Beehive Collective Collaboration Project
After attending a session with the visiting artist, nonprofit organization Beehive Design Collective, drawing students took the opportunity to partake in the same process the collective does. Check them out here: https://beehivecollective.org. Students researched a social, political, or environmental issue and created a piece of art illustrating it and the many complicating factors surrounding it. They combined nature imagery and visual metaphors to tell a story. By practicing pen and ink techniques, they were able to use mark making to trace over a pencil sketch that depicts a scene of their issue. Students had the opportunity to make copies of their incredible work and distribute them.
Check out the intro slideshow here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18-8ym_mBCSdr0rw_bAJQbZQlTZu3aOJGyUOtCCDDk7k/edit?usp=sharing
And full lesson plan here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNtAuxzB_rNI6Ajfzi_E-lvOy2woAvrnegzB5TjugXo/edit?usp=sharing
Layers of Identity Art Journals
Students created two page spreads in their art journals that explored the various layers of themselves and their identities. They thought introspectively and identified layers of themselves, or how they inhabited different spaces and parts of their lives. Deep reflection and quiet thinking was essential to this process. Material choice was completely open-ended, but required mixing media.Check out the intro slideshow here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FaHR-xzqKVpM1_wpVHifAdznpbXQ1jrMnkBjEZNlYvs/edit?usp=sharing
And full lesson plan here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aK7hxraTSNFGcyH92JbP0BQwAtwMANVQMCxnPmvg6jE/edit?usp=sharing
Clay Containers
Foundations of Art students learned the three handbuilding techniques: pinch, coil, and slab. They then chose one or more methods to create a container for a prized possession. The container could be a literal interpretation for an object, or a thematic and imaginative interpretation. They were required to incorporate some element of detail on the outside that indicates what it is meant to hold.Check out the intro slideshow here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZLmDV0YuieK9R1b3x5KsaMNSNF6u0Tmgr_JZC9hN_TA/edit?usp=sharing
And the full lesson plan here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ioMPeU_8VJzOCKkEZXPgmqK9LSWpXb7iA8ROJhkLVKg/edit?usp=sharing
Music Inspired Art Journals
After completing the Layers of Identity project, students were able to follow musical inspiration to create either a visual representation of what a song or album looks like to them, or redesign an existing album cover. They learned about the condition synesthesia, as well as looked at musicians that are also visual artists to cement the idea of the arts as intertwined. As a warm up exercise, they listened to songs they requested and created art inutitiely in response to the music.
See the intro slideshow here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13-LRhvRKpjnQSYAbDvo6uZWv4S7QC7Z7gohqAjaIbB4/edit?usp=sharing
Figures: Faces, Gesture & Skin tones
In a series of formative exercises, students looked at facial proportions in drawing self-portraits from oberservation, did gesture drawing from projected photographs of human body poses, and practiced mixing skin tones with colored pencils and oil pastels. Each of these formative assignments lasted one class period, and prepared students to go forward in creating a figure drawing or portrait of their choice.
Click below for each of the intro slideshows:
Four Things (Stations for Research)
In order to better understand what is most engaging to high school art students, in the Art Journaling class at Gray-New Gloucester High School, I implimented this plan which invloved four stations with different prompts. The students had 15 minutes at each station and completed a survey afterwards. My rationale behind this is that I suspected themed prompts would be more helpful than material prompts in terms of encouraging broad interpretations and unique works. My thinking was that full choice (as in TAB) leads to students reverting to content that they are already familiar with. By providing themes as starting points that students can devaite as much as they choose from, they can push themselves beyond what they thought possible. However, my conclusions were that full choice might actually be more ideal than I originally thought, given that students first had access to lessons in ideation.
Adventures in Art: Liveable Worlds
This project was completed in collaboration with Fairen Stark and Jimena Hernandez, as well as with the ICA staff at MECA&D and Scarborough High School. Adventures in Art is a yearly collaboration with the ICA and participating Maine Schools, and the 2024 exhibition was titled "Liveable Worlds". For more info on the exhibit, visit: https://meca.edu/news/c0d46b9/.
The project involved a process of introducing students to the art exhibit, and allowing them to explore it. We then gathered outside in the "green space" and created two large scale painting using only natural paints and dyes such as turmeric, hibiscus water, coffee, black bean dye, grass, and charcoal, inspired by artist Athena La Toca's work in the exhibit. Students were immersed in creating work using traditional tools, as well as their own bodies and natural tools like rocks. The concept of La Toca's work is to be immersed in the work "as if [they] were traversing the terrain" in a landscape, and we wanted to follow that method as closely as possible.
Unit: Clay Figures How do artists portray the human body and what does it say about humanity?
ex. from lesson plan (first lesson)
A UNIT FOR THE FUTURE
This figure sculpting unit I designed for High School is an advanced ceramics lesson that incorporates measuring, plannning, and abstract thinnking, and challenging human beauty standards.
A SERIES OF THREE LESSONS
The first lesson: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PNLYbqvaox5tq2p2qv4GoRShPy3I-jwE-K1MLuw3m4Y/edit?usp=sharing
involves asking students to create a to-scale sketch of a figure and practicing taking measurements.
The second lesson:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VXsfjq6lRF047rJwE62JxGNft4HMwB8cEWqSDUPIAOk/edit?usp=sharing
involves students making a plan/sketch of how they will alter the human figure, imagining what alterations, changes, or exaggerations could imply visually.
The third lesson:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jcXUjuFoSb6ObkG5UKCzjytxk9WJsF9V0AzYr-w0hBM/edit?usp=sharing
is for students to sculpt based on the plan they made.