Theme: Music

Music was the last theme that my high school students worked on before spring break when EVERYTHING changed.

I don't think I know anyone who doesn't like music. Everyone can find a style they like. In addition to March being Youth Art Month, it is Music In Our Schools Month so it seemed like a good time to make connections between the arts.

Here is the slides presentation that I used to go over the big ideas:

The big questions for this unit were:

How can artists visually express music?

and

How can color convey feeling?

After the discussion, the students warmed up by using 10 minutes* to capture the feeling of a song in a nonobjective painting. The majority of students wanted to keep working so they spent the rest of the class period on the task. I let the students listen to the song of their choice using their personal device or headphones and their school computer.

Students had choice of media.

Eventually, students came up with a plan for a project inspired by music that they could complete in about 2 weeks.

This student painted on old records and then riveted them together to form a wall hanging.

The inspiration for this experimental painting came from the title of the sheet music. I have a couple of old sheet music books I rescued from being recycled.

This painting was inspired by Weezer's Island in the Sun

These two friends made paintings the complement each other.

This drawing was by our Italian exchange student who really loved to draw. I like how you can see where she erased on the left side.

Here are the Visual Arts Standards and Graphic Design Competencies we addressed through this unit:

4th Grade Calder Inspired Circus Sculptures- 2nd batch!

This year my elementary school chose a circus theme and I started the school year off with circus themed projects to ease into things. I have most of my elementary classes for a whole semester but 4th graders switched for 2nd quarter. I decided since the first group enjoyed the process so much, I would repeat it with the 2nd group, and I'm SO glad I did. The kids blew it out of the water! They were so engaged and wanted to keep collaborating and adding cool features that it ended up taking the bulk of their art classes. Having class on Friday left them short 2 classes due to Thanksgiving break and Christmas break starting this Friday, but I'd rather have them do a really good job on a couple projects than be rushed through more.

We started pretty much the same way- talking about Alexander Calder's work and watching part of one of his circus performances- I didn't have time to read the book "Sandy's Circus" to the students this time but it is a great book that they enjoyed! I borrowed it from my local library but you can find a read aloud video online or order from Amazon.

If you order from my link I may recieve a small commission at no extra cost to you.

After the video, I showed students the tubs of objects available for them to use. We had pipe cleaners for wire, fabric scraps, yarn, beads, buttons, gems, cardboard, and all the scraps found in the collage center and recycling bin.

This was a collaboration between 2 girls- there is a horse rider in the front and trapeze artist hanging in the back.

One of the students made Dumbo complete a feather!

Bird Man

 

This is the group that discovered the recycling bin

When one group discovered the recycling bin, they maybe went a little overboard. In the next class we talked about transforming objects so that people could understand the new purpose. This group created a tank with someone holding their breath, turned a plastic cup into a stand for the spotlight and operator, made a packing material into a nest for Bird Man, and used a pop can as his perch.

Details of the circus performers

This group became very adept at creating little performers. They would get everything formed and just ask me to hit it with hot glue. I felt more comfortable being the hot glue gun operator. I stationed myself where I could supervise everyone and they just brought pieces to me to glue.

If you have a lot of random "craft" items or found objects taking up cabinet space, this project would be a great way to use some up in a creative way. If you ever want to do wire sculptures with your younger students but don't have the materials to do it safely, pipe cleaners can be an easy substitute!

Community and TAB-ish art history

Last summer as part of my graduate coursework, I took a class that was a survey of art history for educators. I LOVE art history, I minored in it at ESU, but I was a little nervous not knowing if we'd be expected to create lesson plans "in the style of" the artists we were learning about. Thankfully throughout my courses at UNK, I found that they had a real interest in letting the students make the program work for their lives- their teaching style, grade level, community, etc.

Throughout the course I tried to develop resources that I would actually use. I figured out how to incorporate art history into my TAB-ish classroom.

Our school mascot is a cobra. 

One unit that inspired an idea was American Regionalism. I always try to boil art history down into the big idea. Regionalist artists were basically painting pictures that represented the people, places, and stories of their communities. Today's communities, even in the midwest where Regionalism was rooted, look much different than in Grant Wood's, Thomas Hart Benton's, and John Steuart Curry's day. Technology and social media have changed how we connect. I wondered how my students would define their communities.

I've been using a mixture of boot camps and themes for my main high school art class. On the day we were due for a new theme, I started off with a slides presentation about Regionalism.

American Regionalism & Contemporary Communities from Katie Morris

We discussed the slides, discussed the idea of community and how it doesn't have to be a physical community, before brainstorming communities that the students are a part of and figuring out how they wanted to represent the idea of community in a work of art. Some students chose our school as a community, several represented teams or organizations, some used farming or hunting, some chose online communities, some even represented serving the community in the military. The ideas were vast and so were the media the students chose to carry out their ideas.

This student made a rural scene which fits our community but filled in the space with binary code to represent himself.

Two designs with the same composition and colors (our school colors) reversed were woven together to represent our school having a lot of different types of people but we're all one community. Made by a student with some special needs.

Our school has very successful running programs and the students talk about the feel of family and community there. I wish I'd planned for more time on this project. The painting of the team on the top right would have been much improved if the student wasn't rushed to finish before the end of the semester.

Godspell was our school musical last fall so it made an appearance in a couple projects.

This student works at a veterinary office as a kennel tech and represented her job as part of her community.

This was supposed to be a church picnic but the student ran out of time and had to eliminate more of the crowd. 

Representation of the style and sense of humor of this students' community of friends.

