What we will be doing and learning about this quarter...
8th Grade is super exciting this year as we are testing out our new digital media component to our curriculum! 8th Graders will be working in a mixed media fashion this year, they will have the opportunity to play around with both digital media as well as hands on art making. We have also begun a more "open studio" feel to the program where we open the doors to our adjoining art studios and work together as an art department. This allows students to get to know all the art teachers instead of just their assigned teacher. It also provides students with the opportunity to receive inspiration and feedback from a more diverse group! Students will be creating "mindscapes" (a landscape of their mind) through the use of digital photography, Adobe Photoshop, iPad app Photoshop Mix and mixed media processes like photo transfer as well as using traditional art media such as painting, pen and ink, assemblage, and more!
Day one of quarter two art has begun! Today, instead of spending the first whole day talking about logistical stuff we decided to spend the day making. Today students were asked to think about:
"How can I express something about myself through a non-representational mark using only paper?"
Students were asked to first measure and cut a 4x4" square out of their choice of colored paper to act as a background or a base, then students would create a "mark" out of scraps of paper that somehow represents something about themselves through the idea of color, pattern, shape, line, etc.
The point of this project is for students to feel ownership of their classroom space. I want my students to feel like the classroom is as much theirs as it is mine. So, once they make their mark I hang them throughout the classroom. Quarter 1's marks are still up as well, so hopefully by the end of the year, we will have a whole bunch of marks throughout the classroom to show ownership of all the students!
Take a look at the marks my students made today, they are in no particular order:
11/24: An amazing start to quarter 2 art!
8th graders have been working hard on the beginning stages of their first project! We actually ended up tweaking our 8th grade project after viewing a TED talk on street artist JR which we showed to our quarter 1 students on the last day of art. They had such a strong reaction to this video that we felt like we had to work this artist into our curriculum for 8th grade during quarter 2!
So, we started off quarter 2 by showing 8th grade students JR's TED talk (click to view and watch, it is very powerful, but yes, it does have one swear at the beginning of the video...we told students to try to ignore it as it is only said once and it is out of passion for the particular topic).
Basically, JR's project, Inside Out, is a project that he started several years ago. In this project, JR would travel around the world to places where there were major things happening that could be seen through the media. In these locations, JR would begin to photograph people; for instance when he went to Rio in Brazil, he went because he had heard of an awful tragedy where 3 students were captured by police without their papers, rather than take the students to the police station, they brought them to the nearest enemy favela where the students were tragically killed. JR along with the rest of Brazil and all its on-lookers were in shock about this and JR felt he needed to do something about it, get this story out into the world. So, he went to Rio and he ended up meeting three women, all who were linked to the 3 students, one was the mother, one was the grandmother and one was a best friend. He photographed them and then pasted the LARGE scale photographs of these women where the 3 students had been arrested and where other acts like this occur. Suddenly everyone was talking about it and the story was reaching larger populations, the women were so thankful of JR and what he was doing, all they asked of him was that he take their story and spread it throughout the world.
He continued doing things like this throughout the world and now he has asked that we, the population, take part and spread our own stories, spread our own beliefs and things that we believe in and together we can turn the world inside out. Through his project, anyone can form a group action, a group of people who all believe in one common thing, and take portraits of each other, send JR the photos and JR will print them large scale and send them back to you to then be pasted somewhere in your community. What an amazing project.
So, what are our 8th graders doing to join in on the action?!
8th graders have been asked to think about a topic, either a social or world issue, and from there create an idea web which expands that particular topic. Once they have created their idea web, they began looking through magazines, newspapers, maps and more to find photographs and text that they could cut out and use in their piece. They then began gluing their pieces onto canvas boards. This piece is revolving around our central theme of layers, so day by day students will continue to add layers to their piece. Today, after students glued their images and text down, we challenged students to: "cover 60% of their canvas board with white paint." With a challenge like this, students are expected to work intuitively, not plan too much, but think about what parts of the canvas are most important to keep and what can be covered by the paint, maybe some parts of the paint are thinner than others so as images or text might be starting to poke through...things like this. Some amazing things are happening and students are really exploring what they believe in which is amazing! Check out some in process images below! We will be doing the Inside Out project and getting images sent to us for us to paste somewhere but in the meantime we are creating these mix media pieces about a topic of a social or world issue as a way to stand up for something we believe in!
12/2: Progress we have made...
