Art Show!

 

The art show went off without a hitch this year.  Thanks to all of the parents, teachers, and staff who helped out.  It was wonderful.

 

Each year, I put on an art show.  I do my best to include at least one piece of artwork from every child in the school.  We have snacks and goodies to eat and I play music in the background.  It is so much fun to see the school gym transformed into a gallery.  Due to the sheer number of artpieces I have to hang up, I attach them to butcher paper first and label them.  Then, I adhere the butcher paper to the walls.

Instead of grouping art by class, or grade level, I keep art from the same project together. 
I like this, because it showcases the many different styles of our students among a single project.  I also include a sign by each project that tells a little bit about the art history inspiration, our art making process, and an image of art history examples.

Mixed Media Windows

One of the main mediums I create my own art in is mixed media reverse painting and collage on old windows.  My best friend's dad had all of the windows in his house replaced and gave me some 30 plus windows.  My studio at home could not handle such a large quantity and I immediately thought about doing a lesson with my older students with the windows.

I also connected it to behavior and effort.  At the beginning of the school year, I showed my students examples of my window art and the blank windows I had brought to school.  I informed them that if they worked hard on their art throughout the year and had good behavior as a class, that we would create a collaborative artwork on a window in the Spring.

I collected old education books and maps from the thrift stores and let them cut out images that they liked to collage onto the back.  Then the classes brainstormed on shapes, and each class voted on one shape to use to create a repetition on their window.  They drew them on with sharpe markers.  Finally, they finished the windows by painting them.

Louise Nevelson's Found Art Sculptures

I did this project with my younger grades (K-3), but judging on how cool the older kids thought they were when they saw then littering my classroom; I could have done them with the whole school!

This project was so much fun to do.  It was a perfect way to introduce collaborative art too...

I collected various "found" objects (such as bottle caps, plastic cups, buttons, puzzle pieces, etc...) and organized them in a chip/dip bowl in the middle of the table.  Each student was instructed to pick two objects.  Then, one table at a time, they brought me their objects and we worked together to get them all glued down into our shoebox.

After it all dried, we painted them all one color to mimick the larger scale sculptures by artist Louise Nevelson.