Duval Art Teachers Association is raffling off Origial works of art on Palettes

The Duval Art Teachers Association is raffling off 8 differenat art palettes that have been painted by local artists in Jacksonville. These one of a kind works of art are worth hundreds but can be bought for $1. Raffle tickets are $1 each OR 25 tickets for $20. Each ticket can be labeled for a specific palette or can be spread amoung several palettes. The drawings will be January 16, 2009 and winners will be notifyed so you don't have to be present to win. All money from this goes to fund the Leslie Beddard Foundations which supports and encourages excellence in Art Education through workshops, education, advocacy and grants. For more information on the Art Palette raffle call 904-390-2677.

Art To Remember Project Underway

We have started off the year with our annual Art To Remember fundraiser, which helps to raise funds for the Chets Creek Cultural Arts fund. This fund helps to provide quality presentations and performances by guest artists of various talents to enhance our students' education and experiences. It also helps to fund activities during our annual Cultural Arts Week and Arts Extravaganza evening event, which is held in the Spring. Monies have also been used to furnish special materials for our various resources. This activity is a wonderful way to effect all our students' lives during the school year.

When you recieve your Art To Remember envelope, it will include an original piece of artwork by your child, a picture list of over 30 items on which you can have your child's work reproduced, an order form and price list, and instructions on how to order. What better Holiday gift for family members than an item adorned with your child's artwork. It is definitly a one of a kind gift. We would ask that each family consider purchasing, at least, a magnet to help bring in quality presentations to Chets Creek.

Start watching for your Art To Rememeber envelope to come home in late September or early October. Revisit this blog to find out the deadline date on which to turn in orders.

We are in need of your garbage and donations!!!!!

We are getting ready to start another exciting year in art as we continue to explore a variety of media, techniques and precesses. I am always anxious to see the wonderful work that will be created by our young artists as they discover how line, shape, and color work together to evolve into a beautiful composition.

To start our journey, the Art Lab could use a few items to recycle into a variety of art projects. These items can be dropped off at the Art Lab door.

old CDs and DVDs
clean soup/veggie cans
Styrofoam egg cartons
small pieces of scrap wood or metal
bottle caps (metal and plastic)
old broken jewelry
ribbon scraps
buttons
beads
silk plants and flowers
imitation fruit and vegetables
old calendars
anything that might be fun and interesting to glue into art projects.

DONATIONS:
The following are items that are needed in the art lab. Any thing that you may wish to donate will be GREATLY appreciated and will be used in certain art projects and/or used in the day to day functions of the Art Lab.

Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil
wax paper
sponges
baby wipes
bars of Ivory soap
liquid starch
copy paper
hydrogen peroxide (for cyanotype photography)
rechargable AA batteries (new)
staple gun and staples

Thank you, in advance, for any and all contributions!

Another Great Ending

I have been quite remiss in writing as you can see by the dates. I probably need to work on time management and get more organized. That will have to be a goal for next school year.

The art year seemed to go really well. A lot of information was covered and now we are awaiting the results of the 2nd and 5th grade's MAP test scores to see just how well the students did. Miss Kristy and I really worked on pounding in the vocabulary so that the test might seem much easier in the Spring than it did in the Fall. We will see if our efforts paid off.

Off testing and on to the really important stuff. The art work! It was truly incredible. The students really worked hard and produced some beautiful masterpieces. We actually had 30 pieces of artwork chosen for The Best in Elementary Art Show this year! That was almost every student who had been entered in the Elementary Library Show, which is from what The Best Of.... is chosen. I was quite proud of our body of work. Congratulations to all the students who were representing Chets Creek in both of these shows.

We even had a 4th grade student who went to the State Level of the PTA Reflections competition this year in the Visual Arts area. She created an outstanding work of art reflecting this year's theme about making a difference. Great work!

Photograpy was a hit with the 5th grade students! Oh my, how they loved roaming around the campus finding the "perfect shot". And, I must say, they really got creative! They had to make decisions about the color scheme of the photograph to best present the subject matter and they really made some wonderful choices. The people who saw examples of their work were amazed at how well they chose their subject and captured the shot. I can't wait to get started will photography next year!

Arts Extravaganza was probably the best one yet! It was so well attended we started running out of the hands-on activities materials. I don't think that has ever been done. The guest artists were fabulous, the student artwork looked beautiful and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. It will be hard to top it next year BUT we will try.

What a fabulous year! Having Miss Kristy and Miss Spooner made a huge difference in the amount of art time the students received, helping them to be more "artistically minded". The year would not have been near as successful with out them so.........THANKS A TRILLION TO TWO WONDERFUL ART TEACHERS!

Just because it is summer does not mean the art has to stop! There are a lot of activities that students can get involved with that will keep them working artistically. The Cummer Museum and MOCAJ both have art camps throughout the summer. Art Blast at Grace Church in Avondale has a camp all summer. There are other opportunities as well. If you can't do those, then get paper and crayons and "go to town!" If you go to the archives on this blog site, you will find an old article about ways to stay busy with the arts over the summer. Look in June of 2007. Through out the summer, I will try to give some other ideas as well.

