Kindergarten: Fabulous Feasts!

Many artists use food as subject matter for their work, and food is often present at celebrations of all kinds. Kindergarten students have spent the past few months focused on the many aspects of celebration: masks and costumes, party drawings and now feast collages! After identifying what a “feast” is, students discussed the selected food-related artworks before listing their own favorite foods they would enjoy.

Students were then instructed to create a feast by cutting out appropriate shapes and colors to represent various foods, imagining the white paper background as their “tabletop”. Small details and texture could be added using oil pastels, and students were encouraged to include and think about other table-setting objects such as dishes, flatware and drinking glasses.

February Master of the Month: Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy is a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculpture and land art in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects, to create both temporary and permanent sculptures. From the age of 13 he worked on farms as a laborer. He has compares the repetitive quality of farm work to the routine of making sculpture: "A lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of it."
The materials used in Goldsworthy's art often include brightly-colored flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pine cones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern rock balancing, and often uses only his bare hands, teeth, and found tools. However, he has used machine tools for his permanent sculptures.
Because so much of Goldsworthy’s work is temporary, photography plays a important part. Once he finishes a new piece, he immediately photographs it as a record and final part of his art work.

February Masterpiece of the Month: Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth

Who made this artwork?

An American artist named, Andrew Wyeth, created this painting in 1948.

Where is the REAL one?

This painting can be viewed at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY.

Why is this artwork important?

The woman in this painting was a woman named, Christina Olsen, and was a friend and neighbor of the artist in Cushing, Maine. Christina had a disease which paralyzed her lower body. One day, Wyeth was looking out a window of his house and saw Christina crawling across the field, which inspired him to create this painting. He was determined to try to show Christina's spiritual strength and perseverance which was not held back by her physical limitations.

This painting is done in a style known as REALISM, because it shows something from real life in great detail, looking very realistic. In Christina's World, Wyeth correctly shows us the dry landscape, the country house and the shack in great detail. He painted the tiny blades of grass, the delicate strands of hair and the slight differences of light and shadow. Although Christina was the inspiration and subject of this picture, she did not pose for Wyeth, and she was actually much older than she appears when Wyeth created this painting.

Student Work on Exhibit at the Dallin Museum

The Arlington Public School Visual Art Department invites you to view the
The Jefferson Cutter House Gallery K-8 Student Art Exhibit. Art works by over eighty students from the Bishop, Brackett, Dallin, Hardy, Peirce, Thompson, Stratton, and the Ottoson Middle Schools.

The projects on display represent a variety of materials and curriculum goals of the general art programs of these schools. Art teachers also provide written curriculum materials that help define what kinds of thinking skills and other art making skills were central to the lessons that each of the displayed works represent.

The exhibit can be viewed at the following times: February 4, 2010 from 3-5:30 p.m. and
February 8, 9, 11, 22, 23 and 25, from 4-6 pm. We would like to thank the Arlington Friends of Visual Art for their support with this exhibit.

Please join us for a reception for the young artists on February 25, 2010 at the Gallery from 4-6 p.m.

The Jefferson Cutter House, also known as the Dallin Museum, is the white Revolutionary house with black shutters on the corner of Mass Ave and Pleasant Street across from the Cambridge Savings Bank on Mass Ave. You enter the gallery in the rear of the building and there is ample parking in the adjacent municipal parking lot. Admission is free.
http://www.town.arlington.ma.us/public_documents/ArlingtonMA_Rental/JeffersonCutterHouse/index

For more information contact David Ardito, K-12 Director of Visual Art, Arlington Public Schools at dardito@arlington.k12.ma.us or by calling 781 910 7119

Grade Four: Elemental Styrofoam Blockprints

Students in grade four were shown several examples of a centuries old Japanese craft known as stencil-making, which were made from paper and used to print delicate designs and patterns on silk, later to be used for making items such as kimonos. Students were quick to notice that the subject of these stencils were all inspired by nature, and included a variety of stylized and imaginative solutions for representing the four natural elements in line and shape.

With some fresh inspiration for the nature-themed stencils, students were instructed to sketch out ideas to represent at least one of the four natural elements: air, fire, earth, and water. Interpretations could be as imaginative and/or conceptual as desired.

When students returned the following week, they were shown examples of another Japanese art form: woodblock printing. An explanation of the woodblock process of printmaking was described, as well the reasons and history behind Japan's invention of this early version of mass production of images in the 19th century. Now students were ready to take their elemental designs and give them new life as a series of block prints.

Because block printing requires carving with sharp tools, young students are given a soft material such as styrofoam, which easily yields to forming the impression of images through the gentle pressure of a pencil. Students were given a demonstration of the block printing process using brayers, inking plates and ink, which remain the same as other forms of block printing. After completing sketches and transferring designs, students were then ready to print their designs onto printing paper, signing and numbering their series of prints.

