Start the beginning of the school year with fresh ideas and a spark of inspiration. In this issue, an elementary art teacher promotes kindness through a schoolwide art presentation; middle-school students participate in a humorous rite-of-passage pinch pot lesson; students interview one another and create abstract continuous-line portraits; and more.
View This Issue Purchase This Issue
Whether you are a newbie or a veteran art teacher, the beginning of the school year always offers a fresh new start and an opportunity to set high expectations for your students. To renew or reinforce your enthusiasm for teaching art, it is a good time to reflect on the reasons you became an art teacher.
Read Article
Art has the power to help students make connections to others and themselves. An experience in visual arts should be rich in inspiration, yet allow students to explore and discover their own voice through subject, media, and technique. Finding that inspiration that hooks the learner can result in meaningful and connected process and product.
Recently, I decided to incorporate the art of adinkra cloth into my fourth-grade self-portrait lesson. As we began the unit of study, we looked at printmaking artists from Ghana, West Africa, who use stamps made from gourds to print symbols onto fabric. We also discussed the meaning and importance of the symbols to the people of Ghana.
Read Article
On International Peace Day, pinwheels are created and planted to spin and send thoughts of tolerance, peace, and friendship throughout the world. Taking part in this type of worthwhile schoolwide activity inspired me to plan a new art activity where students would be encouraged to motivate others to show kindness, generosity, and goodwill.
Gustav Klimt filled his artwork with mysterious imagery and mythological references. He did not explain his pictures, instead leaving it up to the viewer to interpret the story. We do know that Klimt was inspired by Egyptian art. I have long been fascinated with the “Tree of Life” at the center of Klimt’s Stoclet Frieze, a series of three mosaics created by the Austrian painter.
Read Article
I treat my sophomore Art 2 class like a boot camp for AP Studio Art. I encourage students to treat each project and assignment as a potential addition to their AP portfolio, and I would like to think that the majority of the assignments we produce in the course are worthy of AP.
As an art educator, I believe in developing projects that call for students to produce images that are aesthetically strong. This requires them to think about their creative experience and who they are as individuals. Reflecting upon one’s own learning or thinking processes provides the artist with a more complete understanding of how the work was conceived and produced.
Read Article
This lesson was originally a student-inspired project. After teaching students how to form a pinch pot, one student asked if he could transform his into a frog. I showed the student how to score and slip the clay in order to attach features. Soon, all of my students wanted to make one as well.
Managing an art classroom is no different than managing an art gallery. Both communicate a mission and a vision. We work with artists/ students of all levels. We provide resources that will aid in their personal and professional growth. We help nurture their artistic voice. We acknowledge their successes, and we listen and provide guidance when they fail.
Read Article
Bernard Pras brings a new level of complexity to anamorphic art (art the can only be properly appreciated from a specific viewpoint). At first glance, his pieces appear to be clever recreations of famous artworks or portraits created from everyday objects. In reality, they are room-sized installations that have been photographed from a specific spot.
