Winter Art Show! Our Artome Art Show

Hey, kids! Last Thursday night, my school celebrated their second annual Fine Arts Extravaganza with a musical performance and an art show. Our winter art show is with the fundraiser Artome. This is our second art show with Artome and I CANNOT brag on them enough. I swear, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just love how easy of an art show (and fundraiser) this is. You can check out last year's Artome art show here.  

I shared quite a bit about this art show on my Instagram and I got a lot of questions. I thought I'd put them together in this post and hopefully help anyone out who is wondering about hosting an art show like this. Before I dive in, here's a short time lapse I made of the pre-show...that's right, this is the calm BEFORE the storm! 

Here are some of the questions I got about out experience:

Is this the only art show you do? No. We do a HUGE art show at the end of the year where every piece of artwork that every child has created is on display. I usually do two blog posts at the end of each school year highlighting both the 2-D and the 3-D portion of our art shows. You can check out archived art show blog posts by using the search bar on my blog and searching "art show".

 What happens to the artwork that is not purchased? After the art show, it is removed from the frame and shipped back to me at no extra charge. In fact, there's no charge for this art show except for the cost of the frame. I'll get to that in a minute.

 How much is the artwork, framed? That's up to you. Artome charges $19 for the framed artwork (and labor of framing and setting up the art show) and you simply up charge. I ask $25 and receive $6 per piece sold. Artome does not charge any additional fees. No charge for set up, shipping, paper, nothing. So, to me, the $19 is super reasonable.

 So, how does this work? You start by contacting Artome either by email or phone. I'm a phone talker myself so I just give them a shout. I ALWAYS get someone immediately. Customer service is spot on. You start by setting up a date and time. About a week later, you'll receive your box of paper for the artwork to either be created or mounted on. The artwork is to be created on a 9" X 12" surface. The paper they send is about 12" X 18" with a space for you to add the child's name, title of artwork, teacher's name and school. Once all of the kiddo's artwork is created, Artome sends you a shipping label. Then you drop it in the mail at your local UPS about 2 weeks before your show. The day of the show, the crew arrives about 2 hours before show time to set up. YOU DO NOTHING! It's fabulous. In fact, the guys who set up my show, had it up in less than an hour!

Writing all of the names on the labels sounds like it would take for ever. What do you suggest? Last year, me and my parent volunteers collectively clocked 2 hours just writing out the names of my 350 students and the rest of the details on the forms. This year, I asked my school secretary if she could print me labels and she agreed. That shaved so much time off the process! I cannot recommend that enough! 

If you don't create the artwork on the paper, how do you attach it to the paper provided? We used 3M spray glue. It is stinky but works great. 

I see you used chalk. Did that smear? How did you set it? My third graders used chalk and we had no issues with smearing! A mom volunteer sprayed it with hair spray and then we attached to the paper...no problems!

What if parents can't make it to the one night only art show? Can they still purchase? So, you get to decide when the art show ends. And, when it does, all of the artwork is packed up, framed, and shipped back to Artome. They do post-show sales for a couple of days after the fact. If you do have sales, they'll ship the framed work to you when they ship the unpurchased and unframed pieces.

What if more than one person wants to buy a piece of artwork? Like a grandparent or something? Artome can do a super high quality print of the original. Then they frame the print and it seriously looks just like the real thing!

 What lessons did you do and how did you decide what to have the kids create? I actually did a repeat of my self portrait projects from last year! They were such a hit...I mean, parents love self portraits, right? You can find the complete lessons on all of our projects! First grade did Royal Self-Portraits, second grade did Super Hero Selfies, third grade created these Sandra Silberzweig-inspired Chalk Portraits and fourth grade did Romero Britto-inspired Selfies! 

I think that answers about all of the questions I've gotten about this art show. I really love it and love this tradition of having a fine arts night. I do think next year, I'd like to add another element...but because we really go to extremes with our end of the year art show, it feel nice to have a beautiful art show that I'm not sweating bullets over. 

I know at some art show that folks put together, they have places set up for kids and families to create. I'm intrigued by this idea...but with our musical program already taking place on the same night, I think adding that just might be too much. I'd love to hear from y'all if you do something in addition to sharing artwork at your school art shows.  

I'd also love to hear if you've worked with Artome? What did you think? Such a great idea! 

By the way, these are the chalk pieces...I think they look great, don't you? No smears. That also shows how carefully each piece is framed.

Thank you so much for letting me share my art show with y'all! It was such a fun night. We plan to use the funds raised to purchase clay and glaze for our spring projects. Y'all know how quickly 500 lbs of clay and a million bottles of glaze can add up!

Big thanks to Artome for making it a fun and EASY night for this super tired art teacher!

Here's to makin' it to Winter Break!

In the Art Room: Walk Like an Egyptian

Our amazing second grade singing and dancing to a rewrite of the Bangles hit "Walk Like an Egyptian."

 Well, here it is, folks, the final installment of The Art Show. It seems like a million years ago that I shared  Part 1 and Part 2 of our school wide art show with you. I decided to save my favorite part of the art show for last: the second grade production "Walk Like an Egyptian."

This year, in the art room, our theme was Ancient Egypt. I chose that theme because of an amazing exhibit at The Frist Center for Visual Arts. Not only did my second through fourth grade students visit this exhibit, but the entire school studied Egypt throughout the year. My first graders created Egyptian Landscapes and Nile Crocodile puppets. The third graders created a life-sized sarcophagus. Egyptian god portraits were created by my fourth grade students. And the second grade created Egyptian collar necklaces and gave this magical performance.

