Art Inspires Fashion

I have a fascination with postcards. Not just any postcards, they must be Art Postcards. The ones that you can purchase at an Art Museum. The ones that are photographs of the art at that museum or on loan to that museum. I have been collecting postcards for YEARS! However, I have finally, during the last few years, figured out how to use them with my students in art.

In Art Centers for Extended Learning-students choose an art postcard, then using a work sheet, they answer questions and draw a small copy of the art. This activity helps students to make connections to different artists and their styles.

In Curating with Postcards-students explore different art careers and the responsibilities of a curator in an art museum as they use postcards to create their own exhibit. AND apparently because I shared this activity last summer at a Summer Institute at Penn State-I'm gonna be quoted in a textbook!!

In Happy Trees-I reference the book If Picasso Had a Christmas Tree, where students matched Art Postcards to the art in the book. This was a great activity for students to learn to recognize the style of different artists.

Soooo last summer on a trip to New York City, while in The Costume Institute at The Met, I came across this beautiful gown. It was part of an exhibit titled China: Through the Looking Glass.

It made me think of this: The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.

Which eventually made me remember this: by Cassie Stephens  click on her name to read her blog and be prepared to be blown away by her talent and dedication to the field of art.

AND a new lesson was Born? Discovered? Created? After messaging Cassie Stephens, who by the way is the art teacher's ROCK STAR of art teachers, I put together a few slides showing off the incredible fashions she creates to inspire her students as they learn from her about different artists.

featured in Nashville Arts Magazine, Nov 2014

 

There were so many different directions to go in with this lesson. However, I love incorporating our school mascot into our art when ever I can. Soooooooo after sharing several photos of Cassie and her wonderful fashions I showed students some postcards and directed them as to what they would be doing. They could cover the whole shape of the lion or put the lion in a body suit. I did this with 2nd and 3rd grades. Would be a good lesson to leave for a sub.
My samples-

  

I thought they should do some planning first and use the sheet with the four lions traced out.  I insisted 3 out of the 4 needed to be art inspired from the postcards and one could be their own art.

On the back they should take notes as to the title and artist's name. And when they decided which one they liked the best they could do an enlarged version. It's a fun activity and introduces students to different kinds of art and how art inspires more art!

 

 

 

Now I vaguely remember taking more photos. Ones with students working on this and of more finished art. I'm sorry, no clue what happened to them.

Moving along........ I feel terrible that my blogging has slowed down. I'm still on medical leave, the surgery was a SUCCESS and I will eventually mend AND NOT want to sleep ALL day because I left the house the day before for a few hours. It is what it is.

My original goal was to blog 3 times a week.
My realistic goal was to blog ONCE a week.
My medical leave goal is to blog when I'm not sleeping, and can think clearly for more then 30 minutes at a time. Hopefully things will get back to normal in time for summer vacation................

Thanks for reading!!!!

Presenting at the FAEA Conference

Look! Listen! And Learn! was the workshop I presented first thing on Thursday morning, which was the first day of the conference. It wasn't quite as well attended as I had hoped for, but, there were a lot of choices for that time slot. Anyway I thought it went really well.

I started off with the above slide of my power point. On the tables were different words from the list below. This activity is called Conversation Starter and was a way to get some discussions going about the art work shown on the screen. It will help students to learn the correct vocabulary to use when discussing art.

  

Next we did the activity You Be the Critic.

 You can read about how well it went when I did it with my 4th graders here.

Then we were Curating with Postcards.

 

Blogged about doing this with my students here. 

Then I did this activity that I had never done with my students. See the photo on the left for the steps.

 

 

Each person was given an envelope (with a number on it) inside was a postcard of a painting, tracing paper and different colored index cards. I posted the steps, on the power point, one at a time, giving people a few minutes to respond. After all the directions were given people grouped together according to the number on their envelopes. Then they had a discussion based on what they had written down on their index cards. I believe they were a bit surprised to find when they were grouped together it was because they all had the SAME postcard.  