HAVE FUN..... AND DON'T FORGET THE ART!

Click...Click.......Click

Oh WOW!!!!! Are we ever going to be having some fun now. I just received a $2000 grant through Best Buy and have bought 10 new digital cameras, and 5 photo printers (plus a few other odds and ins like memory cards, rechargeable batteries, and ink kits) to start basic photography lessons with my students. Now, we all know that they can teach me more about using the cameras than I could EVER teach them, so my lessons are going to be focused more on the framing techniques and developing an "artistic" eye, as opposed to the point and shoot method. I am really excited about this opportunity and can't wait to get started. Begin looking for our first attempts to soon grace the walls of Chets Creek!

In my grant, I did mentions that the cameras could be used with other projects in the school, such as creating photographs demonstrating ideas in academic areas, such as patterns, habitats, proportions, textures (math/science). In social studies they could be used to record different social events or activities. In Language Arts, they could be used to illustrate. Really, the possibilities are endless. Let me know some of the ideas that might be forming that these cameras could help come to pass. I am sure there are going to be some wonderful, expressive ideas flowing from our kids as this project gets off the ground!

Thanks to Best Buy for making these grants possible. If you haven't, you really should check out this opportunity.

Mixed media collages are coming along.

We have really been moving in the lab, just hoping we can get all these projects finished in time for Cultural Arts Week. We are finishing clay, collage, painting, printmaking, radial designs, drawings, and just about everything else you can think of.

One project which really seems to be going nicely is our mixed media collages with a 4th grade class. I actually borrowed the idea from another art teacher and modifyed it, slightly, for this class. As the plexiglass picture frames began to break really badly, I saved the "box" or bottom cardboard part. After saving up about 40, I had a class use them to create these mixed media collages. First we glued colored poster board on top and began drawing a large, simple still life. We painted in the background areas, adding patterns and texture. We then began using Mod Podge to brush tissue paper onto the drawn table top. Student filled in objects on the table with foil, construction paper, packing peanuts, or whatever media they desired - giving us a lot of textures to play with. The final steps will include using oil pastels to outline, detail, and texturize and then gluing on actual silk flowers and leaves coming out of our vases. Because these are done on the cardboard box of the box frames, they are already prepared to hang on the wall! This is just one more way to recycle some of those old items hanging around the art lab.

SOAP - The "Clean" Art Medium

Have you ever wanted to teach sculpture, using subtraction techniques, but couldn't find a time-efficient, easy clean-up, done in two class periods, inexpensive, type of medium? Here is the answer...SOAP! With my elementary school age students, I am able to do just that, and at the same time, have them begging to do more. It has been amazing how intense they get while carving and how excited they get when finished. Yes, we have a few casualties as the soap breaks or crumbles where we don't want it to.... but the students seem to come back the next day with several bars of soap in hand to start again! And what happens to the pieces??? We send them home in a baggie to use for washing hands! Recycling at its best. The really great part of this lesson is the students can do it at home, as well as in the art classroom, without having to buy special art supplies. The best soap to use is any soap that is rectangular, so that there will be a flat base so the sculpture will stand. Some soaps are softer than others which does help make carving more easily accomplished. Buy a few different bars and try it out yourself? You may find you are hooked on this very relaxing process. hint: try dollar stores for a inexpensive source for bars of soap.

BASIC LESSON:
I started the lesson talking about sculpture and form and how these are three-dimensional and must be observed from all sides, not just one. We talk about positive/negative space and what is meant by "subtractive techniques" (where the medium is"taken away" in various amounts to form the image.) The students trace their bar of soap on a piece of paper so that they can come up with ideas for their sculpture. This gives them a starting point, even if the sculpture changes as they go. I provide one bar of soap per student. If theirs breaks and they can not figure out a way to make it work, then they bring in any additional bars of soap to carve. We use small plastic knives and wooden popsicle sticks as the main carving tools. Other tools can be plastic spoons, forks, and wooden skewers (for helping with internal negative space). There are probably hundreds of other objects that can be used as well. Students begin working on the negative space that is in the interior of the sculpture first, and then work on the outside edges. They can move on to creating different levels on the surfaces for interest, once the main form is established. Encouraging students to create different surface textures, using various tools, can add interest to the overall appearance of the final piece. If the final piece does not stand on its own, then a small block of wood with a nail driven through, allowing the soap to gently be pushed down onto the nail, can solve that problem.

If you try this out in your classroom, please leave a comment and let me know how it went. My 4th grade students have really enjoyed it and the classes that have not done it yet are begging to have a turn at this sculptural process!

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!!!

And we have been! The students have been working hard on all their projects with new ones constantly going up on the walls of the "student gallery." Kindergarten has just finished their wonderful animal masks that corrilated with the tribe they studied for Pow Wow. Fun was had by all while working in clay. 1st grade is heading into the world of PORTRAIT, learning how to create shadow and light on the face. 2nd grade is finishing up their clay as well, as they formed interesting animals that will soon grace our cases. 3rd grade is finishing up breathtaking landscapes, where they have used direct painting techniques which include layering and a focus on depth. 4th grade has been doing a variety of projects, some being soap carving, found art sculpture, printmaking, and contour line paintings. 5th grade is finishing up books and working on Artist Trading Cards dealing with Color Study. AND IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THAT, THE 2ND GRADE BACKDROP IS BEING PAINTED.....LITERALLY!!!! So if you can't find me, look on the floor. Never a dull moment in the Art Lab!

