Art Is Messy

I know it’s a little early to start thinking about October holidays, but this Day of the Dead activity combines two of my favorite activities—cooking and art!

Last night, David and I had dinner with two wonderful ladies from Philadelphia’s Classrooms for the Future program. After cleaning up from a very yummy dinner one of the women showed us her technology goody bag. One of the items that she shared was a Livescribe Pulse Smart Pen. My jaw hit the floor when she showed us how it worked! This pen allows users to take hand written notes in a special pad and record audio at the same time. The cool thing about the pen is that you can upload *both* items onto your computer. You can search your notes for certain key words and then easily replay the audio file that relates to that topic. Brillant! Where was this when I was in grad school?

Living and teaching in Asia painfully reminds me of how inadequate my knowledge of non-western art is. I can rattle off movements and artists from Europe and the Americas without blinking an eye, but given the same challenge with non-Western art, nothing but the sound of silence would fill the air.

While it is impossible for art teachers to cover art created by all the peoples of the world over thousands of years in their classrooms, I do think it is our responsibility to make more of an effort. Often times, art from places such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are included in the curriculum as “special multicultural units.” While this is a noble attempt to expand our students’ knowledge of art, it simply doesn’t cut it. Art from areas such as the ones mentioned above should be incorporated into all lessons done throughout the year. Wouldn’t a lesson on landscape painting be more effective if students compared and contrasted  European and Asia images of nature? How might a student’s understanding of pattern might change after looking at textiles from America and Africa?

In order to start filling in the holes of my own art knowledge, I am starting to compile a list of online resources. Seeing I live in China, my stop is Asian art. I came across a link to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum on the Asian Region Art Educators website and thought this was a great site to share. The museum’s education section has a series of very informative and very free PDFs on art from all over Asia. They are worth checking out.

If anyone has other good Asian art resources, please send me the link and I will post it to this site for others to see.

I’ve been feeling pretty bad about not posting to this site in a very long time. I had hoped to spend part of my summer vacation writing about new ideas for projects and researching artists to use in my lessons. I had also planned to work on some watercolor paintings. Sadly, my time has gone towards everything but this. The majority of the summer has been spent dealing with a family member’s medical issues, and trying to prepare to take the Praxis series. (I’m in the process of switching my certification from one state to another. In order to do so, I need to take these exams eventhough I have already taken NY State’s version of them. This is very annoying!) All my testing and studying will be over by the 29th. Hopefully I’ll be able to post after this. Thanks for being patient readers!!!

I came across this art history site today as I was clicking around the internet. It is a collection of different art history links, as well as lesson plans. It’s one to add to your bookmarks.

I don’t support the destruction of property, but come one, this is funny….Barrel Monster

First graders ended they year by learning about Van Gogh’s sunflower drawings. I set up two still life displays around the room an then the kids basically just took off by themselves.

Once they finished their contour drawings, they used oil pastels for the color. I was doubtful at their ability to use pastels for small areas, but once again they rose to the challenge.

The thing that I liked best about this project was that my students were able to clearly see their growth from the beginning of the year. It gave them a tremendous sense of accomplishment. The last sunflower that I posted is testament to this. This student had tremendous difficulty controlling materials at the start of the year. During the project he turned to me and said “Ms. Sajan, I think this is my best work.” I have to fully agree!

With this being only my third year teaching elementary school I am constantly impressed and surprised by the artistic abilities of my students. This is the first time I have done this project. I had no idea what to expect at the end of it. Theses projects surpassed all my expectations!!!

For this project kids looked at images of Pacific Northwest Indian art work. Afterward, I gave them a worksheet that asked them to choose different animals that represents their feelings. Samples questions were “When I am happy I feel like a…….When I am sad I feel like a…….” After the kids came up with a list of animals, they choose three for their totem poles.

Next, I showed them how to create pinch pots. Pots were stuffed with paper towels and holes were cut at the top and bottom of each ball to allow circulation. Balls were then attached together and then the three headed structure was attached to a clay base.

Students then went a head and built their animal heads and added texture and patterns to their work. After the totem poles students used Amaco Alligator glazes to their colors. I cannot go on enough about how much I love these glazes. They work particularly well on top of our red clay.

Recommendations for the project:

• Be sure that each kids has holes on all their ball, as well as through the bottom of the base. I tried to double check their projects to make sure they had them, sadly I missed a few.
• Make sure that the balls are attache really well to one another. I had a few heads pop off even after the final firing.

David found the Tiny Art Director site the other day while searching around the internet. Not only are there great examples of children’s book illustration, the “art director’s” commentary is priceless.  I cracked up so much while reading the commentary that I just had to pass this along…..

…listening to a group of girl speaking to each other in Beijing opera style voices while making Greek and African inspired clay pots. I can’t understrand their Chinese, but it cracks me up anyways.