In the Art Room: Gettin' Outta the Art Room!

Hiya, kids! I thought I'd share with y'all today some excitingness that has me busting outta the art room and hittin' the road. The CliffsNotes version is this:

* On Saturday, September 6th, I'll be leading a workshop at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Nashville. The workshop will coincide with Cheekwood's current exhibit of Andy Warhol's Flowers. We'll start the morning with a docent-lead walk through the exhibit and then jump right into printmaking, leaf relief sculpturing and some textile work that will involve my personal favorite: needle felting! The workshop fee is a mere $25 ($20 if you are a member of the Gardens). Spots are limited so if you are interested, go here, click the link and get yourself signed up. I can't hardly wait!

* On Monday, October 6th, I'll be speaking to the art ed students (and any folks who'd like to attend) at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio! Yeah, you heard me right. Here's how the talk is being described: 

A Bloggers Guide to Bringing Art to Life

Cassie Stephens graduated from Indiana University with a BFA in painting and an art education certification.  After student teaching in Ireland, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee where she has been teaching art to kindergarten through fourth grade students for the past 15 years. She is a blogger sharing her passion for bringing art to life.  This might be by dressing like Andy Warhol's Soup Cans or Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night.  She enjoys connecting with art teachers from across the world with her blog and will share examples of art projects that reflect this global outlook.

Wow. Totally freaking the funk out about this one! I'm so excited to chat with art ed students as well as anyone else that would like to attend. The talk will start at 5pm, is open to all and it's free (I'll share the exact location with you soon). Hope to see you there! 

But first, let's chat about this Cheekwood Adventure, shall we? I love Cheekwood, y'all. When I first moved to Nashville, I used to go, hang out in the gardens and attempt to paint. It's always gorgeous, peaceful and inspiring. A fellow art teacher buddy and I visited this summer to check out their current Big Bugs outdoor exhibit (although the million degree summer temps prevented us from lasting too long) the Andy Warhol's Flowers show.

I like Big Bugs and I cannot lie. Actually I freakin hate bugs of any size. This summer, a buncha buddies and I were waiting to eat at a restaurant (which I will not name but I also will not be eating at ever again) when a FREAKIN HUGE cockroach landed on my friend's shoulder. I was the only one that noticed the monster crawling on him and started screaming "Oh my gawd, OH MY GAWD," at the top of my lungs. Meanwhile, everyone else was trying to figure out what I was spazzing over because I was unable to say anything other than, well, oh by gawd. When the others finally noticed La Cucaracha, EVERYONE started screaming and jumping up and down until the poor beast was finally crushed. It was at that point that we noticed the ENTIRE restaurant had stopped and was staring in our direction. Awk. Ward.

See? I done tole you the gardens were beautiful! We'll be using both Andy Warhol's printed flowers as well as Cheekwood's real ones as our printing/sculpturing/felting inspiration.

Now, if y'all can't make it, you can always read all about the process of printing that we'll be doing here. This is actually one of my most visited blog posts and I think it's because the results look so stunning. I did this project with my lil 2nd grade friends and they rocked it. You can check out all the deets here. 

One printing process results in two amazing prints. I'm hoping we can print some flowers while we are at Cheekwood. Although, in the past, I've just used leaves as their flat surface doesn't puncture the gelatin printing plate. But it will be fun to experiment, so we shall see!

For our relief sculpture, we'll be creating these super groovy leaf and flower pieces. I have done this project with my 3rd grade friends and they always look rad. You can read about that project here if you wanna.

 In the afternoon, we'll be needle felting! I'm still toying with the idea of just what we'll be creating...but I'm excited about the possibilities! Of course, we just might have to felt some flowers. You might recognize these from my Felted Fiesta Frock with Ballz.

So! I hope to see y'all there! And my Ohio friends, I hope you'll join us at BGSU. Until next time, I hope you have a super fab week, y'all!

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In the Art Room: Egyptian Style

Portrait of the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis created by one of my fourth grade students. I love that the artist embossed the goddess' name in hieroglyphics at the bottom of the frame.