Two 4th Grades are Recycling for Art

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Two of my 4th grade classes are having a blast as they use "previously used" materials to build Folk Art sculptures. Of course, we like to call them "junk" sculptures as they are made from found objects that are available around us and have usually been discarded after their initial use. Folk Artists were artists that were not formally trained and usually developed their own style by trial and error. Most were not from wealthy families, so what they used they had to find. There are many artists, especially sculptors, who look for discarded items and find new functions for them in their art. That is what our two 4th grade classes are doing, as they dig through scraps of wood, old toys, and parts and pieces of other discarded items to build their animal or robot sculptures. You will be amazed at the connections they are making between unrelated objects! Not to mention how they are helping the environment by recycling these objects into a thing of beauty!

Kindergarten Cave Art Helps with LINE and SHAPE

To begin the year with a study of line and shape, the Kindergarten students and I have gone back in history, or actually before history, to the oldest known artworks found to date - The Cave Artists. Who were they? Why did they paint what they painted and how? What did it mean for them to paint these animals and scenes inside a dark cave? Interesting questions to say the least. After a brief discussion on "LINE", we looked closer at the images of these cave art masterpieces and observed the different types of lines that were used in the paintings. Then, we learned about shapes that are made when a line comes back to its starting point and encloses an area. Of course, we then had to find the many different shapes that the cave artists used when painting their scenes. Well, enough talk.....it was time to take action.....SO we used a little bit of paint on manila paper and created a cave wall texture on which to paint our animals. The students were allowed to practice an animal that they wished to put on their personal cave wall, and then to paint it on top of the cave wall texture using black and brown tempera paint. WOW!! They really look awesome. This lesson proved to be a way to begin our understanding of these two Elements of Design - shape and line.

Artist Trading Cards are the new trading frenzie!!!!

Here is a new Trading Card craze that is actually, quite creative. Artist Trading Cards(ATC)are small 2 1/2" x 3 1/3" works of art that are created by....well, whoever wants to create one! The rules are simple. They have to be the stated size and they should only be traded, not sold. They can be made with any two dimentional medium and a few textural media (Three dimensional media could, easily, be accidently pulled or torn off).

Because of the size, the cards can be kept safely in regular trading card sleeves or plastic sheets (holding about 9)allowing collectors to keep them protected for years. Kids, as well as adults, can enjoy creating these small masterpiecs, trading them, and building up a personal collection of minitures.

Fourth and Fifth grade students will be making some ATC's during art classes this year to review specific aspects of art, specifically the elements and principles of design. During free time, they are allowed to create additional cards to add to their personal stockpile. I am hoping to arrange at least one swap this year so the students can have the opportunity to trade with each other and start a desire to make and trade on their own.

Cards can be cut from posterboard or other sturdy papers (tagboard or card stock) that will hold up to handling. When a piece is created the artist should put their name and the date that it was completed on the back. With parental permission, students can include contact information as well. I encourage my students to include a brief artist statement (one or two sentances) that could tell about the art, what inspired them, or just a title. This gives the holder part of the "story" behind the card.

The following are several websites that can be visited to learn about ATC's as well as how to trade on line. Putting "Artist Trading Cards" into Google will yield many, many other sites as well. Visit some and have fun making and trading your own works of art!!!!!

LINKS:

www.artist-trading-cards.ch/
artistradingcards.meetup.com/
groups.yahoo.com/group/ArtistTradingCards

Creativity out of the Bag

Do you want to stretch you child's imagination? Especially, when all the rain is keeping them inside? Here is an idea. Give them a bag full of interesting items (i.e. scraps of material, cotton balls, buttons, sequins, puzzle pieces, paper, and any thing else you can find), scissors, and glue and challenge them to create something new. They can come up with fantasy creatures or beautiful collages, foreign landscapes or secret gardens. Anything goes! Have them set up an Art Show and help cook or make little snacks for an "Opening" for their exhibit. You could go all out and invite neighborhood children or relatives to attend. Have fun together this summer and take pictures to commemorate the event!

Summer Art Fun with the Family

Summer is the perfect time for the family to enjoy art activities together. An inside or outside area provides a wonderful arena for creative exploration of different art mediums while enjoing the exercising of the mind. Using materials found in nature to build sculptures or castles is a perfect way to make interesting connections. Using a variety of color materials, such as markers, crayons, colored pencils, etc. can build fine motor skills and exercise line/space relationships. Paints, cutting and pasting, and collage can spark the imagination that brings to life the visions of fantasy in our minds. So DO SOME ART!!

Take the family on a visit to an art museum. The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens has a wonderful adventure awaiting kids in the Art Connections, where they can experience hands on activities and interactions with art. Take a look. The Museum of Contemporary Art is also a wonderful place for the family to explore. Try to visit one this summer!