My 8th grade classes at this school participated in an annual mosaic. First, 40 students nominated mosaic themes. After electing album covers, they flattened and cut 7-inch ceramic tiles then glaze painted them. I prepared a frame, kiln-fired, arranged then grouted the tiles in traditional checkers for display. An art history assignment could have required writing about an album.
Future mosaics could include: new geometric tile materials, sizes, shapes, student proposed tiled areas plus inlay, relief sculpture. Beforehand 8th grade looked at some NYC subway mosaics. They collaborated in a mural design exercise by arranging cropped 3 x 3-inch sections of their own open-themed sharpie drawings and they practiced painting on paper.
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| 5 x 7-inch paintings |
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| 3 x 3-inch drawings |
8th graders reviewed 1, 2, and 3-point perspective drawing. Examples in Unbuilt America helped us develop a rubric. Using pencils and rulers students made studies from memories of familiar spaces. Next they learned about the history of site-specific and plop art, and debated how to categorize some examples. Each drafted a proposal for either an installation or alteration to the current school grounds. Added instruction included rubbing collage, digital editing and rotoscoped animation. Classes presented and received feedback on proposals by role playing how various community members might respond to the changes. Future assignments could involve 3D modeling software.
8th graders made linocut printed t-shirts with fabric ink. Another assignment could include silkscreen printing.
Students explored cyanotype and van dyke processes. They looked at photomontages by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and were given National Geographic magazines. Some sharpie pen traced drawings onto their 4 x 6-inch transparencies, before paper coating and exposing to sunlight. Students also each created a 3 x 3-inch albumen print from digital negatives with Photoshop and Pictorico transparency film. Again they paper coated, exposed and washed their prints.
Middle schoolers used digital cameras for a stop-motion animation. They freehand animated in books donated by their school library. Students considered how their metered pictures might relate to the words randomly included, and watched a video about William Kentridge. More resources could include a visit the Center for Book Arts and more requirements could include editing video with audio.
8th Grade Art Elective's six students observed plastic sculptures and ceramic light fixtures. They designed lamps using a socket, switch, LED bulb along with cardboard, wood, clay, wire, and paper mache. Lessons could also include pottery wheels, research and writing about the development of light bulbs and lamps.
Elective students made presentations on professional photographers with PowerPoint before solar plate printing their own photos. They followed instructions in Photoshop to create a black and white digital print or positive film transparency. Using makeshift black light exposure boxes and contact cases, they contact etched their transparencies while measuring solar plate exposure times. Students inked and press-print their plates, some experimented with watercolor finishes.
2nd Grade
2nd graders observed wood carved, painted masks and totems from the Pacific Northwest as well as dioramas of North American mammals at the Museum of Natural History. They read and wrote about the museum collection. Visual Art students sketched mask designs, sculpted, glazed, and then titled their own supernatural spirit summoning masks.
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| Hallway display |
Using lunch knives again 2nd graders carved styrofoam, then painted, stacked and adjoined foam with popsicle sticks to balance two 7-foot totems. I did not advise trying to carve from observation, but rather designing totems based on a traditional Native American theme. Nevertheless, students proposed a shame totem for someone. Next time 2nd graders could weave in connection with social studies. I also do not recommend styrofoam due to dust and biodegradability.
Animal sculptures began with classifying North American mammals as vertebrates. Using the idea of a backbone and beginning with wire students tried engineering armatures. They also worked with tape, tin foil, and newsprint, before casting their armatures in paper mache and painting. Despite exploring the AMNH's Hall of Ocean Life, marine mammal/vertebrates were not optional for a Lewis and Clark display.
2nd graders tried animation. They sequenced and organized a series of drawings in order to create a moving image. Students worked on a frame of rate 12 drawings per second of video, using proportions to help calculate the number of drawings needed to create videos.
A 2nd grade printmaking lesson discussed what is symmetry and pattern before sketching on graph paper. 2nd graders looked at an XY coordinate plane and points measured in a drawing as (X,Y) coordinates. I suggested they divide their graph paper in four equal quadrants. Students selected and transferred final designs into styrofoam plates, inked, registered and hand-printed.
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2nd graders discussed an architectural drawing and were first asked to design their own home using pencil, sharpie, and then varying opacities of watercolors on paper. Next, considering weight and force in relation to balance, 2nd graders slipped and scored clay as well as glued pre-cut wood pieces. A few cut wood with a supervised clamp and hand saw.
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| Woodblock display |
2nd grade reviewed color mixing with oil pastels, first blending and naming 10 of their own colors.
Classes made self-portraits using mirrors. Our rubric included carefully observed shapes and colors, inclusion of details, layering and blending tones, as well as inclusion of foreground and background.
Students practiced working with brushes and tempera paint. They mixed primary and secondary colors. We talked about landscape paintings and Albert Bierstadts Storm in the Rocky Mountains at the Brooklyn Museum. A topic dialogue asked students to create paintings about their commute to school on 12 x 18-inch paper. |
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| Paintings with captions by 2nd graders |
My 2nd grade classes contributed to annual themed auctions.
For a "road trip” theme, each student was randomly assigned a state and then given a map. Using pencils, cardstock and scissors they were asked to create a large border shape outline of their state and then cut a stencil. They geographically placed their stencils on stretched 50 x 72-inch canvases and painted. One class added roads.
For an “alma mater" theme, children photographed one another using a digital camera in front of a makeshift green screen. Some students also participated in an open-ended, stop-motion dance video. I arranged digital negatives of their portraits with a signed transparency and printed (school color) cyanotypes on 12 x 12-inch paper.
3rd Grade
3rd grade began the year recalling American tall tales they read in 2nd grade. Classes looked at compositions of text and illustration in Where the Wild Things Are. Each student was assigned to write and illustrate a short story.
They also painted a cotton field with cardboard boll weevil props for a scene in a 3rd grade play about the Great Migration.
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| Collages with typed captions |
Further practicing with scissors, Visual Art made shadow puppet videos narrated in Spanish and French. After introduction to Cambodian shadow puppets online, students explored modeling poses for corresponding torn paper collages. Each selected a final pose to glue and title. Working in self-selected groups, classes storyboarded. Then using cardstock paper, scissors, one supervised x-acto knife, hole punchers, paper fasteners, tape, and dowels students made puppets with movable parts. Groups practiced choreographing movements. They performed and recorded their skits with a digital camera. Some added backgrounds by illuminating sharpie drawings on transparencies. They worked with their foreign language teachers to script then voice record dialogue. I combined the audio and video files.
Students also animated their own voice recordings.
3rd graders made NYC themed prints. The rubric consisted of inking, center registering, then hand-printing three clean prints from an original drawing etched in styrofoam. They also cut their styrofoam and reprinted within a large outline of the Statue of Liberty to make a sign for their Ellis Island reenactment.
A question about a hypothetical fashion show began a freestanding sculpture assignment. Classes discussed Neoclassical style as well as a Duane Hanson sculpture seen on a visit to the Whitney Museum. They engineered armatures, cast paper mache, painted, cut and collaged fabric.
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| Aphrodite |