Rangoli

First grade students ventured outside today to create their own Rangoli designs.  Rangoli are typically done outside of homes in India.  They are beautiful radial designs that some women apply on the ground outside their homes every morning.  They are usually believed to bring good luck.
Students created their design by folding one fourth of a circle and cutting it into a symmetrical design.  This was then used as their stencil which they rotated four times on the ground to create a design with rotational symmetry!  It was so nice to take our art making outdoors!!!

Surrealism

Fifth graders studied the Renaissance and the introduction of perspective in Renaissance paintings.  Each students created a room that demonstrated knowledge of the rules of perspective.  Using perspective creates the illusion of depth and a very realistic looking space.  Once the room was complete, we shifted our focus from creating something real to something surreal.  Surrealism is all about unexpected images and real looking objects put together in unexpected ways.  Students transformed their space into a surrealist landscape by including a background from outer space and pictures cut from magazines.

Victorian Homes

Third grade students discussed what the word home means to them...a place to feel safe, to rest, where you feel comfortable.  In the Victorian Era (the time during the reign of Queen Victoria 1837-1901)homes became a reflection of your status and wealth.  American Victorians thought of their homes as a way to show off what they have accomplished (their wealth) and the stability of their family.  The American dream became an individually owned home on a nice piece of land.  Many people in this era thought of their home as a status symbol.  Building a large, impressive house was a measure of success and your social status.
After studying the details on these impressive houses students set out to design their own.  Each student created a pop up and drew the details of their home.

More Miro!

I was hanging these up this morning and just needed to post a few more...I love how these came out!!

Thank You

Our first grade is going on a field trip to the zoo this month; thanks to the generous donations received
through Donors Choose.  Barre N9ne Dance Studio funded a large portion of the trip so some of my first graders created these dancing animals as a thank you!

Miro

First grade students studied the work of artist Joan Miro.  We discussed the abstract nature of his work, and learned how abstract art doesn't try to look real but instead uses lines, shapes and colors to describe an idea.  Students identified different symbols, lines and shapes that reminded them of the night sky while discussing Miro's constellation series.  We also discussed how Miro is often described as a surrealist artist -since he tried to get in touch with his unconcious mind when he painted.  Finally students created their own Miro inspired figure by playing a drawing game with a dice to roll their own Miro!

Moving lines

Kindergartners created sculptural lines that twist and turn around their page.

Tunnel Books

Fourth Graders looked at the art of Henri Rousseau.  Rousseau is famous for his paintings of jungle scenes.  After studying the life and work of this artist students discussed the idea of creating depth in an artwork.  In order to make a picture look deep artists include 3 parts: foreground, middle ground and background.  Students designed there own jungle scenes on three different open rectangles; creating a foreground, middle ground and background.  Once complete we looked at various examples of tunnel books (including one of my own creations)  and glued our rectangles to accordion folded papers to create our own books

Exquisite Corpse

The Exquisite Corpse is a drawing game invented by the Surrealists.  Surrealist artwork is often considered very strange since they try to use their dreams and unconscious minds as inspiration for their art. The exquisite corpse was a game of chance and unpredictable happenings.  It was played by several people.  Each would write a word or phrase on a
piece of paper, fold it to hide part of it, and then pass it on to the next player.  At the end, the paper was unfolded and the surrealists read the results.  Many times it wouldn't make sense but often words would be put together in interesting ways no one would have thought of had it been written the regular way.  The first time the game was played the sentence they ended up with was, "The Exquisite Corpse will drink the new wine"  (which is why we call it Exquisite Corpse).  They also tried this as a drawing game where one person would draw the head, the next a body and last, the feet.  Second grade students created their own version of the exquisite corpse!  Each portrait changes into an unexpected picture as you fold down the different flaps...for example you might have the body of spider-man but the legs of a horse!

Kandinsky Circles

First Grade students studied the work of Wassily Kandinsky.  We discussed his use of geometric shapes to create abstract artwork.  Kandinsky was particularly fond of circle and thought this shape had endless possibilities.  After creating our own concentric circles, similar to Kandinsky's work, we discussed color.  Students learned how colors look different depending on the company they keep.  We looked at various optical illusions involving color to prove this point.  Finally students experimented with their own color combinations using chalk pastels

May the Arts be with You!!

March on the Arts (our district wide art show had to be pushed back to May this year because of all the snow.  So this year we renamed it May the Arts be with You!  There was art from all the schools as well as musical performances.  Our own Mrs Keplin performed with her Glee Club.  If you missed it this year make sure to be on the lookout for it next year.  All the donations from the evening contribute to art and music programs in Revere!