks were used in various cultures and eras. Students, again selected a region to explore and research in order to interpret the culture through a mask design. Obviously we also learned a lot about clay... wedging, rolling, slab construction, embossing, glazing, etc., etc.

A student's interpretation of Northwest Tribal art

I had used paper mache for making masks a few times. The beauty of this method is that it allows both large and small forms to be made relatively cheaply and easily.

Large student masks. Note, they choose the scale of their masks. The armature is chicken wire and foam core.

Now, although we had looked at Carnival celebrations and parades, African tribal group dances and images of Native Americans in ceremonial masks, until I visited the Bread & Puppet I did not put the pieces together...masks need to be a part of a performance!

Bread & Puppet Museum
Puppetry is an artform that I have not explored. Narrative art is so powerful...why had I not thought of it?

Bread & Puppet Museum
Again, the props can be made from everyday materials.

Bread & Puppet Museum

Collaborative projects are fun and students could be divided into teams to build theatres, costumes, puppets, write stories and dialogue. Next time maybe I will get it right!

Just Rewards

2009-05-20T09:07:00.003-04:00

On art education:

"I think it's so important....Many times, kids can only express themselves through art...Everything cannot be paper, pencil, regurgitating information."
Priscilla Barrow,
"For Opera's Tweet Gift, the Plot Quickens", by Anne Midgette
Washington Post, May 20, p. C5

Briefly, Priscilla Barrow, a DC public school music teacher of renown and enterprise wins a fairy tale prize...a seat at the final performance of The Washington National Opera's Turandot and a trip to the Opera Ball at the German Embassy dressed in a gown provided by the opera' costume designers.

The contest that Ms. Barrow did not participate in was won by Stephen Llewellyn of Portland Oregon, a man that she had never met. The prize that he won was the result of a contest created by Marcia Adair (The Omniscient Mussel) on Twitter. The challenge: to tweet opera plots! Llewellyn was one of the winners and chose the select Opera Weekend Prize. He decided that he wanted an arts educator to be the final recipient of the reward and then found the right person to bestow it on, a 22-year veteran elementary school music teacher!

Flag Books for Everyone

2009-05-14T22:45:00.022-04:00

April Diary, 1979, Hedi Kyle
Paper, Binder's board, Ink, and Watercolor
In the collection of Richard Minsky
Note: This is the original design for the book form know as the "Flag Book"

Many lifetimes ago, I worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Perched in a tiny attic space off of the library, my task was to unwrap bundles of items that had been stored there and decide what their relationship was to the museum's history, document them and put them into a more archival package.

This was the Memorabilia Collection and this was a rather wonderful job. I found packets of photographs from around the world before globalization changed how everyone lived; travel kits (one made by Cartier) for explorers who went into the wild places in the world; artwork of all kinds and dimensions; documents; papers; etc., etc. Everyday revealed new and exciting finds in my little treasure trove.

When I became lonely in my quiet little space I would creep down the ladder into the Restoration Studio where women with a wide range of incredible skills were at work cleaning paper, rebinding rare books and creating wondrous fitted boxes with leather and gold lettering to safely cradle priceless tomes.

One of these book wizards was Hedi Kyle, the originator of the design for a book form known as the "Flag Book". I attended a workshop to learn from her how to make this fabulous book form many years later. However, concurrent to the period when I worked at the museum, I studied book arts with her at the Center for Book Arts, then located on Lafayette, around the corner from the loft I had sublet at Bond and Bowery.

From Hedi I also learned how to make paste decorated papers (to be discussed later in another posting). Well, if you combine paste papers with a flag book format you can have a great deal of fun with young people, old people and everyone in between. This is such a flexible and forgiving format. It not only encourages individual creativity but also allows those who are less deft to create something that is quite fascinating and satisfying in the end! No mean feat for book arts that are well known for requiring the higher end of fine motor skills.

This is a student made project with the objective of illustrating something from 32 different points of view. When high school students are able to channel their true interests into art you can get some amazing results.
Here is a basic formula for a two flag book format
Flag book pdf by Kathy Miller & Diane Weintraub

SPARK

2009-05-09T11:59:00.012-04:00

Monoprint with Chine colle and photo transfers

Public television station KQED in the San Francisco Bay area offers super arts coverage and they maintain an excellent website, Spark. "Produced by KQED Public Television, Spark is about Bay Area artists and arts organizations -- it is a weekly television show, an educational outreach program and a Web site. More than a showcase for art objects and the artists who make them, Spark takes the audience inside the creative process to witness the challenges, opportunities and rewards of making art."

For art educators in California, you know that Spark in Education offers a wide range of in service training. For all the rest of us: "Each week one of the Spark stories is chosen to be the educational focus, and a corresponding educator guide is created." This week's installment includes a PDF of Jaime Guerrero: A Few Good Stories. This is a fabulous way to introduce the art of glass into the classroom.

2009-04-13T10:36:00.002-04:00

If children's book illustration is of interest to you, I am redirecting you to my other blog, Abbysal Plain http://abyssalplain.blogspot.com/

Today, April 13th, the posting on that site is about the amazing author/illustrator, Virginia Lee Burton!

