Recycled Sculptures and Richard Hunt

Last spring my students studied Richard Hunt, a Chicago sculpture artist who uses recycled metal scraps to create small and large scale abstract sculpture. We had gotten a really great set of cups, pizza tables, boxes, dowels and Styrofoam from Creative Pitch and got busy! The work turned out amazing because the students were able to use the creative freedom afforded them by the amount of different materials available.

Some of the students made pieces focused on balance and tension.

Some of the sculptures appeared to be functional objects.

One of the kids brought in his father's old airplane made of recycled materials!


One of the sculptures was made to be hung while another looked like it was blowing in the wind.

Sometimes you are just still interested in two dimensional art work.

Muraltastic!

Irving has partnered with CME for the last three years to clean and improve the school each spring. Part of this program is to create an addition every year to the mural at the 'T' hallway. This year I got to work with a group of sixth and seventh graders to design and paint the latest mural.
I don't know about the kids but I really enjoyed spending time in that hallway just letting the compliments flood in..

For our addition we decided to pay homage to all of the wonderful field trip destinations the students visited this year: The Children's Museum, The Field Museum, Millenium Park, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Shedd Aquarium, and The Notebaert Nature Museum. The finished piece is below. What a great job!

Middle School

We used another middle school class period for still life painting.
I brought in several fruits and several bags of chips and soda cans that used the same colors as the selected fruit. The students aranged them on the table (very well I might add) and painted them as they saw them.
Throughout this class period we talked about the difference in the two groups of food. We talked about colors, nutrition, space, and composition. Before they left the students begged me to sell them the chips and pop. I gave them their choice of what to take for free and in the end, took the fruit home. It's a work in progress.

Middle School Art

My schedule lacked space for middle school art at one of my schools last year but I really missed teaching them and they really missed art (I swear-they told me so). Knowing that by Thursday and Friday I was to tired to do any planning during my prep time I decided to invite them to come for a more experimental art period. Wow was I rewarded for sharing that time! They painted and sculpted and took risks and everyone had a great time.

Flowers made from plastic water bottles. One can't just go out and buy spray paint in Chicago, it's against the law, so I offered the spray paint that I already had, they loved the color choices!

For one of the middle school art periods I put out some glue guns, some tacky glue and any and all recyclable materials I could find. The pictures are the result of this experiment before they were painted. Oh and a new lesson learned: do not spray-paint Styrofoam. It melts away.

Several abstract sculptures, one alligator, and one hovercraft!

Why Art Matters Week 2010

This year for WAM week we had a beautiful gallery with the addition of sculpture throughout! Some of the students even helped me with the installation. My favorite thing to hang was definitely the water bottle flowers. Enjoy!

I happened to be teaching at two schools this year which really limited my schedule at this school. I asked the homeroom teachers if they would like to celebrate art with their students by honoring an artist on the classroom door. Some examples of this WAM activity are show below.

Quilling

The sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students tried their hands at the old art of Quilling and after some practice and experimentation they came up with the following:






Yes. This is the work of my elementary students. Are they talented or what?!

6th Grade Alma Thomas Study

The sixth graders learned about Alma Thomas and ROV G BIV for this lesson and out of that came these beauties. I love laminating for preserving hallway art but not for fly-by flash shooting. For such simple painting this process really cracks the students' personalities wide open.