The Reason for a Flower...

Ruth Keller's delightful book says, "The reason for a flower is to manufacture seeds!" Plants and seeds were the classroom focus last month in science. But as we painted large O'Keefe style flowers in the art room, 2nd graders also explored color value... how artists use tints and shades to give form to a flat object or to add light or shadow or contrast.

Playing pass the painting with Georgia O'Keefe

 

Day 1- Mixing tints

Day 2- Mixing shades

Finally adding a pistil and staymens with pollen

...and cutting and attaching our flowers

Dot Day 2015 Was Dotilicious!

On September 15, Lafayette joined millions of teachers and students around the world to celebrate creativity, collaboration, and the courage to "Make Your Mark!" A delightful, sunshiny day just made our outdoor campus feel more like a delicious celebration! 
Here are a few moments from our special day:

Sidewalk Chalk During Recess... a Great Way to Express How We Were Feeling!

No Walls in Our New Trailer Campus? No Problem!

Have Dots? Think Cookies:)

Negative Space Hand Dots

Dotty Cuna Indian Molas- Thank you Grade 2!

Our Spanish Teachers Show Their Dot Day Spirit!

Sharing Our Dot Day Attitude!

Celebrate Creativity You Say? 

How About a Custom Designed Shirt?

We Even Dotified the Fence!

Feeling Grateful As We Transform

Feeling grateful for Mr. Young preserving and rehanging our sweet LAFAYETTE panels, a labor of love by Lafayette's class of 2011.

 

Feeling grateful for a light-filled, functional, air conditioned art room and engaged, curious, thoughtful, creative students:)

Fifth graders classifying art by style and justifying their choice!

Feeling grateful for enthusiastic, warm supportive parents. And feeling grateful for our "tree-house" campus, where we will find new ways to make and hang art in our outdoor hallways and on many yards of fence which beckon like a blank canvas.

And finally, feeling grateful for the opportunity to watch Lafayette reborn... beginning with giant earth moving machines carving huge holes where our 1970s addition used to be and the promise of a crane next week, all right outside our art room windows... so much excitement!!!

Celebrate Creativity at the Visionary Museum!

A few weeks ago, Ms. Perll and I spent an inspirational morning in Baltimore at one of my all time favorite museums where one learns to expect the unexpected and find delight in the quirkiness of humankind!

Art work at the museum has been created by untrained artists who find their inspiration from within.

AVAM believes, "there is great power in not knowing what will or won't work" and they state, "as in science, ignorance often gives birth to genuinely new inventions...Discovering possibilities that others do not see is what visionaries do best."

Whirlygig and found object sculpture by Vollis Simpson

After viewing the museum, we had lunch with a spectacular view of this sculpture and federal hill. Here is the advice posted on the cafe wall:

I am hoping to keep the same sense of delight and wonder as we create art in our magical trailer "treehouse" this school year and watch our new school building be constructed in front of our eyes. What an amazing opportunity for learning and inspiration!!!

Feed the ART Teacher!

An inspiring two weeks in Italy and an intensive week at the Arts, Books, and Creativity Institute at the Museum of Women in the Arts has recharged my batteries! 

The mosaics and frescoes of Pompeii and the architecture of the ancient hilltop towns of Sicily were a reminder of the richness that
the arts gave daily lives thousands of years ago.

During the museum workshop we explored studio habits of mind, many ways to engage students in talking and writing about art, and the ever engaging form of book arts in all it's 3-D glory. 

Many times our books became an engineering challenge as well as a chance to explore language arts, science, and social studies through paper and pop ups and sculpture!

Wrapping it Up!

Where has the time gone!!! As I pack boxes for the big move, art goes on... What's been on tap? Sketching our neighborhood and our school for grades 1-3... our powers of observation are sharpened and our drawing skills refined:

A fourth grade class helped with cleanup (art room style) before drawing and shading bonsai trees. 

Fifth graders are working on using the vanishing point to show perspective Renaissance style. A middle school challenge as we get ready to move on!

And most of our students had a chance to add their farewell messages and grafitti to our art room walls before demolition takes place this summer!

Thanks to those parents who were able to find the precious time to help out in the art room this school year! You made my life more sane and gave your children a wonderful gift!!!

Hoping everyone has a great summer filled with visually rich experiences!!!

COLOR is COOL! ... and WARM:)

First graders spent some time last month playing with color... mixing secondaries and tertiaries from primaries and slicing the color wheel in half as we learned about warm (fire! hot lava!) and cool (blue water, cool green grass) colors.

Van Gogh's "Wheat Fields" was our inspiration piece for a landscape painting as we traveled to color stations dab, dab, dabbing like Mr Van Gogh, separating our warms and cools at the horizon line.