The Beauty of Transformation

2009-04-10T16:13:00.013-04:00

I am now only teaching as an adjunct professor a the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus of Montgomery College. Two years ago we moved into our "new" quarters, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Art Center, formerly the bakery for the Giant Food grocery chain.

The building was gutted but the architects wanted to preserve some aspect of its former identity, so the irregular brick and cement flooring and the original ceramic tile walls remain in some areas.

Here we are looking down onto the first floor gallery. There is exhibition space throughout the building but we have a formal space for a wide range of shows.

Teaching perspective to intro. level drawing students is a pain with walls shaped like this!
After you have a little experience, however, it is a wonderful building to draw.

This is one of the least difficult views on the second floor for students to draw using one-point perspective. The pale green flooring is frosted glass.

This is my favorite part of the drawing studio...my command station with access to lots of bells and whistles!

Design as a way of thinking

2009-03-27T00:03:00.017-04:00

Design in the classroom: facilitating creative growth for a temperamental century.

In the summer of 2002 I was fortunate to attended the week-long Cooper-Hewitt Design Institute for educators. The Education Office of this branch of the Smithsonian Institution located in the Andrew Carnegie Mansion at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue pulled together the greatest minds in the design community to meet, talk with and conduct workshops with K-12 teachers. I doubt that any other professional group in America does a similar service in providing enrichment for teachers from the brightest bulbs in their field!

The first morning, I walked in to search out the coffee pot and found myself talking to one of my cultural heroes, John Maeda, of the MIT Media Lab then, and now, President-Elect for RISD!
The line-up of design greats was legendary and the opportunity to talk with them directly was a profound experience. Now I see that the CHDI is a traveling show! Since the Cooper Hewitt is the National Design Museum it makes all the sense in the world. So if you know educators in close proximity to Atlanta, please read the following and also go the their website to learn the details, quick!

"Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is accepting applications for participation in its week-long Cooper-Hewitt Design Institute, April 6-10, 2009. The training will take place in Atlanta, GA and is only eligible for Atlanta area K-12 public school teachers.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in partnership with the Global Health Odyssey Museum, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is pleased to present the Cooper-Hewitt Design Institute (CHDI), an intensive, process-based program that will train K-12 teachers to use design-based learning in their classrooms. The CHDI will explore the ideas presented in the upcoming exhibition (February 17-May 29, 2009) at Atlanta’s Global Health Odyssey Museum, Design for the Other 90%, featuring the work of designers attempting to improve the lives of people living in poverty or recovering from natural disasters."

At the program that I attended another presenter from the pantheon was David Kelley, co-founder of IDEO. I noticed that the February issue of Metropolis magazine (image above) is devoted to the theme of design as a strategy for learning in the classroom. Trust me, nothing can take your mind and stretch it in so many directions all at the same time!

Below is a copy of IDEO's "Ten Tips for Creating a 21st-century Classroom Experience" by
Sandy Speicher.

"1. Pull, don’t push.
Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer.

2. Create from relevance.
Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.

3. Stop calling them “soft” skills.
Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.

4. Allow for variation.
Evolve past a one- size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.

5. No more sage onstage.
Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

6. Teachers are designers.
Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.

7. Build a learning community.
Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.
An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

9. Incubate the future.
What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

10. Change the discourse.
If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them."

Carnival a la Virgin Island Style

2009-03-10T22:18:00.009-04:00

These are very old images from the Carnival on St. John, Virgin Islands

Sadly I have no student-made image for this project. When I first began teaching at the high school I was assigned to help a student develop an independent project. The student had no visual art background and was entirely intimidated (I will not go into why she was assigned to me...). Her strength was in dance, voice and choreography. She arrived after the start of school from her family's home in the British Virgin Islands. We had vacationed in the U.S. Virgin Islands that summer so I knew a little about her cultural background.

From past experience I knew that the form of carnival is celebrated differently in St. John, and it is not held at the traditional time of Mardi Gras at the start of Lent, but rather in July. In the BVI I learned that it is staged at the beginning of August. For both it is a combination of celebrating the traditions of carnival with emancipation and independence.

So together we brain stormed and came up with a super idea....she would design carnival costumes, and have them made up in the BVI, she would keep a journal of her process and progress, and choreograph a dance for her and select friends to perform for the school audience at the annual holiday event for performing arts at the end of the semester.

I helped her design a "paper doll" image by tracing around a figure of a model in a catalog. This was then photo-copied along with an area for notations for fabrics and trims. The student then drew her designs (front and back views) and also created headgear, foot ware, and other accessories and created a palette for each design.

She researched and wrote about carnival history and culture. We lunched at local Caribbean restaurants. During the Thanksgiving break she flew to the islands to pick up the finished costumes from the seamstresses. She also got a cd of steel drum music written by a cousin and performed by him and friends. While she was there she also borrowed some traditional costumes.

Back at home she choreographed her dance and worked with the other students...and would not allow me to see their progress! The night of the event, the new head of school's wife sat next to me. I explained the independent project and her response was something like, "How could you let her do that?", or something to that effect. Needless to say, the dance was an amazing success for her, me, the dancers, and the students and their families...and hopefully the wife of the head of school.

