New Year - New School!

Hello all! It is that time of year again when we all scramble to stock up on school supplies and pick out that perfect outfit for the first day of school. And for some people that also means hours of sorting and organizing art supplies.

I will be at a new school this year where I will be working full time teaching art to students in grades 7-9. I will be at MacDowell Montessori school, which is a K-12 school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is part of the Milwaukee Public School System. I am starting out sort of a new art program for the students there and have spent lots of time this past month changing a bare homeroom into an art room. Looking forward to a successful and fun year. Stay tuned for more posts throughout the school year...

 Carloads of stuff to bring in...

 The room before I moved in.

 I made paper chandeliers to identify different tables by color.

 My desk area with a little bit of Asian flair.

 Since there aren't a lot of cabinet, most of my storage is open bookcases,                                               so I made curtains to cover them.

Architecture Drawing

When looking at European art, you can't ignore the beautiful churches, palaces, and other interesting architecture. It is also good to look at art that is made from many different types of media, not just drawings and paintings. After studying this churches and the different types of towers and domes it has, students created their own versions of the "Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood" in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

Students first designed their buildings by drawing them with pencil, outlining the lines with a Sharpie marker, then painting them with watercolor paints and gold acrylic paint. 

Mixed Media Stained Glass

While looking at art in Europe, we looked at stained glass and how it is common especially in churches in Europe (and even America today). We looked at how the stained glass is made by coming up with a design, cutting glass that has been colored into specific shapes, then attaching the pieces with metal (which is what looks black). Today, stained glass is not only used for windows, but also for decorative items and lamps - like in Tiffany lamps. 

To make their own "stained glass", students used paper. They were given 1 inch tissue paper squares in any color they wanted, and used the squares to come up with a design by cutting them into shapes if they wanted. They brushed Mod Podge on a piece of paper, placed the tissue paper squares on top, then brushed Mod Podge on top of that again. The tissue paper and Mod Podge together have a translucent effect that, when it is dry, looks similar to stained glass. The final step was to add the "solder", which looks black. For us, I mixed some black acrylic paint with glue. This was easy to squirt out of a glue bottle, and when it is dry looks black and leaves a slightly raised texture. 

Dreamcatcher

While looking at Native American art, we studied how not all Native American tribes are the same and not all of them have the same art. Dream catchers come from the Ojibwa tribe which originates from northern Wisconsin and Canada-area. A dream catcher is originally made out of a willow hoop and decorated with beads and feathers. The strings going across the middle are like a spiders web that catches bad dreams at night and allows the good dreams to come down the feathers. 

Students made a dream catcher by making a metal hoop, wrapping pipe-cleaners around it, then making a design across the hoop with the pipe-cleaners (and adding beads if they wanted). They then used the pipe-cleaners to attach feathers at the end. After that, they could paint any parts they wanted with acrylic paint.