January 23, 2012 Grade 10

Picasso to Pollock

This week grade ten students will be preparing for their February 1 celebration of American Artist, Jackson Pollock. They will be conducting experiments, mixing paints, and practicing his techniques. They will be sharing informaton about his work and its importance in 20th century art with other students.

January 9- 17, 2012 AP

The third quarter AP students will explore "Painting as a Language - Material, Technique, Form, Content". We will be referring to this text by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel and focus on chapter 1 to expand our journal skills and on chapter 8 titled Expanded Forms and Ideas.

This is a challenging step to higher level thinking and working in visual arts.

We will complete three exercises.

1. Challenging hierachies - students will create an artwork that mixes materials and images from more than one of the categories described.

2. Appropriation - students will create a painting in which the composition or subject matter is appropriated from one artist while the style is appropriated from another artist.

3. Layering Languages - Students will create a painting whose content borrows or addresses the language of another nonart discipline.

Students please see additional information in the handouts provided.

All students will upload images of previous works to their digital portfolio on the school server.

January 9 - 17, 2012 Grade 10

Students will continue to explore the 20th Century Modern period of art. We began the semester by looking at the "Twin Titans" of Modern Art - Matisse and Picasso. Mr. Warren Ochoa joined the class for discussions about these two artists and their work. The studio assignment was to render a self portrait in the style of either Matisse or Picasso. Students will use oil pastels or acrylic paints to complete this project.

January 17, we will begin our journey to Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollack. We will begin construction of two large canvases for a demonstration of his work planned for February 1.

All students in the school will be invited to join the celebration and have a slice of a special Jackson Pollack Birthday Cake.

January 9 - 17, 2012 - Grade 9

A new year and a new semester! We have "old business" to complete before we start a new unit of study. This week we will add the trees to our Fauvist landscape. We will continue this process next week and have our last in-class work day Tuesday January 17. Incomplete compositions may be worked on before and/or after school or during breaks and lunch times. All compositions must be completed by January 20.

Thursday January 19 we will begin the lesson on 3D letter designs in the style of Robert Indiana. Students will need two (2)clean corregated cardboard sheets no more than 15 inches wide and no more than 12 - 18 inches long. So please check out large cardboard boxes that meet this dimension. We will need them in class January 23.

January 4, 2012 AP - 10 - 9

On my United/Continental return flight to Tegucigalpa Sunday morning I was browsing through the January 2012 issue of their “in-flight” Hemisphere magazine and saw an article titled “Next Big Things” about six innovators “who promise to change the way we live”. There I met José
Gomez-Marquez / age 35 / from Tegucigalpa, Honduras / lives in Boston. He is a 2011 TED fellow and program director of MITs Innovations in International Health lab.

I read the article and later “googled” him. As I read about him and his work these words and phrases kept leaping out at me – experiment, explore, investigate, innovation, love of design, multi disciplinary research.

I am always trying to find ways of explaining to our high school students why we study art.
Here before me was my answer – Jose Gomez-Marquez! Is he a great artist in the fine arts sense of the word – no! Is he a great creative thinker and a creative problem solver – YES! And what will our young people be called on to do? Right – experiment, explore, investigate, innovate, design, and research.

This semester our visual arts high school and middle school students will be doing just that. AP
students will be exploring and solving a variety of visual problems, Grade 10 students will delve further into the 20th Century Modern and investigate and experiment with art making techniques that changed the way we define art. Grade 9 students will research and create designs based on centuries old spiritual traditions.

In the middle school grade six students will look around the world for “curiosities” and build curiosity cabinets. Grade 7 students will explore art through a microscope. And grade 8 students will investigate pattern and design.

Six words to describe visual arts in 2012 - experiment, explore, investigate, innovate, design, and research.

January 23, 2012 Grade 9

This will be a busy week for grade 9 students. We will begin several projects. We will start two cross-curricular projects one with literature class and the other with maths class. We will also start the 3D Letter Form designs based on Robert Indiana's sculptures. Some students will need to put finishing touches on their landscape compositions this week.