For the record, let me just say that this lesson is not mine. I found it on pinterest, which lead me to artsonia. The image I found there showed that the middle school-aged students had watercolor painted their gods and painted their frame with metallic paint. As you can see, I altered the lesson some. It has taken my fourth grade students quite a bit of time but they are finally seeing the light at the end of the Never-Ending-Project tunnel. The kids and I are both pleased with the results so I though I'd share my version of the lesson.

Don't let the picture fool you. This photo was taken at the begin of the year before the dementors, er, students entered the scene. Now there's a drum kit where the rugs were and the third grader's half-painted sarcophaguses (sarcophagui?) drying all over the floor.

Our year long theme is the study of Ancient Egypt (really? I had to tell you that? I'm kinda like Mrs. Obvious, if you've not noticed). I chose this theme because of the Egyptian exhibit at the local art museum that the majority of my students field-tripped to.

Portrait of the Ancient Egyptian god Horus.

 This particular unit began with a sit down in Ancient Egypt where the students were told the story of the two gods portrayed on my window, Isis and her son Horus. In case you don't know the story, it goes something like this: Jealous brother Seth decides to take down his brother Osiris. Builds him sarcophagus, convinces him to climb inside and suffocates him. Wife of Osiris, Isis, sends her eagle-headed son Horus to avenge his father's death. That's what she's chatting with him about on my painted window. Confused? Well, the Ancient Egyptians believed in hundreds of gods, some animal, some human and some a combo of both, all with strange tales of their own. Needless to say, to the average 10 year old, the stories are fascinating.   

Ancient Egyptian god Osiris who is often depicted the color green. We're guessing it has to do with all that suffocating business.

After learning about the Ancient Egyptian gods (with an emphasis on the fact that these are false gods), students were given a handout with a list of about a dozen gods, their back story and their image in profile. After they chose one that piqued their interest, they began to sketch out their god in pencil and trace their lines in sharpie.

Learning the fine art of metal tooling.

From there, I introduced colored pencils. I briefly chatted with the kids about coloring and let them have at it. It was a total disaster. After creating such beautiful drawings, I was disappointed that their coloring skills were lacking. Or, rather, their art teacher had failed to teach them some important things about shading, value and blending.

So I backtracked. I created a colored pencil coloring sheet (don't stop reading, hear me out) that involved creating a gradation of values. There was also a little review on color theory. Some got it and applied it to their drawings and some didn't. But it did improve their application of colored pencil greatly.

Once the gods and goddesses were complete, I introduced the kids to Ancient Egyptian symbols. We looked at symbols we see and recognize everyday (hearts, peace signs, smiley faces, etc.) and discussed how the Egyptians used symbols as well. Using a 3" by 4" piece of styrofoam, the kids chose a symbol that they felt related to their god and engraved it into the foam.

I love the tooled metal design on this frame.

As you can see from these drawings, the ankh was a very popular symbol with the kids. When printmaking, I set out two trays of ink and brayers for each table of four students. Working with a partner, the kids printed for several art classes. One day we printed with metallics and the next, we tried our hand at rainbow printing, which they loved. It was an absolute mess and sometimes frustrating for both the kids and myself. But by the last day, they were printmaking fools.

Anubis.

Last week, we started the metal tooled frame. I have five rolls of tooling metal in red, blue, green, gold, and silver. We chatted about embossing, looked at Egyptian patterns, recalled hieroglyphics and symbols. With dull pencils and a foam board for cushion, the students managed to complete their frames in just a few classes. I've been dangling the carrot of weaving over their heads, so they are more than ready to move on. I began assembling the works of art yesterday in my excitement to see what they would look like. 

I don't know if you can tell, but the images of the gods are three dimensional. Pieces of foam core were glued underneath to raise them up. I also hot glued the metal frame to the construction paper because the edges are sharp and that metal gets as hot as a mother with hot glue on it. Oh, convection, how I hate you.

In all, I thought this was a pretty successful project. We managed to learn about drawing, shading, printmaking, metal tooling and just a smidge of Ancient Egyptian history. I am so thankful for pinterest and the art teacher behind the original lesson.

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