Trends Modern Art

I am a big fan of American sculptor Louise Nevelson. She appeals to my love of symmetry and found object sculpture. She is well known for assembling "crates" grouped together to form a new creation, then painted in a uniform color to unite the objects.

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."--Nevelson

As is my custom, I've been mulling over a Nevelson project for quite sometime now. I found an interesting take on the project here, but I had my own ideas to take the project to another level, to appeal to my older students.

I have six children, so broken toys, mismatched legos, naked dolls and bits of junk abound. So what I did was, with my kids, go through all of their toy bins. We pulled out stuff they no longer played with, multiples, etc. etc. This was a good way to clean up their stuff, so I totally killed two birds with one stone.

And now I had a collection of things for our sculpture. I wish I had a pic of the sculpture that was created with a doll head that I sawed in two, but it came out completely blurry and the student took it home. Boo hoo. It turned out fab, though. And the doll heads cut in half were big ticket items the day we spent assembling sculptures, to be sure.

Heads up: This was a project that I had to extend into two class sessions. There is too much to do in one class period, even with classroom helpers.

• Acquire some sturdy cardboard as the base for your sculpture. I used the backing from all of my Canson Value Artist pads because I had so many laying around. They worked out perfectly. Of course you can used regular old cardboard and cut it down to the size you wanted to work with. We worked with a 9 X 12 piece.
• Arrange your classroom so you have three working stations: one to assemble, one to glue with hot glue gun and the third for painting. This will make life easier for you because there are always students who rush through their work, and others who are very meticulous.
  
• The fun part: after showing students examples of Nevelson's work, they got to dig into my found object/toy graveyard piles and pick out objects they wanted to work with. Break up the squabbles over the coveted doll heads and airplane parts.
• Encourage students to explore different arrangements just as Nevelson did.
• Then its off to the hot glue gun table. Yes, it might be a little time consuming and I usually melt off half of my fingertips, the end result is much neater and more sturdy compared to basic white glue.
• This is the point where I end the first part of the project. Now I get to lug home all of these sculptures. Yay!
• To prepare for day #2, you will need some white primer. Any primer will do. Students will need to paint a coat of primer over their sculptures so that the paint will adhere to the toys/buttons/dominos/matchbox cars, etc. I also mixed up my own shade of charcoal gray. I believe matte looks best.
  
• On day #2, let students go to town priming their sculptures. The challenge is to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the toys. Primer dries fairly quickly, but if you want to speed along the process, break out with the hair dryer.
• After the primer coat is dry, they need to paint using the charcoal grey color. I choose this color so it would look similar to Nevelson's pieces. Several of the students asked why they couldn't use blue or red...so feel free to use whatever color you want. Use the hair dryer again.
  
• IMHO, the charcoal grey made the sculptures look very dynamic.
  
• At our open house at the end of the semester, these sculptures were one of the most eye-catching displays.
  

The sculpture above was created by a third grader. As you can see, he couldn't quite get the paint into the thread spools and lego nooks. Still looks cool, though!

Joan Miró is one of my all-time favorite artists. Wait. I say every artist is my all-time fave, don't I? LOL But this abstract artist from Spain really is. I love his carefree, child-like style, his colors. They just make you feel good looking at it. I've long wanted to interpret Miró 's abstract style, and this project was alot of fun. I incorporated an assemblage technique, just to give the students something tactile to work with.

