Artists Innovate

One of the Artist Behavior units we tried out in my advanced class 2nd semester was about artists using nontraditional materials or methods. I called it “Artists Innovate” because though less descriptive it was a lot shorter!

Here is part of the lesson plan:

1. The students will view and discuss work by relevant artists.
2. The students will apply paint or ink with non-traditional tools.
3. The students will explore creating a traditional image with non-traditional materials.
4. The students will explore creating sculpture with found objects and non-traditional materials.
5. The students will plan and implement a project that is created with a non-traditional process or materials.

Procedure:

Day 1: Look at Chuck Close’s fingerprint portraits- layering prints to create different values- and discuss. Look at images of Matisse doing gestural drawing using a pole and discuss- why did he use that approach? Next, students will make a picture of a plant from observation either using their fingerprints or a paintbrush on a stick.

Day 2: Continue plant pictures, try the opposite of fingerprints or paintbrush on a stick.

Day 3: Look collage/fiber artists Mickalene Thomas, Bryan Grove, etc. Students make small traditional image with nontraditional media.

Day 4: Look at found object/assemblage artists. Explore available materials and play/experiment.

Day 5: Come up with a proposal and present to teacher. Work on project!

Days 6-20: Work on assignments.

Here are two examples of the traditional subject, nontraditional approach exercise. Plants made with a paintbrush on a stick and with fingerprints.

This student turned a broken hair dryer into a drawing machine. He melted crayons on the blades and figured out how to still make the fan run with a little help from our technology teacher.

This student wanted to make jewelry out of found objects. She started with forks and ended up exploring nontraditional jewelry the whole time.

She got scraps of glass from our local hot glass shop and fused them before making a wire wrapped necklace inspired by Alexander Calder.

This student used fabric scraps to create an abstracted kite piece.

This was the unit where I saw the most exploration from my students. Some didn’t have a finished product and others had multiple. Since I grade mostly based on the Artistic Thinking Process that worked out just fine!

Opposites

Now that I've made it through my first semester as a PreK-12th grade art teacher, I wanted to write some posts reflecting on what worked well and what didn't. I've been exploring Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) for a few years now but this was my first time to try it out with 7th-12th grade. 5 hours of my day are spent with high school students- 1 hour is advanced art, 1 hour is computer graphics, and 3 hours are "graphic design". My advanced class assignments have been theme based. I think most of the themes are keepers but next time I may introduce them at a different time of year or with a different intro. Part of getting to know my new students and new school environment has been trying to find the fine line between giving them enough of a direction to get started but not so much that they imitate. A lot of students have a bad tendency to find an example online and imitate it with minimal changes (which cued the fair use lesson I'll try to remember to write about later).

One of the first themes I assigned was "Opposites". I gave students a brainstorming sheet to help them get started.

Opposites

We are going to be exploring the idea of “Opposites” for our next project. To begin, brainstorm a list of words and their opposites. The words can be adjectives like heavy and light or they can be more abstract ideas.

1st Word Opposite

Choose one pair and decide how to use it

Pick the opposite pair that is most intriguing to you. Brainstorm ideas on how to use those in an art project. Your project could be 2D or 3D. The choice of media is up to you.

Mrs.Morris’ example

Opposite pair: Heavy and Light

Idea: Make a sculpture of an elephant (something very heavy) out of feathers (something very light) so that the sculpture is almost a contradiction.

My idea Describe your idea with words or thumbnail sketches. Present ideas to Mrs.Morris before beginning. Use the back of the paper if you need more space.

 The first example posted above used the opposite pair of "good and evil" with Little Red Riding Hood imagery.

Fire and Ice- the student used the same profile but flipped so it was like two versions of the same person.

 Young and Old- the student superimposed a photo of her grandparents' wedding onto their mirror using Photoshop.

 Heaven and Hell- fiery background to represent hell and tissue paper angel wings to represent heaven. Another student also did heaven and hell as almost tourist attractions but I somehow missed taking a photo of the painting.

 Chaos and Calm- someone taking a relaxing bath during a zombie apocalypse. There are some little perspective issues here but the idea was interesting.

 Rich and Poor- the student had the idea of constructing a mansion out of trash. There was just a ton of detail put into this project, even windows cut from some sort of packaging plastic.

 Thi sproject was originally going to be Life and Death but it turned into positive and negative or black and white. 

Complementary Colors & Composition- paintbrushes painting opposite colors in opposite directions.

I wish... 

I had found some examples but made those word pairs off limits. I actually didn't SHOW any examples for this project, just talked about ideas because I was fighting the imitation problem. I also wish I'd saved this theme for later in the year because I really like it, I think it has a lot of potential, and it wasn't quite reached. I'm not unhappy with the students' work, I just think if I had done it later in the year after they'd worked more on developing ideas, the work could have been even better.