Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold is a painter and sculptor, but she is best known for her painted story quilts.  She combined the her paintings, the African American tradition of storytelling, with the tradition of quilt-making all in these unique pieces designed after the Tibetan tanghka.  She used the quilting to frame her artwork and as an easier way to transport/ship her work.

Students created a torn paper collage American Flag and used her Flag Story Quilt as a jumping off point.  I wanted students to play around with composition/ color and words/ images to create a meaningful personalized flag.  Colored magazine pages were glued to tag board with collage glue in the first class.  The next class, students were provided access to a wide variety of materials to use for printmaking, spraying stencils, applying words and images.  This was quite a feat since I am a traveling art teacher, but it was well worth it for a big artful bang at the end of the year.  Students have spent this year working with many different materials and learning techniques through their projects, so this is a great opportunity to be creative and experiment by layering many different materials over their flag while not completely obliterating the image under it.

Guidance needed to be given on how to use and layer materials and in what order so as not to ruin dry materials by using it over wet products and that sort of thing. I had many 'drawing' materials on their tables and set up stations at tables near the back of the room for pastels, spray inks, paints, and printmaking. Students worked hard and had a blast blending these products to create some amazing results. Really nice with the 4th of July coming up.

This was the final class for the year.  While students were working on their project, I quizzed them about the many artists we had studied that semester (9 in 15 weeks).  I was sure to include questions about the artist's life, their style, subject matter, as well as our projects and what they learned about techniques they used to create them.  I am truly grateful to be able to teach and do something I love so much.  A big thank you to the parents for sharing your wonderful children with me...what a great group of young people I have had the privilege to work with this year!

Collagraph

Grades 6-12 students completed their textured landscapes and used water-soluable printmaking ink in a variety of colors to pull a print. There were a few challenges to address in this project.  Students learned to mark the corners before pulling a print in order to line everything up correctly each time they layered a different color, they learned to work dark to light and how the colors can print over each other, and doing each color separately allows the colors to not dry out too quickly before pulling a print.  There were aspects of this project that were very bothersome...keeping all materials the same 1/4" height on the format and keeping items glued down for multiple prints.  I think next time I will work on a textured landscape and keep the format as their completed work, painting it all one color like Louise Nevelson might do.  Or another idea I had was to work on a canvas, adding texture to certain areas in the landscape while creating a painting. I really prefer the collagraph done with the sheets of craft foam.  I personally cannot stand working with craft foam for anything, with the exception of how beautifully they work for collagraph printmaking.

Grades 2-5 students created a collagraph printing plate using the craft foam sheets and had time to pull a print using a variety of colors.   Their assignment was to make a person using a variety of geometric shapes.  Their person needed to be doing some kind of activity.  Kids are so creative! They came up with cheerleaders, a person playing guitar, a runner, and many more ideas.  Sooo fun! Also, they could not overlap the foam or it would not be level and would not print properly.  For example, if they wanted to add a hat to the head, they had to cut off part of the head and separate the hat a bit from the head for it to look correct.  This project works best if they separate each piece from the one next to it, leaving a little gap.

Printmaking is such a hectic class for me to teach, with messy ink, students moving around the inking station, and rotating the students through so that everyone has time to print.  I sadly had no time for photos at this class.  Hopefully you can gain from my descriptions of the projects we did and for those of you with students, can see these concepts in the projects they brought home. I did get this photo at home of  a print that I pulled from my student's collagraph.  I just love her cheerleader!

Textured Landscape

We looked at the artwork of Grant Wood, most famous due to his work "American Gothic".  This painting was meant as a tribute to the hardworking American during the time of the depression.  We also looked at Wood's landscape paintings which inspired a lesson on these textured landscapes.

Students grades 6th-12th worked on creating a collograph printing plate out of various materials.  They began by sketching their landscape onto cardboard.  They choose from the various materials available to them...burlap, string, tissue paper, foil, pipe cleaners, rice, etc.  They needed to build everything up evenly and with no sharp edges by gluing onto to their base, using their sketch as a guide.  They will ink this next week and pull a print revealing a textured landscape.

Students grades 2nd-5th grade worked on creating a textured landscape by first drawing their landscape in Sharpie.  Then using various texture plates and warm and cool colors of crayons, they did rubbings in each section of their drawn landscape. Warm colors in front, cool colors in background, and I explained the why of this.  This would be a good opportunity to ask your student if they remember why?

I will post pictures this week (camera glitch) but wanted to share what we are doing.  Watch for it in the next post.

Frank Lloyd Wright

We were studying the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright this week and his modern design for his time.  Students created texture with watercolor techniques and used these to design their own houses for a refrigerator magnet.  Students glued pieces to a rectangle tag board base and attached a magnet to the back. All levels participated in this project and the results were very creative! If you are ever in Pennsylvania, take the time to visit Fallingwater.