• Make sure to bring some of Miró's artwork to show to the students, so they can get a better idea of Miró and his abstract style. This is such an important step in teaching modern art. Its hard to understand and/or visualize the concepts so being able to look at each artist's work is imperative.
• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of watercolor paper and make sure each student has a palette with 2-3 different watercolors.
• It's important that the student use a large watercolor brush, to give the background an appearance of washed color, as Miró did.
• Encourage them to blend their watercolors nicely because this is the first layer that we will be creating our assemblage on.
• Once they are finished painting, bring out the trusty hairdryer so the projects can be done within the hour. No one likes to watch paint dry!
• Once it is dry, encourage students to draw abstract shapes with oil pastels. They can also cut interesting shapes out of scrapbooking paper.
• Once students have laid out their abstract design, they can add their final touch, which really brings a graphic punch to the project.
• Black yarn! Of course, students could have used a black oil pastel or a black Sharpie, but I though using a spool of black yarn would be fun!
• Each student created designs with a bottle of elmer's glue (just supervise them carefully or they will get glue happy and create a mess!), then carefully placed their black yarn on top of it, snipping off the end with a pair of scissors.

The artwork above was created was a third grader.

In honor of Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock's birthday today (1/28/12), I thought I would share a project that is beloved by all children--action painting!

Pollock would lay down huge tarps of canvas onto the floor. Then he would literally "step into his painting". With buckets of paint, sticks, hardened brushes and even basting syringes, he would drip paint onto the canvas and create these beautiful abstract paintings.

The students love the idea of dripping paint pretty much anywhere. In my experience, the high schoolers love it more than the elementary students! Either way, take care to either do this project outside where a few splatters of paint won't be a big deal, or do yourself a favor and lay out a blue tarp and/or vinyl tablecloths. I also gave fair warning to the students about the messiness of this project, so I encouraged them to wear old clothes and shoes for the day of this project. Thankfully, we were using washable tempera paint.

I thinned my tempera paint with some alcohol, to make sure they had the right consistency. Adding water would have broken down the clarity of the pigments. That said, I'm not sure how the alcohol affects the washable quality of the tempera paint. Maybe I should check into that before recommending this, right?

• Pass out sheets of poster board or Bristol Board. The larger the paper, the better.
• Make sure everyone is spread out and has some elbow room. I'll admit, I attempted this project with a classroom of nine students. I don't know how it would have worked out with a larger class. Pandemonium, I'm sure!
• Pour tempera paint into plastic cups. Give each student a variety of colors and few paintbrushes.
• Students can either drip paint directly from their plastic cup onto their poster board, or they can dip their brushes into the paint and drip and flick away.
• I also considered ketchup/mustard squeeze bottles, those might work well.

Overall, the students really had a blast doing this project. And there was hardly any wasted paint, which drives me nuts. One small hazard, once the tempera paint gets several coats, it tends to harden and crack off, so encourage students to keep their drips moving and not concentrated on one area.

The above project was created by fifth grader.

Oh em gee. It's been a while since I posted something. But don't be troubled...I have lots of goodies up my sleeve.

Kandinsky! A wonderful artist from Russia who created art of pure abstraction. He was inspired by things such as jazz music and nature and from that inspiration stemmed creations that held no definitive subject matter or logical reasoning. Just color, shape, line, movement and feeling...Abstraction Expressionism was born.

I decided to focus on Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Rings. This is a fun project that doesn't entail alot of planning and supplies and the best part--it's not as messy as painting. Don't mind me, that is just a tender spot for me today....after painting in a classroom with fifteen elementary school kids and no sink nearby--no fun!

• Hand out 9 X12 sheet of drawing paper, canson paper or poster board. You will also need glue sticks, oil pastels and scrapbooking paper squares in multiple colors.
• Instruct the students to glue down six squares in a grid of three across. The squares should be the same uniform size and they should vary in color.
• Get to tearing! That's right, we tore the scrapbooking paper into rough looking circles. No scissors involved in this project. They should tear smaller circles to fit in the larger circle and then get sequentially smaller.
  
• Each square should have at least three circles on it, varying in size and color.
• Glue them all down on the paper, creating interesting patterns of color and shape.
• After circles are glued down, the students can use 2-3 different oil pastel colors and make contrasting circle shapes on top of their collages.

This was one of those projects where I could have just sat there for days, tearing scrapbooking paper and enjoying life. The students enjoyed it and it was fun to see the uniqueness of each project, given the parameters.