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.

Recording Movement - Tony Orrico

January 18, 2012

As part of their 2nd grade curriculum, these students are learning about heath and wellness. Using this as a jumping off point, we talked about Tony Orrico.

Tony Orrico makes art by recording movement:

This is a piece he did in real time. He keeps this up for nearly 20 minutes! He uses large sticks of graphite (pencils without wood on the outside) so that he doesn't have to stop to sharpen.

And this is a time-laps of a piece he worked on for 4 hours without stopping. If you watch, you can see him drop the Sharpies in his hand when they run out of ink and then pull new ones out of his pockets.

And this is a picture of him after doing a series of circles - look how sweaty and covered in graphite he is!

The students then asked me why he was making drawings that didn't look like anything. I returned the question and asked what reasons they could think of for making abstract or non-representational artwork (after explaining that that was what it was called).

Here are some of their really insightful answers:

• Because he wants you to decide what it looks like.
• Because he wants you to spend time thinking about it.
• Because he wants you to think more about how he made it than what he made.

Then I asked another question. I asked them to think about different ways they could record their own movements. I was especially impressed that they seemed to combine what they had learned the week before with what we were talking about.

The first idea was to drag your foot across a piece of paper. I asked how you would record it, and they responded that you would leave marks if you had a really dirty foot.

Then each student had a piece of paper and used pencils, pens and crayons to record a movement pattern. I then brought the students to the back by table group to spend just a couple of minutes each recording that same pattern onto 3 pieces of brown packing paper and one piece of newspaper.

Next week we will talk more about media and collaboration since we brought them up this week without explaining them.

Here are some pictures of the work the students did:

Day One - Thinking Outside the Box

January 11, 2011

Yesterday we started with an introduction to our unit. First, we had a discussion:

What is art? How do we make art?

~ The students gave me lots of good answers that mostly included standard art forms:

• Art is making pictures or telling stories through pictures. We make art with paper, pencils, crayons, markers, paint, etc. They also informed me that they know many artists - their cousin, uncle, friend, neighbor, etc. are all artists.
• I then asked the students to take 5 minutes and make the best artwork that they knew how to make.

Here is one example that was given to me at the end of class:

After they finished these drawings, we switched gears and talked about our BIG IDEA for the semester:

Art: Thinking Outside the Box

We then talked about 3 different artists:

Courtney Perry (me):

I brought in two of my ceramic sculptures and we mentioned "abstract" or "non-objective" art and talked about sculpture as a form of art.

Shahzia Sikander

Is a woman from Pakistan trained in the painstaking art of traditional Pakistani miniature painting. She uses tea to paint her ground and uses things like vegetable juice for some of her colors.

"Reinventing the Dislocation", 1997.

Learn More about Shahzia Sikander:

Her Art21 Spot

Her Website

and

Paul Curtis aka "Moose"

This guy does what is called "Reverse Graffiti". He uses stencils and cleans off parts of dirty city walls to create murals and bring awareness to the public about the dirty state of our cities.

Learn More about "Moose":

The Reverse Graffiti Project Website - including short documentary.

Picture Archive

Other artists who do Reverse Graffiti

We ended class with a challenge - each student had to make 3 marks on their paper without using pencils, crayons, pens, markers, etc.

~What they did:

• Rub - the metal and/or yellow sides of their pencils and glue sticks.
• Draw - on a paper towel, and rub the towel on their paper. Then one student used his eraser to draw into the rubbed graphite!
• Dry-erase board erasers!
• Glue with pink eraser dust.
• Cut the paper with scissors
• Rubbed fingers across to leave a mark.

Here is a link to the lesson plan!