Inspiration: Steven Kenny

 I am with the artist Steven Kenny (click on his name to be taken to his website) at the opening of his exhibit at The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art. 

(The hat I have on is 'cause the opening included a costume contest.)

The inspiration pieces by Steven Kenny, that I shared with my students as we began our paintings.

 

                                            The Arrival                               After the Flood

For several years now I have been taking my 4th graders to The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art. As part of this field trip, they get to see their work displayed. Which is very exciting! Click HERE to see how it all started! Just in case you would like to display your student's work in a museum.

As I prepare for this event, I check out what will be on exhibit at the museum to inspire my students so that their project will relate to what they will be seeing.

The first time I saw the painting The Arrival by Steven Kenny something just clicked! Maybe because I'm from the north and I now live in Florida. But I absolutely love that painting. And with a little research I found his painting After the Flood, which again makes me think of Florida. I was really excited to see that Steven Kenny's work would be on display when I took my students to the museum.j

 

                                                   (student work)

After showing my students the inspiration paintings, I modeled how to use the paint to create an outdoor scene. I demonstrated a beach background, however I told my students it just needed to be outside. At the time it was winter in Florida and an art teacher friend of mine up north wanted me to do an exchange with her and her students. They would do a winter scene up north and I would do one in the south. Basically to show how different our winters are. The Arrival was the perfect way to start the conversation.

 

I wanted my students to paint their backgrounds without any interference and not to worry about what they would place in their paintings.

 

The following week we practiced drawing figures with manikins and students drew what they wanted in their paintings on a separate piece of paper. They colored with markers and colored pencils. Then they cut out their figures and anything else they wanted to add and glued it to their paper. I showed them how to blend in what they had glued down as some couldn't quite cut out small areas.

Check out how wonderful they came out!

 

The Student Expressions Wall

Students checking out their art work

Soooo in the event you have clicked on the artists name and noticed how some of his art may not be appropriate for elementary students.......... I did include that information on the permission slips and did keep the children away from some of the more graphic paintings........ sigh.

We all had a wonderful time at the museum and now I'm gonna start planning for next years trip!

Thanks for Reading!

Advocating by Exhibit

How important is it for you to exhibit your student's art? I personally believe it is incredibly important! And that's why I try to participate as much as possible when a call for artwork goes out.  I believe that displaying artwork is a form of advocating for the arts and without it, why have art?

It's not among one of the easiest parts of our job. It takes up a lot of time. Time to choose it, mat it, label it, send it out or drop it off.  Sometimes work needs to be a certain size, there are many pieces of art to choose from, sometimes I need to send the work out before all the classes are done and it doesn't give everyone a chance to be picked. I may only be able to pick 4 pieces of art and there are over 500 students in the school. If it's a long term placement, that eliminates 5th graders because they will no longer be in my school when the work is returned. And I ALWAYS notify parents where their student's art work is on display if it is not being displayed at school. To read about how I set up a school exhibit click here.

 

 
If the art is to be displayed long term, I photograph it and send a copy home with a letter as to where it will be displayed. To keep track of which student belonged to which art work I have the app Meme Design on my phone and put their names on the photos.

So when I was asked to participate in sending art over to the local courthouse, I did! This is the second year I sent them work, however, because I was on medical leave I totally missed out on the Student Artist Reception last year. But I made it there this year and it was wonderful!

My principal and I received invitations along with the students. Three out of the four students were there with their families and it was really quite an honor for them. I think in the grand scheme of pulling together artwork to display, we forget how meaningful it is to the students whose work gets to be admired. It really made me feel good to see how happy my students were to be acknowledged. They received certificates and American Flags and they got their photos taken.

Another student exhibit that my 4th graders participate in is at The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art.

The museum has a Student Expression wall and we have been getting the wall for a month each year for several years now. Read about it how it got started here. And the really special part is that I take the 4th graders there on a field trip each year. In preparation for the trip I do a pretty cool activity with my students that you can read about here. Another fun museum activity can be found here.

Along with the above exhibits, I send art to be displayed at the district office.

The county fair, for 2 separate areas. The art exhibit and the school exhibit.

 

With always displaying student work, most of us forget to consider displaying our own work. I have been slowly fixing that and have had some pieces on display here and there in the past two years.

There is going to be a display of art from Pasco County Schools Art Specialists and I will be included. The exhibit is titled My Art and will be at the Center for the Arts at Wesley Chapel from May 4th to May 20th. My photograph of a sea urchin titled Expansion will be in the exhibit.

How often do you display student work? How about your own work? What are some of the ways in which you advocate for the arts?

Thanks for Reading!!!