Artist Statement: I decided to represent the farming community through the burning of CRP/Grassland. I choose this topic because I grew up in a farming community. Also, I have had experience in burning CRP. In my art I painted the grass being burned, sparks flew through the air and into the fire, and the fire was fully ablaze. I had trees in the background that were about to be caught on fire. Finally, behind the fire I have the burnt pieces of grass that have already been through the fire.

The two students above used their after school jobs as part of their community project.

Artist Statement: I did, for my community project, a couch with four people people, one a Death Eater (from Harry Potter), one a Science Officer (from Star Trek), one a X-wing Pilot (from Star Wars), and a Superhero (The Flash, from DC comics). I represented the Nerd community by putting these four together. I chose this topic because I am very big in this community. I visually represented this by putting them all hanging out together on a couch, in one of their houses. The title also represents the community by being the thing that starts every Simpsons’ episode ever (Couch Gags).

One of my freshmen loves wheel throwing and is pretty good at it. She has a large family that represents community to her so she made a bowl to represent each member of her family.

I think this theme will be added to my rotation. I teach in a small school so my class "regular" art class is like an Art 1, but students can take it more than once so I may have a senior with 4 years of art under their belt and a freshman who hasn't had art since elementary school in the same class. I think I will have to figure out a rotation of themes or some other method to allow students to propose their own theme. My advanced art class has been a full-TAB experiment this year. I'm still finding the right balance for my students.

Unsung Heroes

I heard about the Unsung Heroes art competition from a former colleague (featured in the video above) and thought it sounded like an awesome project. I decided to use "Heroes" as the first themed project for my high school graphic design class. Some students have taken the class 4 times and it's a first for others. The students could choose any medium to communicate their idea.
We started with a discussion of what a hero is and watched the videos from the Lowell Milken Center. Next, I asked students to brainstorm and research to choose a hero. They could choose a hero from the LMC website that would be pre-approved for entering the contest, they could find their own unsung hero from history and seek approval for entering the contest, or they could just focus on a hero without the contest. I had a few students email to ask about a relative who had served in the military being their unsung hero only to be disappointed when they found out their person didn't meet all the criteria. I encouraged them to go with their choice anyway since I wanted the project to be meaningful to them and the contest part was just extra.
The students who chose personal heroes seemed more engaged in their projects overall than those who chose from the Unsung Heroes list, so I'm glad that I didn't limit them to participating in the contest. The contest is an amazing opportunity with a great message and the largest monetary prize packages I've ever seen in a middle and high school art contest so don't let that deter you! It seemed that most of the students who chose from the Unsung Heroes list did so randomly just to meet the requirement where the students who did their own research or chose a family member did it because they cared.

Will I reuse this theme in the future? Possibly, but I will probably not do it as the first theme for a class, or would instead offer it to my advanced students. The project does not have to be a portrait, but it is helpful, and many students were intimidated. I decided to let some trace the contours of a portrait of their unsung hero with the agreement that they would add more to it, and I wish I wouldn't have. There's not necessarily a problem with tracing- lots of contemporary artists do it instead of a grid method and it's not that different from Renaissance artists supposedly using a camera obscura- but I typically don't let students do it unless it is a photo that they took. Tracing has now been a hard habit to break for those students. Some saw tracing as the default and totally forgot about drawing but I think we're back on track now.

For my unsung heroes project I used my grandpa. He fought in Vietnam and saved many men. He disobeyed his orders and flew into a hot zone and rescued a bunch of men. He deserves recognition because he is a very humble and amazing person. I used pencils, colored pencils, and sharpies to create my artwork. I drew a chinook to show that’s what he flew to rescue the men, I then drew a picture of him in uniform, an American flag because ‘Merica, the 82nd and 101st airborne symbols because that was what he was in, and lastly I drew his dog tags. My grandpa is one amazing, humbled, loving, and caring man you will ever meet. For these reasons is why I used my grandpa for this unsung heroes project.

Today many women participate in the Boston Marathon, in but 1967 that wasn’t the case. Over history, there are people who stand out and make a courageous move to be the first one to do something. Kathrine Switzer was the first women to run the Boston Marathon. I chose Kathrine Switzer for my unsung heroes project because she is a light illuminating in the darkness. She shows society that just because you are a woman, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do things that men are doing, such as running a marathon. Also she is a great example in what it means to have determination and drive. During the race, officials tried to pull her out of the race but she wouldn’t give up. I was interested in Kathrine Switzer’s story and I could relate to it well because I’m a runner. Whenever you have passion and interest in what you are doing, it just makes your work all the more better. Kathrine Switzer is a hero to me because she was unique and original. She didn’t go where the path led, but instead she went where there was no path and left a trail. The whole story about how she started running and then realized that she could be capable of running a marathon is inspiring. It reminds everyone that knows her story, that the most dangerous place is in your comfort zone. Kathrine Switzer definitely deserves recognition for her amazing accomplishment of being the first woman ever to run the Boston Marathon.

When you think of heroes on 9/11, who do you think of? Firefighters? Policemen? First responders? What if I told you that one of the men who saved the most lives on 9/11 was none of those things. My graphite drawing represents Benjamin Clark. Clark was a chef on the 96th floor of the South World Trade Center Tower. He started his day as he always did on that tragic September day. But when the events unraveled, Clark went into action saving all the people on his floor, saving over hundreds of lives as he worked his way down the tower. Clark died when he stopped to assist a woman stuck in a wheelchair. Clark could have made it out alive along with the men and women that he saved. That would have been courageous enough but instead he stayed to assist someone who would have died without a chance. That is why he is a hero. I chose to do a graphite drawing to show Clark’s story. I drew a portrait of him in the foreground and the burning twin towers with the smoke spelling out “Clark.”