Warhol-inspired Self-portraits

Andy Warhol has inspired a lot of artists and art lessons, and it's easy to see why. Bold, expressive, and totally subversive, his work turned the self-serious art world upside-down. With his combination of ordinary objects, celebrities, and politicians, he turned the public's and the art world's obsessive cultural lens on itself, asking us to ask ourselves what we take seriously. Pretty heavy, and with lots of parallels to work earlier in the century, like Marcel DuChamp.

Third grade student self-portrait

There are lots of reasons that students love Andy Warhol, and although he was early to bring silkscreening to the forefront of fine art, that's got nothing to do with what kids love. They love his realistic portraits and extreme color. Who can blame them? His work suggests all kinds of emotions, multiple personalities, and satirical takes on famous people who popular culture thought they knew well. It's a terrific jumping off point for students to think about what aspects of themselves they would want expressed visually, who they are by reputation, and who they are internally.

Fourth grade student work

The project began with photographs, where students in my third/fourth mixed-grade classes considered gaze direction, facial expression, and body language to create a visual expression of personality. The result could be a conflict of parts of their personalities, what they want to be, or who they feel they are.

Fourth grade student work

Using their photographs, students transferred sketches to watercolor paper by using graphite transfer paper. It's a great tool, and students were smitten by the possibilities it opened for them. They were able to get over the eternal self-portrait dread of it "not looking like me" and move onto what they hoped the work would express.

 When students completed their drawings with transfer paper, they used watercolor paint to tint the image.

The lesson objectives asked students to deeply consider composition as part of their work. So often, students fall into the trap of thinking that a successful self-portrait looks right at the viewer, and is centered, like a photo-studio portrait. I gave them extra-large paper, so that they could trim it down afterward if they changed their minds and wanted to try different angles or shapes for the composition.

Fourth grade student work

The works above and below have pretty awesome compositional choices. In the work above, she seems to be looking at something we cannot see, and her gaze directs us toward the light side of the image, suggesting a light source that appears again on her hair. She looks on calmly and strongly, and the diagonal angle adds to our suspense about what she sees.

Third grade student work.

In the painting above, his sense of loneliness or sadness is not only enhanced by the color and gaze, but how the artist chose to compose the work with himself down in the corner, enhancing the visual isolation. Students also looked at the use of shades of a single color used in Warhol's work. The painting above effectively used a monochromatic scheme to shows the lights and darks, which can be seen in areas such as how his neck is a darker shade than his face, and his lips are only ever so slightly warm in color.

Fourth grade student work

When students finished their paintings, they presented their work with construction paper matting. They used a variety of colors, shapes, and compositions there as well.

Fourth grade student work

It would be hard to overstate how happy students are with these artworks.

Fourth grade student work

Here are two more, just in case, like me, you cannot get enough of the powerful, creative voices these young artists possess. I am honored to work with them. In case you forgot while reading, these artists are nine and ten years old.

Third grade student work

Third grade student work

Heart Prints!

It is the perfect time of year to get thinking about someone you love! Second graders explored printmaking by creating these fabulous hearts.

The process is not intimidating at all, even for novice printers, because the technique eliminates worries about "just right" ink amounts- being too dry or too wet.

To begin, second graders had a flat piece of styrofoam, onto which they rolled ink and then pressed it on a colorful piece of construction paper.

The image above is a great example to understand the process:
1. Roll the yellow ink onto a big styrofoam rectangle, and print on lavender paper.
2. Wash the ink off the styrofoam, cut it into a heart, and ink with a new color- here, the artist used black ink next, pressing it onto the yellow.
3. Wash the ink off the styrofoam heart, cut it smaller, and ink with a new color- here, the artist used blue ink, printing it onto the black.

The artist of the work above stopped there, but artists could keep going, cutting smaller hearts out each time from the same piece of styrofoam until it's too small. The artist below cut out and printed seven hearts!