2009-02-11T00:37:00.001-05:00

School Spirit: The Tale Of The Hippocampos

Well it doesn't help to start something and then neglect it...as in the case of this particular blog site. It is my hope to put online past projects that I think my students have enjoyed as well as new strategies and ideas.

Teaching in the upper school of a private school as a one-person operation was certainly interesting because I was able to work with a wide range of art materials and ideas. We had a little "Art House" on the hill at the edge of the campus with tall trees surrounding it. Someone told me at the end that the building was haunted. I had felt the presence of something or someone many times but it never felt negative. It was lonely in the little house when the students were not there so I guess that I was grateful for the company.

One semester I offered an intermediate level course entitled Ceramic Murals. With this small class of students (7 or 8) we looked at examples of ceramic and tile murals around us and in time to go into Washington D.C. We looked at PowerPoints about the history of use of murals throughout cultures and time. They each researched a specific mural and wrote a paper on the methods and techniques used and also examined the cultural significance of their mural.

At the end of the semester we produced this final product after having experienced a wide range of art methods and activities. The image combines the two symbols of the school, a mustang horse and the nautilus shell. Ever the designer, I managed to order glazes that coordinated with the Common's decor.

We used a high fire stoneware clay body. Making a huge slab and then transferring our original design by tracing it onto the damp clay. As it became leather hard we carved and beveled the edges. Ultimately the clay shrank between 15 to 20% but it was still large enough to be a dominant image over the fireplace! I will tell you about another of the projects from this class in another posting.

2009-01-10T14:36:00.004-05:00

"Making" Art History

In this unit students found images of paintings that they loved then scaled the work up proportionately and created collages. They had to research the artists' lives, find out their path to becoming an artist, think about the artwork and discover what if any information about their works. The fun began when they had to "change" the work to make it their own. There was a lot of cooperation between the students collecting colors and textures from recycled magazines and mail. A heavy coat of glossy acrylic keeps the bits glued tight and unifies the surfaces. Click on the images to see the works more closely.
We started by studying the history of collage and then moved up to an intensive review of Romare Bearden and his life and work.

Students also wrote a "Museum Label" describe their process. The first two images are of a work by Paul Cezanne. The next is by Claude Monet, and the final is of a work by Wayne Thiebaud.

2009-01-03T22:46:00.001-05:00

Divine Inspiration

Being the only visual art teacher for a secondary program in a small private high school I was always racing around for ideas that would grab the students' attention and also introduce a range of concepts. Many of the students had little experience with art materials especially ceramics.
Introducing wedging, pinch and coil techniques, attaching with slip, creating texture, plus clean up is always challenging especially when students have short class periods and go into it thinking that it is "Play with Clay" time.

If truth be told, I usually planned my units only after I knew who were enrolled the classes. I found that tailoring my curriculum made it a right fit for the most part and our class sizes were relatively small (5 to 12 students from 9th to 12th grade). It was time to introduce a ceramics unit to the 3-dimensional design foundations class and I wanted a fresh idea. For my birthday I had indulged myself with several lavishly illustrated art books from Assouline Publishing, one of them, African Forms: Art and Rituals by Laure Meyer, yielded a kernel of an idea. An image of an anthropomorphic vessel from the Luba Tribe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo really grabbed my attention. Pottery is usually produced by women and men create figural sculpture. These vessels possibly combined the work of women and men working collaboratively!

I could not find a lot of information or examples but I looked at the usual sites for examples such as the Museum of African Art here at the Smithsonian and several other online sites and museums. The students and I were fascinated by the idea that these vessels were made for the purposes of divination. According to Belgian ethnologist, Albert Maesen, "...this type of anthropomorphic pottery was used by royal diviners to identify and cure illnesses. Occasionally the spirit provides information touching on a crime or some other misfortune." The diviner would place charm inside the vessel.

Because scarification was a form of body art practiced by tribes the figures needed to have texture and pattern. We used high fire stoneware and applied iron oxide as well. The top figure is the exemplar that I made and then pit fired.

A Charming Form of Recognition

2008-12-28T23:56:00.001-05:00

Ben was making some collages using old National Geographic Magazines.
I flipped through some of them and found an article about the 25th anniversary
celebration of the National Gallery of Art here in Washington, D.C.

Now most art teachers that I know can clean up well but isn't this fabulous!
Here we have First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson recognizing art educators at the White House, awarding them gold medals and also giving them the extravagant (by 1967 standards) sum of $500 for their fine efforts.

Will we ever see the day again when art educators experience such prestigious recognition outside of their peer groups?

O Magnum Mysterium

2008-12-24T23:19:00.000-05:00

How do I manage to go to the final critique without a camera? The students did amazing works in their color assignments and I have no record!

Some things never change

2008-12-24T23:10:00.000-05:00

Inaugural post

2008-12-19T13:10:00.000-05:00

This is the inaugural post for Reform School Art. It is being developed in order to publish: student work; lesson plans; thoughts on teaching art; nurturing creativity; and insights from others. I also have another blog, Abyssal Plain. Please visit me there as well.

Here are a few student works from the basic drawings classes I taught at the community college this past year.