Welcome back to a new and exciting year at CHS.
Our School-Wide Art Theme this year is Collaboration. Working together on a collaboration is always exciting, and this year we will be doing a variety of collaborating within art classes, across grade levels, and across the curriculum. Collaboration inspires cooperation as well as building community and providing many opportunities for problem solving.
In the art room young artists have a safe space for exploring materials and new techniques. They have an opportunity to think differently, solve visual and spatial problems, engage and persist in a variety of mediums, and expand their range of personal expression. To this end we began the year reading Beautiful OOPS by Barney Saltzberg. In this wonderful little book the author encourages artists to view mistakes as opportunities...a lesson for life.
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Primary Artists have been exploring shapes and lines through paint and drawing, individually and in collaboration with others:
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| Shape Painting Collaboration between Primary and Second Graders |
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| Start with a shape and see where it leads you... |
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| Collaborating with Classmates |
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| "A line is a dot that went for a walk"...artist, Paul Klee |
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| Later, Primary Artists followed their lines with watercolor. ***************************************************************************** |
After these explorations they got busy creating surface designs on paper using foam rollers, which was later used as the background paper for their Kindness Quilt (a collaboration with their classroom teachers):
Kindergarten artists also enjoyed creating shape paintings and learning about ways to connect the shapes...
Most recently, the Kindergartners learned about the artist Heni Matisse and his artistic life. We focused on the paper cut-outs he created later in his life and tried our own version of "drawing with scissors".:
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First Grade Artists also began the year by exploring the art room and trying out a variety of tools and materials:
The first project that First Graders worked on was a Mixed Media Collage of Fall Trees. This project incorporates the *Eight Studio Habits of Mind which is a framework for our art curriculum. For example, the project challenges students to:
- Develop Craft in that they learn to work with a variety of papers in a mixed-media collage
- Engage and Persist when they work on the project for several weeks, adding a new element each time.
- Envision the trees they with to create- it's trunk and branches, and create a horizon line where the ground meets the sky
- Express their own vision of a tree, some including humor!
- Observe images of many types of trees prior to creating their own
- Reflect on their work as they discuss it with classmates
- Stretch & Explore as they create their own unique tree using a variety of handmade papers
- Understand the Art World as they see their work displayed in the school and are asked questions about their creative process
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Second Graders began the year collaborating with classmates to illustrate our school's Core Values: Community, Play, Knowledge, Respect, and Character. Their illustrations are currently displayed in the Community Room with the Third Grader's work.
After collaborating they worked individually on their self portraits, looking closely at their faces to create a likeness. Did you realize that the shape of lips is made from three lines?
Second graders also collaborated with the Primary class creating one huge painting. They started with shapes, added to the areas around the shapes and added designs on some.
Most recently, the second graders created mono prints of leaves using glitter paint and fibrous paper.
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Third Grade Artists also began the year illustrating our Core Values. They first worked together to define what each one means. Defining "Character" was tough, but they decided it meant doing the right thing. Once their illustrations were complete, they began working on a two step self-portrait project. They did traditional observational self-portraits first and later created abstract self-portraits after looking at a variety of images created by other artists. For these portraits they used canvas sheets and acrylic paint and felt very professional!
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All of the students at CHS have been adding a shape contribution to our "Auction Painting" and enjoying thinking about what Imagination means to them..."Imagination is dreaming, wondering, playing with your mind and having unicorn magic!"
*Eight Studio
Habits of Mind were developed by artists and educators associated with
Project Zero at Harvard. These “Habits of Mind” are identified as the ways of
thinking that are unique to learning in a studio environment, thus
demonstrating the real benefits of a Visual Arts Education.
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