Grade One: Beginner Painting Techniques

WEEK ONE

This first grade lesson was instructed in two phases, allowing students to experience two different methods of painting. First, students discussed how artists such as Helen Frankenthaler can use paint in different ways, such as allowing colors to run together as seen in her painting, Pistachio.

Week one involved painting in a technique called "wet on wet", meaning wet paint on wet paper. Students learned to moisten paper before painting and to dilute colors to force them to "bleed", run and drip. This created a colorful background wash for the second phase of this lesson.

WEEK TWO

Returning to find their background paintings dry, students discussed how artists use different types of brushes to make many kinds of marks, such as Georges Braque in his painting, Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet. Examining for differences, students were shown a flat brush and a round brush. Looking at Braques' painting, students were asked to find marks that each of these brushes might have made.


Students were then each given both a flat and round brush and instructed to paint "wet on dry" (wet paint on dry paper) using each of these brushes on top of the wash painting from the previous week.

Grade Two: Narrative Sculpture

Second graders recently created narrative collages based upon favorite stories, but what about narrative sculpture? How do artists take a three-dimensional form and transform into an object with a life of its own?

Students were guided through a discussion about the element of form, and how it differs from the element of shape. They were then shown and asked to identify examples of three-dimensional forms: sphere, cube, prism, cone, etc. Students discussed how these forms can be seen and recognized in examples of sculpture, such as Constantin Brancusi's The Kiss. Students were led to notice that which may have started out as a simple form, was later turned into a sculpture with meaning.

Second graders were instructed to begin their clay sculpture with a three-dimensional form appropriately chosen to best fit their idea. From there, they could pinch, carve and shape the clay, as well as add details. Once dry, the sculptures were painted.

Kindergarten: Stick Puppets

Kindergarteners wrapped up their costuming unit with a lesson on constructing stick puppets. This was also a good segway into our next lessons which will be about celebrations. Students were first shown reproductions of the above artworks and led through a discussion with a series of questions:

“What are the people doing?”

“What are the people wearing?”

“What have the artists repeated in these artworks?” (lines, shapes, colors, patterns, positions of figures, costumes and uniforms)

Children were especially guided to notice the interesting clothing worn by the performers depicted in each of these artworks, and were then told they would be constructing stick puppets of people wearing interesting costumes. Students were first instructed to draw the shape of the person onto a piece of oak tag, then cut out the person using scissors, and finally decorating their puppets using a variety of collage materials made available at their table.

January Master of the Month: Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter (1872-1944). He developed a non-representational style of painting, over many years, which he called Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of a white background, upon which he painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. He began his career as a teacher, but while teaching he also practiced painting. Most of his early work is impressionistic, consisting mostly of landscapes. However, Mondrian is best known for his abstract work and he continued to paint in this style for the rest of his career. Mondrian spend his whole life exploring new ways to paint his ideas. His painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–43) is one of his masterpieces. The piece is made up of many squares of bright color that leap from the canvas, then appear to shimmer, much like the neon lights of New York City. These paintings created at the end of his life, reflect the upbeat music that inspired them and the city in which they were made.

January Masterpiece of the Month: Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso

Who made this artwork?

A Spanish artist named, Pablo Picasso made this painting in 1921.

Where is the REAL one?

The real painting can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY.

Why is this artwork important?

Picasso was largely responsible for inventing a style of art called CUBISM, which explored objects in flat, geometric shapes and for showing more than one viewpoint at the same time-something impossible in real life. There are two kinds of Cubism: synthetic and analytic. Three Musicians is an excellent example of SYNTHETIC CUBISM because it explores the subject in shapes so that they appear to be cut out of paper! Synthetic Cubism was often done in collage, allowing Picasso to completely represent things in flat, geometric shapes. But here, he fools us and makes Three Musicians look like a collage, when in fact, it is a painting.

Grade One: Warm and Cool Colors

To introduce a unit on color, first graders discussed the difference between "warm" colors (red, yellow, orange) and "cool" colors (blue, green, purple). Students were able to see how an artist depicting a warm place such as Georgia O'Keefe's, Red Hills and Bones, and cool places such as Claude Monet's, Waterlilies, can be emphasized using these groups of colors. They also noticed that we associate certain warm or cool things, such as fire and water, with their colors, which help us to distinguish these colors even more.

Students were then asked to create an oil pastel drawing using their own subject matter in either warm or cool colors. While it was fine to use other colors as well, students had to decide whether to use mostly warm or cool colors.

Observational Drawing: Drawing Our Shoes

This month's drawing challenge consisted of having third graders remove one of their shoes and draw it from observation by placing it on the table before them, much to student's delight! Students were informed that shoes, particularly sneakers, contain many intricate details in the form of lines, shapes, patterns and textures which would require their attention for this drawing. Students had the option of including shading in this drawing or keeping it as a line drawing, which would allow them to focus on the beauty of the many interior details.

Some students chose to opt for the additional challenge of placing BOTH shoes on the table and arranging them into a small still-life, while others drew their shoe(s) from unusual and/or multiple viewpoints.