December 12, 2011 AP

Last week AP students used every minute of class time to complete their "Romantic Landscapes". They will be taking exams this week but we will use our Thursday class time to critique our work.

December 12, 2011 Grade 10

Do you recognize these students? What a great job everyone did on their self portrait. So many new skills were learned and/or further developed. Getting over the "art fear" was the biggest challenge for some students. More finishing touches may be added during our Thursday morning class. Next semester we are moving into The Modern - Twentieth Century Art. We will go from Kandinsky to Pollock.

December 12, 2011 Grade 9

Grade nine students will spend their week studying for and taking semester exams. Thursday we will meet in the art room and take some time to "critique" the work they have done on their Fauvist Landscapes. They will be assessed on this first step of the process and will continue next year in the second semester. They will be adding stylized trees to the land.

December 5, 2011 AP

Last week AP students finished experiments with different drawing materials, drawing with feathers and brushes with sumi-e ink, and coffee.

This week they will begin using the characteristics of the nineteenth-century Romantic Landscapes.

Objectives/Outcomes
Students will:
become familiar with the style of nineteenth-century Romantic landscape painting.
create a painting from direct observation utilizing stylistic devices of nineteenth-century landscape painting.
learn techniques for dramatic landscape composition.
will learn to exploit effects of color and light for expressive results.


Students refer to the handout for more detailed information. Check online for images and information about the artists discussed in the Powerpoint on Friday.

Students will work at home and in the school studio to complete this by Monday December 12.

December 5, Grade 10

What drew the grade ten students to the window Friday morning? A rainbow, hanging low on the hill across from the school and above it was a double rainbow. Could we have asked for anything better to study color with. This was a good omen for students as they look forward to this weeks final sessions on their self portraits.

December 5, 2011 Grade 9

Grade nine students will continue painting like "wild beasts". The color will be flying onto their papers. This week they will also begin adding their forest elements to the landscape backgrounds.

November 28, Grade 10

Grade 10 students are moving toward the final stages of their self portraits. Some have reached completion. Transfering their original drawings to pastel or drawing paper and adding the tonal rendering. Their work goes beyond the representational, we are beginning to see their personalities shining through their featues.

November 28, 2011 Grade 9

Grade nine students are learning to paint like "Wild Beasts" - the Fauves! As Matisse said, "Fauvism isn't everything, only the beginning of everything. Fauvism was the first major avant-garde art movement of the twentieth century and kicked the modern era with a bang!" (From The Annotated Mona Lisa).

The Hallmarks of Fauvism were: Intense, bright, clashing colors. Distorted Forms and perspective, vigorous brushstrokes. Critics refered to these artists as wild beasts.They used color with no restraint skies could be green and grass could be purple.

Our students are creating a landscape with trees in the tradition of the Fauves artists, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Dufy, Rouault and Braque. We will use acrylic paint on sulfit paper. Wach for these non-traditional landscapes.

November 14, 2011 Advanced Placement - Drawing

HELP! Grade 11 students! We need your masks and Logo Designs from last year! This Friday and Saturday November 18 and 19, I will be presenting a workshop about some of the great things you have done in art class. If you still have your mask and/or your Logo Design, please bring it to the art room this week. We will return them the following week. You did great work and we want to share it!

We will continue gestural drawing exercises in class. Please be sure you bring your sketchbooks Monday. We will take time out for a mid quarter self evaluation on Monday.

November 14, 2011 Grade 10

Everyone is making very good progress on the unit on portraiture! On Monday we will complete a mid quarter self evaluation on the hand study and on Participation, Respect and Responsibility.

November 14, 2011 Grade 9

Tuesday - Time for mid quarter self evaluation. If you did not complete your sketchbook color studies in class, please plan to come to the art room to complete them, before school 7:15, morning recess, lunch time or after school Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday this week.

Please bring your favorite T shirt to class Tuesday so that we can begin drapery studies in preparation for still life painting.