8th Graders have been hard at work in art class. They have been making dynamic surface square layered studies on top of working on their social/world issue piece. They experiment with different art techniques on their square layered studies so that whatever techniques or materials they find interesting they can use on their social/world issue piece. This way, they aren't committing to ideas right away, instead they are trying materials and techniques out on a separate piece and if they enjoy it they can use it for their main project! Check out some images of square layered dynamic surface studies as well as some in progress images of students at work on their social/world issue piece!
Square Layer Studies:
Social / World Issue Mix Media Pieces In Progress:
Right before this photo was taken, I turned around to see ALL the boys at this table trying to tap their heads and rub their stomachs at the same time, I sadly took this photo one second too late to catch them all!! These guys are so ridiculous and silly, but are also SO great to have in class!
12/15: Wrapping up the social/world issue project and moving on to new things!
8th Graders did some amazing work on their social/world issue pieces. I will post some photos soon! Moving forward we are doing two more projects, the first which we have just started is the Hope project. The art teachers all felt like though the social/world issue project produced some very strong work, there was a lot of negativity in terms of themes that students chose. This is not at all a bad thing because there is a lot of negative things happening in our current world and students were asked to choose a topic from our current world. However, we didn't want to focus so much on all the bad things this entire art term so instead, for our next project we will be focusing on the theme of HOPE. We are partaking in the JR Inside Out project. For this hope project, students got into groups of 3 or 4 students, they then brainstormed what hope looks like, what hope feels like, what makes each individual in the group hopeful. From there students are going to be taking a portrait photo of HOPE. They will be directing each other and taking photos of each other to then create one photo that represents HOPE! From there we are going to print out all these photos on photo copy paper and do a mock up JR style exhibition by wheat pasting them somewhere in the school or outside of the school. Then, once we get the funding for the real JR inside out project, we will send off all of the portraits (with parents permission of course) to JR to be printed large scale and sent back to us for us to hang somewhere in our community!! So exciting. Today, we took students outside and took photos of what they felt showed hope. Check out some images I took of students working in their groups outside, they look pretty happy and hopeful =]
1/3/16: Starting off the new year in the art room...
It is the last day of winter break, hopefully all my students and their families had a great break from school and are feeling ready to come back to the art room! 8th graders made a lot of progress on their individual digital projects in which they are responding to the idea of hope but this time individually. How do YOU interpret the idea of hope? What do you see as hopeful? Students could even use symbols and metaphors to represent hope for them individually. Students are expected to create this piece using their own photography and they must use at least 3 layers and 3 editing tools from either Adobe Photoshop or the iPad app Moldiv.
Students have been creating some amazing digital pieces that capture hope for each one of them, check out some of the finished ones below! We began printing them with our nice fancy printer before break, so we will keep on printing as students wrap these up!!
1/11/16: Moving on to our new project...photo sculptures!
Now that most 8th graders have finished their individual digital piece about their idea of hope we are moving on to our new project which is centered around photo as sculpture and how artists use a 2D medium such as photography but create 3D sculptures with them! Check out our pinterest page for inspiration! We talked about how with this project, there won't be a theme, like hope, instead students will be coming up with their own ideas and creating a sort of narrative with the photos they choose and the form that they create with them. It will be really interesting to see what happens! Check out some examples of in progress photo sculptures below!
1/16: 8th graders have been busy working on their sculptures!
This past week, 8th graders have been busy finishing anything up from prior projects and also working on their photo sculptures! On thursday and friday, students had a critique in which they each had to present their work in progress to the class and talk about their plans to finish, then they would receive feedback from fellow students as well as teachers! Stay tuned for more photos of their in progress works!
ATTENTION OMS PARENTS! Your children have been hard at work in the art room during quarter two creating all kinds of amazing artwork! To honor their hard work, we will be hosting a quarter two ART SHOW on THURSDAY, JANUARY 21st, 2016 FROM 6-8pm! Your child may have brought home an invitation to invite you and whoever else would like to come see their amazing art work! We hope to see you all there!
If you cannot come to the art show on it's opening night, it will be up all day Friday, January 22nd and then will begin to come down the following week. If you still do not get a chance to come see your child's work, I will be taking tons of photos documenting the event and posting them to my website after that. Be sure to check them out by clicking on the OMS ART SHOW tab at the top of the page and click on 2016: Quarter 2 Art Show.