Their Story So Far

New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991)

Storytelling is, in my opinion, a very important part of our culture. Nowadays I think we allow others to tell our stories, whether through rap, hip-hop, and music videos or social media and standard media people unrelated to our own personal cultural histories create their versions of our scripts. There are modern organizations whose work is having an impact on this trend. I appreciate phenomenal and brave organizations like StoryCorps. I enjoy hearing the variety of personal stories done in interview style. They enrich my life and I'm sure the lives of others.
Storytelling has earned its place as the most important tradition we humans possess. Stories teach us to love, to forgive, to imagine a world outside of our own, and to strive for better than we have. The greatest stories ever told function as a reflection on the world we live in and of both the goodness and evil present in our world. Carpenter, “The Importance of Storytelling”, 2013, https://hslda.org/Contests/Essay

 

In this lesson, I used Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach as inspiration. She is best known for her narrative quilts, it is illustrated with flat figures and shapes, it's a genre style that is all her own. My high school students even allowed me to read them the book for the lesson hook. We all enjoyed the story from the eyes of Cassie Louise Lightfoot. Ringgold reflects upon her experiences growing up in Harlem, NY with narrative text and colorful painting.

I have to admit, it was really challenging to get the students to tell their stories. Most of them replied, "I don't have one." However, the students who were able to dig deep created stories about family cookouts, vacations, and childbirth.

Students were encouraged to use different writing processes, including strategies from the Writing To Win curriculum, and boy did I get some push-back. "Mih Hill, this is ART, not a writing class!" "But, how can we separate them?" I would reply. Below you can see a couple of examples of their drafts. I strive in EVERY lesson to demonstrate to students that art is not just fluff, because the general perception of art in education is that it is insignificant.

The duration of this project was six weeks. They had to talk with family members, and write a draft; next they researched photos, and illustrated the story; then they transferred the drawings onto the cotton duck fabric, and finally, begin painting. If I ever teach this again I will use nine weeks, or perhaps an entire semester, because I discovered that the students required more time. Additionally, only really committed students were able to complete a painting. The quilting aspect wasn't realized. Nevertheless, the process and product deepened the students' skills in a variety of subjects.

  

Shoe Is On The Other Foot

My two weeks with the 7th grade class has ended. I am sad to have left them, but so happy that I had the time to lead them in such an amazing project. Art is a lot about discovery. I have always wanted to try to "sculpt" shoes with masking tape, but was a little reticent about the process. I experimented with the material, as did the kiddos. Teaching them sculpting skills and pulling out their knowledge of geometry was easy with these amazing students. They used the elements of art to really begin to image the function of the shoes as well as the form. The entire class visited the High Museum of Art and seeing the history of sneakers in the Exhibition "The Rise of Sneaker Culture". The students could really get excited about this art exploration, and I think that it was the perfect segue. Enjoy.

 
 
 

Finding Value

What did they do with all that knowledge about the Elements of Art and Principles of Design? They created beautiful micrographic self portraits encompassing poetry that they wrote all about themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make it fun, and interactive; To get students to really understand differing values in a portrait, I had them run a relay race, three teams of students tagged each other to take turns identifying varying values in each of three images projected via airdrop with my iPad mini.

The photographer and the subject student are on the right, in the background.

Keeping up with the Artdashians

Parents and students, please check out the class website for important information, notices, and helpful tips. You should feel free to check your child's eSchool account for attendance and academic progress, but here at McClarin teachers employ a variety of remote sites that will keep you and our students engaged in success. In addition to this website there are also Edmodo groups for each class. Those groups have assignments that, should your child need to miss school, can easily access, create and turn in. Also please feel free to contact me by email which is also on the website http://artedatmcclarin.weebly.com.

Cashing In on Jasper Johns

Scholastic Art had a fabulous magazine with Jasper Johns, a 20th century American Abstract Expressionist painter as their cover story. He was born in Georgia, but most of his symbolic works were created in Mid-Century New York City. He broke with the trend of the Abstract Expressionists of the day, who were putting paint splatters or brush swooshes on canvas. He chose to use common symbols. My Everyday Students read about his symbols and statements, his life and his art. Then they used letterforms, and at least seven to ten letters to create a chaotic, but unified composition inspired by Johns. Below you will see works created in chalk pastel. Some students chose oil pastel or paint to express themselves. Jasper Johns used stencils, but I challenged my students to draw their letterforms either from their imagination, or to choose from fonts with styles that were college-like, a Game Of Thrones-like font, a classic serif font, and a modern san serif font. As they developed their compositions students also had to identify negative and positive space. Another requirement was that they show at least three Principles in their work. I have a background in print graphic design, so it was especially enjoyable for me to share the nuances of typography with my students.

Go Go Gestalt

My Everyday students, often take a lot of convincing. Convincing them that they can create beautiful illusions with lines and shapes in graphite, charcoal, paint, et al is simultaneously challenging and rewarding. To make my point clear . . . and believavable, I set up four stations, each with black, white or gray scale media. Students could choose, and then rotate to each. In one, I hung a striped shirt on a display board, then placed easels around it. Their goal was to focus on its form and shape, by seeing, then representing only the negative space. The result is a gestalt. My student-skeptics, a few any way...did draw some contour lines as guides, but their drawings, albeit unfinished are quite nice.

SELFYisms

High School, Drawing and Painting I students used visual symbolism through collage and drawing. My "Everyday" students had to consider how the principles (balance, variety, unity, contrast, emphasis, rhythm, movement) are combined to communicate meaning in the creation of their artwork. They also discussed isms in art. "Isms" are distinctive doctrines, systems, or theories, and in the art world they typically signify art movements or styles. The suffix (word fragment added at the end of a word to modify its meaning) "-ism" marks a word as one signifying a doctrine, theory, or system of principles; or an attitude strongly in favor of or against a given group; a distinctive or characteristic trait; an action, process, or practice; a characteristic behavior or quality; a state or condition resulting from an excess of something specified.* Check out http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/ij/isms.html.  In the pre-lessons students created paintings of atmospheric perspective to understand Value: The lightness or darkness of a color tonal range. That was to prepare them for knowing how to shade the contours of their face with various shades of grey between absolute black and absolute white. Today’s teens seem so self-absorbed with their hand-held devices. I tried to take advantage of that by encouraging them to use a selfy as the subject of their art, and called this assignment “Selfyisms”