Scapes: Land, Sea, City....

Okay, gotta teach about scapes. Actually had a lot of fun with this lesson. I used Rauol Dufy's Mediterranean: Scene for inspiration. AND I really didn't have any samples of my own to share. Which meant my students needed to pull from their own imagination. Which was a good thing!

In my lesson presentation I told them about the different scapes and parts of scapes. That it is outside views of land, cities, sea, etc. And that a scape has a foreground, middle ground, and background.  We reviewed what the horizon line is. Which is a horizontal line where the sky meets the earth. Showed them a few other art posters and had them tell me what kind of scapes and where the back, middle and foreground was. Did a really quick sketch and sent them to their seats to get started.

       

   

One group insisted  they wanted to paint, so I pulled out what they would need and instructed them to set it up for themselves. They could also use colored pencils and markers.

 

 

I love the landscape with the dinosaur! This lesson was done with 2nd and 3rd graders. I tried it with one first grade group and it just didn't work. But that was alright, they got to hear and possibly learn some vocabulary. 

I totally enjoyed the stories my students told about their scapes and was happy they could name the different parts.

Last night I went to the Opening of 2 exhibits that my 4th grades will be seeing on their field trip to The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art next week. I thought it important to preview it. Good thing I did, because there were a few abstract lady parts hanging out....... they will now get the speech about being a mature audience....... One of the best reasons for the trip is that there will also be an exhibit of their art. My students did the beautiful flowers read about it here. I shared the space with a buddy of mine from another elementary school in our district.

Now for the really disappointing part..... I will NOT be joining the 4th graders on their trip. I am officially on medical leave for the balance of the school year. I will be having back surgery next month and in the meantime need to do a variety of stuff in preparation. I'm devastated....... I am also missing the NAEA conference next month and a chance to hang with my BFF who would have met me in Chicago.

I do not wish to go into details about the surgery, as my mind blanked after the part about being told to stay home. My husband was with me and he agrees with what needs to be done. My BFF checked out the doctor and informed me that "he is a rock star." So I'm good to go.

I love writing this blog and have no intentions of stopping now. Soooooo when I run out of recent lessons to blog about, I will write about some "oldie but goodie" lessons from the past. AND then about all the lessons that float in my head that I haven't had the chance to do yet!

Hope that works and you all continue to read my posts!! Again thanks for reading!

Flower Garden

 

I am getting my 4th grade students ready to visit The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs. For many of my students this is going to be their first time going to a museum. What will make this trip even MORE special is that they will SEE their art work displayed on the Student Exhibit wall at this museum!! This is the fifth year that I'm doing this and every year I try hard to improve on the experience for my students. I blogged about that first trip last year, you can read about it here. Last year was also the first time I prepared my students to be art critics and you can read about that here. I also started to add artist's statements to their work, which I know the art patrons enjoy reading.

I believe that I have mentioned that this has been a particularly difficult year for me. While settling into a new room I am also adjusting to dealing with filling children's heads with the standards. AND rigor walks AND mid year assessments AND getting displays ready. I know, it's the stuff we are ALL dealing with-but prior to this year, let's just say the philosophy was more about having FUN in art.

So as hard as I tried to get it together, I didn't really feel I had enough finished art from my 4th graders to make a cohesive display. Sooooooo since the display would be up mid February to April it occurred to me that I should come up with a Spring Theme. And what better project is there then Georgia O'Keeffe flowers?? Now usually I theme the display on what the museum is exhibiting. However, this year it happens to be Florida Artists- Welllll I have over 80 of them!!!

 

I've done this lesson before AND it's one of my favorites (I know I have a lot of favorite lessons, I love being an art teacher!)  Probably shouldn't have done this, but I took a whole bunch of flower photos off the internet (I do credit the artist on the back of each photo) for my students to use.

  

I explained how O'Keeffe painted as if she was looking though a camera's view finder. (Yeah, had to explain view finder.) I showed them photos of her flowers. Then I modeled using the view finder, lightly sketching out the flower and then painting it. I wanted to get this done in 2 weeks, so I made students stay until they finished painting the flowers. Thankfully, it was during my planning time.

 

   

This flower project is the opposite of a crayon resist. Because instead of using crayons first, they used them last.  Some students even used markers and I explained to them they were making art using mixed mediums.

The second week students used crayons to fill in details of the flowers and write an artist's statement.

It started with a writing prompt, their choice. What I like about art.... or I chose this flower because....

Below are some of the finished ones going to the museum.

 

 Aren't they BEAUTIFUL!! I can hardly wait!!!

Do you have the opportunity for displaying student work at a local museum?

 

Thanks for reading!!