If there is too little ink, the artist can just try again before washing and trimming. If there is too much ink, it doesn't matter because there are no fine drawn lines getting flooded by the ink.

If you wanted to try this at home, you don't need fancy printmaking supplies like ink and a brayer, you could just use tempera paint and a brush. The styrofoam could be something you repurpose from the grocery store, as it's often used to pack meat or vegetables. Just give it a wash and use the smooth side to print.

These took two 45-minute classes with twenty-two students sharing five trays of ink, but if you try it at home it would be realistic to do in about an hour or so. It is a snow day here in Burlington, so if you have a little time today, go get artsy, and make someone a Valentine!

Wishes for the World

First graders have been busily printing and sewing during these last couple of weeks, preparing for our upcoming Art Night.

The new year is a great time to reflect on change and ideals, so back in January first graders began our new art unit by reflecting on the things they need and appreciate in their own lives, and from among those, one that they would wish for every person in the world to access.

This is the list they brainstormed from that prompt.

The first step for each student was to draw a small picture on styrofoam of the wish they chose to illustrate. Some students chose to show their wish with only pictures, while others wanted to include text. Text with printmaking is tricky, because the word has to be written backward initially, and is reversed in the printing process.  You can see the mirror image alphabet above and below here, with the example of the word "food."

One thing that is fascinating to me about early literacy is the fact that children are quite excellent at deciphering text in different orientations, so this did not prove to hinder students. Some wrote it both ways, as below.

Love

The printing process is one that first graders have done before in the art room, using materials such as bubble wrap, stamps, sponges, and cups to create prints. This is the first time these students have used brayers, ink, and styrofoam print plates. They rolled out the ink and printed their drawings onto fabric, which they then sewed to a larger background fabric using a sewing machine.

As an aside, children love sewing machines. They also usually enjoy hand sewing, but they find the machine totally thrilling. If you have a student who came home from this project really, really excited about sewing, consider looking around for an inexpensive or used one, or ask a neighbor if there is one collecting dust in their basement. Not yet into it yourself?  Learn it along with your child. It's totally empowering to make a first pillow case or totebag.

House

Their wishes are so beautiful that it made it hard not to get emotional. The things students wanted for humanity truly reflect what they love and need in their own worlds.

School

To make their wishes attention-grabbing and cheerful, they included all manner of ribbons, rickrack, and pompoms.

Water

Before you fear that the project is devoid of action, it is actually tied to the year-long theme of community action in the first grade classrooms. Many, many students were interested in the concept of food security, having just come out of both a food drive they ran, concurrent with visits from educators at the Chittenden County Food Shelf.

The school has also just hosted a visit this week from Chittenden Solid Waste District, who came to educate students about keeping our world clean by optimizing and refining our use of school-wide classroom composting, recycling, reuse, and garbage plans.

Environment

Be on the lookout for these beautiful flags overhead in our first floor hallway. They will be on display all this month.

Art

One last flag to share. The idea behind it was too beautiful to leave out. The artist explained that dreaming itself is a powerful and important wish, to keep a person's mind open to bigger, loftier aspirations in life. "I love dreaming," he said, "and everyone should get to do it."

Dreaming

K-2 Art Night!

Clear your schedules, the arts event of this winter is coming this Thursday, February 9, 2017, from 6-7:30pm at Edmunds Elementary in Burlington!

Nail and String Art, grade two

There will be nearly 400 works on view made by  our youngest artists in Kindergarten, grade one, and grade two. The art show will begin at 6pm, and seating for the music concert will begin at 6:30pm.

These students have been working so hard all year to show off their skills. You will find that each grade level has completed a pottery project, thanks to the generosity of the EES PTO. These pottery projects can be brought home the night of the show, because families are the safest way for this artwork to travel. Kindergarten has made bowls, first grade has made coil pots, and second graders have made butterflies.

Lois Ehlert-inspired collage, Kindergarten.

