Student Teaching: High School Edition

As promised, here are some of the amazing projects completed by my students during the seven weeks I worked at the high school. I had the following five preps every day: ceramics, sculpture, advanced 3-D, advanced 2-D, and art 1. Throughout that time time, I completed units on Photoshop (digital collage self portrait), fibers (felt sculptures), drawing (Chuck Close-style self portraits), printmaking (linoleum block printing and screen printing), and assemblage (Alison and Betye Saar-style sculptures). I assisted on the Claes Oldenburg-style enlarged sculptures and various ceramics assignments (bowls, boxes, rattles, and masks).

I was so impressed with the level of talent from students and was surprised that there weren't any seniors planning careers in art. Two extraordinary students won silver and gold keys from Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards in ceramics and sculpture. Check out this amazing work:

Mask (Sculpture)

Mask (Sculpture)

Rose with petal construction (Advanced 3-D)

Fish with petal construction (Advanced 3-D)

Monster rattle (Ceramics)

Mask (Ceramics)

Mask (Advanced 3-D)

Bowl with painted inside (Ceramics)

Bowl with painted inside (Ceramics)

Bowl with carved outside (Ceramics)

Fibers/felted wall hanging (Advanced 3-D)

Fibers/felted pod frontside (Advanced 3-D)

Fibers/felted pod backside (Advanced 3-D)

Fibers/felted ladybug - being dyed red (Advanced 3-D)

My experience at both grade levels has excited and eager to get into a classroom of my own ASAP!

Link Love: Supplies

Photo: MOMA

I'm always looking for places to get supplies both for myself and for the classroom. Michaels, Joann's, and Hobby Lobby all have good basics and offer 20-40% off coupons, but the following places are less crafty/more art specific:

• Cheap Joe's Art Stuff - I started buying painting supplies from them when I was doing my undergrad in Michigan's upper peninsula. It was pre-internet and we ordered via catalog. They still run great deals.
  
• Dick Blick - Blick stores are open to the public, however, you have to have an account if you want to order online. Their house brand of products are good quality and they give school discounts.
  
• Nasco - This catalog and web site are for art teachers. They recruit heavily to students.
  
• School Specialties - Not art specific, however, their basic supplies like markers, glue, and pencils are much cheaper than the alternative.
  
• Utrecht - I'm lucky enough to have a Utrecht store in my area so they're my go-to art supply store. They're great because they run good coupons for the home artist, offer school discounts, and produce high-quality house branded supplies.
  
• Wicked Good Farm - I was lucky enough to do a fibers/felting unit while student teaching thanks to my amazing friend Lee at Wicked Good Farm. She sent gorgeous white wool roving that was perfect -- clean from all debris, combed, and it didn't smell like farm.

Upcycling

I've noticed a trend lately with a lot of artists and craftspeople talking about "upcycling." This is especially big on Etsy. According to wikipedia, upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value. This is done all the time in the crafts -- quilts, woodworking, and mosaics all allow you to take broken pieces, leftover materials, and scraps to create something new, beautiful, and functional. With the exception of sculpture/assemblage, upcycling isn't all that prevalent in the arts. With everybody going "green," it's time to expand the upcycling trend to all aspects of arts and crafts. Check out what these artists are doing:

The folks at mijafiberart.com are upcycling old quilts to make works of art for the home.

Portraits of President Obama and Queen Elizabeth made from "unwanted objects" by Jane Perkins.

Bottle Cap Portrait of Chuck Close by Molly B. Right.

Fabric made from recycled keyboard keys by Jean Shin.

Design your own fabric

I'm not really into shameless plugging companies, but this is super fun. Spoonflower will take your design and print it on fabric for as little as $18/yard. If you have a small class or an art club, you could take this one step further and do soft sculpture or fashion design using student-designed fabric. Project Runway did this a couple of times.  Mondo, a former contestant, designed this print for the pants fabric and then designed an outfit around it.

Project Runway contest, Mondo, designed the fabric first and outfit second

The possibilities are endless: print fabric labels on one yard and cut them down to size, design fabric and make a sculpture using wallpaper glue to stiffen it up, use embroidery floss to create a composition on the custom fabric, create soft sculptures, line the back of shelving units in furniture design, create custom upholstery for furniture, fashion design, handbag design, book covers, altered books, dolls, jewelry, publish photos and mount them on stretcher bars, etc. SO many ideas! At the very least, you could do some high contrast black and white photos, put them on a colored background, and voila! you have a Warhol-inspired piece of custom fabric.

Check out some of these samples from the Spoonflower site:

patterns

faux granny squares

faux wood

tetris

 

pencil illustration

pantone color chart

high contrast black + white photo

Inspiration: Emily Barletta

While planning my fibers/felting unit for the advanced sculpture class, I came across this image by the incredible fiber artist, Emily Barletta:

Love at first sight: this is a close-up segment from a piece called Horizon

Working with a variety of threads, fibers, and materials, her work is graphic, bold, colorful, and always interesting. She works both in 2-D and 3-D with seemingly equal proficiency. I've posted more images of her works below, but check out her online portfolio or read her blog.

embroidery on paper

 

incredible, right?!