Thank you to everyone for such a warm welcome! I am very excited to be back at Consolidated where I started teaching in this district 12 years ago and to be teaching art is a dream come true! I know all the children's names now and I am thoroughly enjoying working with each child. They are a wonderful group, very enthusiastic about art and very creative and thoughtful with their projects. I plan to follow an approach to art that respects each child's artistic development while also linking art to the outside world of culture, history and interdisciplinary studies.
Most classes started the year by creating self portraits that are hanging in the hall. We talked about how a self portrait is different than a photograph because it tells not only about how an artist looks but how they view themselves and how they want others to view them. Color and facial expression were the focus of conveying mood and we studied several self portraits from the National Gallery of Art (please see art website for link to the NGA site). The halls now feel like a large living room with family pictures displayed!
Other happenings include...
Fifth grade and Mr. Chapman's multi-age class studied line as illusion and form through Alexander Calder's Cow and then created wire sculptures of people and animals. Ms. Miller and Mrs. Pennington's classes also learned about different kinds of lines and explored Henri Matisse's collages before creating their own shape collage which included geometric and organic shapes and also positive and negative shapes. Third grade has been working on line as expression, subject matter and most recently positive and negative shapes through stencils. Second grade and Mrs. Naimey's multi-age worked from still lifes to create beautiful pastel sunflowers and first grade worked with texture to create animals both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional. Kindergarten children have been studying Eric Carle so we talked about how he makes his papers for his collaged illustrations. The children then made their own papers thinking about different kinds of lines, cut them into shapes after talking about what a shape is and then turned them into the most wonderful creatures imaginable! They are hanging in the hall by their classrooms!
Presently, all classes are beginning a Native American unit for this month. The older children are working with monoprints and symbols from nature, others are weaving, third graders are continuing their stencil study but now looking at Inuit prints for inspiration, and second graders and 1/2 multi-age are creating sand paintings and thinking about lines as symbols and art that tells a story. The first graders will be making buckskins that also reflect story telling and kindergarten will be exploring form through pinch pots! So we are very busy in the artroom and learning this month about art from Native American cultures. Please look for the art work both on display in the halls and on the website as the children complete their study.
Thank you again for such a great start and please contact me at jwendle@msad71.net if you have any questions about the art program.