Here are a few ways to enjoy the show with your student:
• Remind your student to stay with you, use walking feet, and enjoy looking with their eyes at the artwork.
• Ask your student about their artwork. How did they make it?  What tools or materials were used?
•  If you are unclear about the image the student has made, a great opener is to ask "Can you tell me about your picture?"

First grade integrated light-unit landscape, showing what's needed to create a shadow

Other commitments that night? The art show will, with exception of the pottery, be on display all this coming week and next. Visit it anytime school is open on the first floor, beginning inside the Main Entrance, which is swimming with fantasy fish from our second grade artists.

Fantasy fish, grade 2

When you come, make sure to look up!  The first graders have created Wishes for the World, strings of colorful flags printed with their hopes and dreams for all of humanity, full of wishes such as freedom, health, clean water, and enough to eat.

We hope to see you there! 

Marble Runs, Amazing Mazes, and Making!

    This summer, when I took CreateMakeLearn at Generator, the magical Pinbox3000 cardboard guru Ben Matchstick ignited (pun intended) a desire to give students more space to experiment, make, and fail quickly, using cardboard as the primary medium.

   One of the best things that Ben told us was that students needed to "fail faster." It's a problem of our school system that we value success so highly, without teaching students a few points:

1) Everything that they use has been designed by someone. That someone likely failed dozens of times, but kept at it, to get the final result.

2) Failure, and getting comfortable with it, allows humans to experiment more comfortably, without the fear they often associate with it.

3) Frustration, and working through that feeling, needs to be experienced early and often in elementary school. Without that skill, students will hit the challenging trials of middle school and will shut down instead of persevering.

If all that sounds too heavy, just give kids a pile of cardboard, tape, and hot glue, and it will happen pretty naturally.

Students began this project with a Design Thinking lens, with some adjustments to their age levels and interests.  The mindset of Design Thinking asks students to solve a problem for another person. My students identified a user (real or imaginary) and a situation in which the user encounters a feeling for which they need a solution (lonely, bored, etc.).

The only requirements were that students work in pairs, use materials provided, and use one or more marbles to find a solution to their user's problem.

 As you might imagine, these being children, most of the students chose children as their users. Users and problem scenarios included examples from my students such as:

A bored 5 year-old sister, stuck in a car seat, needs a lap size game.
A 10 year old, playing alone in his room, wanting something solo but interactive to do.
A 30ish guy in a doctor waiting room, who is nervous and needs to be distracted.

(That last one cracked me up. I would love toys/mazes/puzzles in the waiting room.)

The solutions that students created were nearly all intended to amuse the user and lift their spirits, mostly toys or other interactive playthings.

This approach gets students to begin making art for people other than themselves, and to consider how designs work for different people in different situations. For example, that little sister in the car seat will not be able to pick up the marble if she drops it, so how can you keep her from dropping it while she plays, but still see it?

More often than they might have liked, students found themselves with pieces breaking, falling off, or otherwise not functioning as intended. It was a process that involved a lot of investigation (What kind of paint can stick to a rubber band? How can I attach the rubber band to cardboard? Tape keeps pulling off...) and science (The marble is falling too quickly and missing the tube, we need to change the angle, like this.)

Many groups made parts that moved, so that the user could adapt the game and change it as he or she plays. The pair who made the game pictured below created anchors on the back so that popsicle sticks could be spun and repositioned to change the outcomes, and encourage experimentation.

 The pair who created this next maze made it rock on a small pedestal underneath, to increase the challenge.

The pedestal

How it rolls

A few years ago, when I decided that my classes needed more tool exploration, this project would have still had me biting my nails. What if they burn themselves on the hot glue? (They did. And they survived.) What if they fling the marbles or rubber bands across the room? (They did. And they survived.) I realized that they needed more risk-taking in art, and they are absolutely thriving with it. Several students over the many weeks told me that this was their favorite thing in all of elementary school art, and these are fourth and fifth graders.

So what happens when a pair wants to build a mash-up catapult/slingshot that truly flings that marble across the room? Have them point it at the wall, not the windows. It will be fine.