The workshop was scheduled for 2 hours and I am happy to say that the 4 activities I choose worked really well in that time frame. I was able to give out goodies from Faber-Castell, they also provided a door prize for both of my presentations. My suitcase weighed a ton with all the swag I packed.

Also gave out pins from the Art of Ed and included some info about The Baker Museum and Traveling Exhibits.  To get the goodies I gave out, I emailed representatives  from those companies beforehand.

 

My presentation on blogging which I titled Born to Blog on Friday was very well attended. I used the power point that I made for the Carousel of Bloggers that I was a part of at the NAEA in New Orleans. I did add a few informational slides that were helpful for actually starting a blog.

 

There was a lot of great feedback from people and I hope I inspired a few of them to start their own blog.

I really enjoyed presenting.  I attended a President's Reception and got to mingle with Karen Noble, our outgoing President, and our new President Nicole Crane along with the other presenters. I even got this awesome certificate and a nice thank-you note.

And on another note- My niece, who is a math teacher up north, decided to Google: Storybook Character Costumes for Teachers and look what she found! ME in the second row! You can learn how I made that costume here  and what book inspired it! 

 

Thanks for reading!! Would love to hear from people who have presented at conferences. What did you present? How was your experience? Would you do it again?

Curating With Postcards

I LOVE museums! And of course to me, shopping in the museum store is the best part. Okay, viewing the exhibits are VERY important and seriously meaningful. BUT, when you get to the store, you can always BUY something! Maybe a book or postcard about what you saw, which you can then share with your students, like I do.

I have lots of postcards. LOTS. Of. Postcards. The photo at the top includes only the ones I chose to use that day. In the past I have displayed them on bulletin boards in my art room. I also, have an art center in which I use the postcards.

 

However, last summer during a teacher institute I attended, we got to play with some postcards. We actually did an activity where we were grouped at tables with a stack of them. Our assignment was to sort through the stack, take turns laying out the postcards and arranging them. We were to assemble the postcards as if we were a curator putting an exhibit together. Oh yeah, AND we got to split up and KEEP the postcards afterwards! ( Lots of postcards, remember?)

So, picture this-my art room is just about ALL packed up, AND we have 3 more days of school.....
AND I have all these postcards, and since I put in a proposal to do some museum activities at my FAEA conference, why not try out this activity with my students? So I did! AND it was incredible fun.

   

 Above they are busy sorting through their piles.

 Here they are starting to arrange their exhibit.

   

 I spoke with my students about how they should decide on a theme for grouping them. They would need to tell me the theme and about the postcards they chose. They also needed to pick out a piece of colored construction paper to place the postcards on. After all, curators do consider and change out the wall color for an exhibit!

 

 They were also told that they could work individually or as a team. Afterwards, it was time to share out. Students grouped together and we moved from table to table to hear about each exhibit.

 

 Laminating to preserve paper items is a wonderful way to make them last longer. Unfortunately it does not make them very photogenic.

It was absolutely amazing the thoughtfulness my students put into arranging the postcards. They created and told stories, in the day or life of a person, as you viewed the art in their exhibit. AND the wall colors they chose, seriously, brought out the tiniest details in the art work. WOW! Just WOW!

And you know what? They actually enjoyed the activity!! Interestingly, it didn't take very long. So next time I plan to include the concept of negotiating with other curators to borrow from them for an exhibit. Maybe have students look up info about the art and decide on its value.  Or research the artist and write wall text. There are many ways to extend this lesson to include those Higher Order Thinking skills!

Tomorrow I leave for NY to spend some quality time with my sister*. We are planning to visit MANY of the wonderful museums in NY City where I can buy more........... POSTCARDS!!

 *I was originally planning to write, my sister, who I have not seen in over 3 years. However MY family gave my the most AMAZING surprise party last night for my birthday, which is in 2 months. YES, it's a BIG one! And on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most surprised- it was a 20! And she is here with me now! So we will fly up together! Truly feeling the love today!!

Thanks for reading!!!