Media and Collaboration

January 25, 2012

Over the last two lessons, we introduced 2 important topics without discussing them - media and collaboration.

So we talked about them today! We started the lesson off with this list:

Medium

Collaboration

Installation

2-D

3-D

Sculpture

I asked the students if they could tell me what each word meant. The first three were tricky. Medium has many meanings, but we talked about the art meaning - the supplies we use to create our artworks. Collaboration means more than one person working together on a project. And installation is a type of sculpture that takes up a certain amount of space (usually the whole room). They all knew what 2-D, 3-D and Sculpture meant.

Then we talked about a couple of neat artists who work in unusual media:

Tara Donovan

Untitled, 2003

Paper Plates, Glue

3 1/2'(H) x 4'(W) x 9'(D)

Bluffs, 2005

Buttons, Glue

3 1/2'(H) x 5'(W) x 12'(D)

Untitled, 2003

Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue

Dimensions Variable

Untitled, 2006

Plastic Cups

5'(H) x 50'(W) x 60'(D)

Brian Dettmer

World Books

2009

Altered set of Encyclopedias

19" x 32" x 10"

Then for our activity, we had a selection of plastic cups, pipe cleaners, plastic forks, styrofoam trays, brown packing paper, sponges, glue, tape, etc. to use as our medium and everyone collaborated in groups of 2 or 3 to create a sculpture using these unexpected supplies. They did some great work! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera that day, so we didn't get any pictures of their work.