The art department, Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Serafini and myself, are always playing around with new ideas for our students and sometimes we like to change things up! So, we decided to switch things up with the sculpture project, instead of focusing on architecture and building, we are playing around with the idea of OUTSIDER ART and a specific artist, Judith Scott who creates some really amazing sculptures!
First, we talked about what Outsider Art is - it consists of artists who are not a part of the traditional artistic community; they don't go to galleries and museums, they are not trained as an artist, they haven't gone to art school, instead they just make!
OUTSIDER ART - "art created outside the boundaries of official culture"
Many outsider artists are self-taught. After learning a little bit about outsider art, we talked about Judith Scott and her very interesting life story. We watched this short video about her art, water here! After watching, we discussed our reactions and talked about how interesting it is to think about her sculptures as a place for almost keeping something safe, like a secret or something no one knows about us. Read more about Judith Scott here!
Students are now beginning to create their own Judith Scott inspired wrapped sculpture however it must have some personal connection to them. They came up with some really great connections and seem really excited to make their sculptures because they have that connection - its great!! Check back for photos to see their progress!
It has been a while since I have posted...
It has been a crazy year so far and I realize I am behind on updating everyone on what the 7th graders have been up to! They have completed their Judith Scott pieces and have actually already moved on and completed their next project, monoprinting! But first, lets look at some photos of their sculptures!
Moving on to monoprinting!
This is one of my favorite projects and the students seem to really enjoy it as well! After focusing so much on Judith Scott and thinking about wrapping something important up inside their sculptures, I wanted students to start to think about the space around themselves, some might call it their safe space, or maybe it is a space they go to escape to or a place they day dream about, it could be real or imagined or inspired by a place that is special to them. I wanted them to visualize what that space looked like abstractly, in terms of lines, shapes, textures, and color. We then learned about monoprinting and began experimenting. Through our several days of experiments, students learned about adding to monoprints through drawing back into them, cutting up and collaging them, or adding additional monoprint layers to them. Through monoprinting, students made A TON of prints and students were encouraged to think about their prints either as a series or choosing one final print to represent their "space." Check out some of the amazing results!
CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE QUARTER 2 ART SHOW HERE!