 I wrote this short and silly play set up just like the game show "Jeopardy". The program began with the two hosts (shown on the left) kicking off with the song "Walk like an Egyptian" Our fabulous music teacher rewrote the lyrics to The Bangles song (you know, because that little bit about "smoking on a hookah pipe" just might not go over well) and taught the kids the lyrics. One of our incredible second grade teachers taught the kids some sweet dance moves.

After that intro, King Tut (our friend in the middle) comes out as the Alex Trebek of the show. He lobbed questions, as well as some jokes, at the contestants: Cleopatra, a Mummy and Queen Nefertiti. The kids sang a rewrite of Steve Martin's "King Tut" ("he's my favorite honkey" didn't seem like the best thing for the kids to be singing, 'specially since dude was Egyptian). The show ended with the mummy busting free of her bandage strips (er, toilet paper) and stealing the show as well as winning the prize of 100 shabti (shown on the right).

After the production, the kids were all smiles, even the toothless variety.

 The play was a ton of fun and a huge hit, especially with the performers. They lit up the stage with their excitement and enthusiasm. It was such a delight to work with the incredible music, P.E., second grade and many other teachers in the school to make this play possible.

Egyptian collar necklaces are now the latest in second grade fashion.

 My part in preparing the kids for the program was the costuming. I knew I wanted to keep it simple for the parents, so I asked the kids wear over sized t-shirts, shorts and sandals on the day of the performance. During art class, we studied the history of Egyptian jewelry with a focus on Egyptian collar necklaces and scarab beetle jewelry.

Okay, I'm not a macaroni-art kind of teacher but I will admit, this was kind of fun. If you do this, do not use the textured pasta as it cracks when it dries.

 One group of kids was given a wide variety of colorful pasta that they glued onto their gold-painted cardboard collars. We chatted about patterning and design.

 Once the glue dried, we added designs to our necklaces by printing. The kids used cardboard, q-tips and marker caps dipped in gold paint to create their unique designs.

 Knowing that they were going to be wearing their creations in their performance, the kids really worked hard on crafting beautiful necklaces.

The little actor that played King Tut is the son of one sweet mama. She came up with the pipe cleaner idea as a way to hold the necklaces on. She simply hole punched, fed the pipe cleaner through one side and twisted to keep it in place. The other side she left like a hook. This way the kids could take their necklaces on and off on their own.

 Some of my other classes created these scarab beetle necklaces. For these, the kids used cardboard to cut out the shape of wings. These cardboard shapes were then wrapped in tin foil and then colored with sharpie. Can you guess what the beetle's body is...? One of the many uses for bottle caps in the art room!

Two proud Egyptians showing off their necklaces.

I love the anch design, don't you?

 This program was such fun and a great way to kick off the art show. However, having an art show AND a performance on the same day most certainly gave me some new gray hairs. So, while I'd love to work with these amazing kids and teacher on another production again...let's just say I might pick a less insanely busy day. Thanks for dropping by.

In the Art Room: The Art Show, Part 1

 It's official, ya'll: School's Out for the Summer! And it really truly couldn't have come at a better time. Our school wide art show was a week before the last days of school which was a good thing since I was basically a useless puddle of exhaustion after the fact. I'm just glad that my Stress-Related Art-Show Eyebrow-Twitch finally stopped as I was tired of the dude at Starbucks thinking I was hitting on him.

Before I share with ya'll the amazing artwork of my kindergarten through 2nd grade students (3rd and 4th grade kiddos and clay projects to be shared in another photo-laden post), I have just gotta give a great big 

Thank You! 

to the dozens of parent volunteers that popped in everyday for two weeks leading up to the art show to hang the artwork. That's right, they hung everything that the kids created all year (my rough estimate was about 2300 masterpieces). I'm super lucky to have such amazing support from the parents of my young artists. Ya'll are the bestest!

Okay, without further ado, I present to you the masterpieces outta Kindergartenland!

 In kindergarten, I like to start the school year with a great big fat unit on line. We sculpt with lines, paint a pattern of lines and create an abstraction of lines. These bright and happy paintings are always a favorite of mine.

Another fave this year was clay butterfly sculptures. I really love that crayon/watercolor technique for the little ones. It seemed to add more depth to their texture than glaze would. That painting on the right is another project from our line unit.

For Read Across America week, I wore my Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus dress and we created these cuties. This was a big hit with the kids and parents alike. We had a lot of fun trying out our wet-on-wet watercolor skills with this project. Look below and you'll see how they did that in the background of their work.

 One thing I love about having the parents hang the artwork is that each hangs the pieces a little differently. I find that this makes for more dynamic displays from class to class. Foxy lesson here and Starry Night Collages here.

 This year, I made signs for the art show that were inspired by that AMAZING art teacher over at Painted Paper. When I saw her post on art show signs, I knew I had to use our stash of leftover painted papers to make my own.

 Onto the 1st grade artwork. The little ones were so busy this year! One of our most recent masterpieces were these koinobori that we were able to hang in a large bank of windows. Details on that fun and quick lesson here.

 My 1st grade started the year creating those hilarious Viking Self Portrait collages with Rebecca, my former student teacher (who is RIGHT NOW interviewing for her own art teacher gig, wish her lucky, ya'll!). Details on those Starry Night Collages here and Party Pandas here. 

 Our second round of self-portraits were of a Japanese theme with ourselves dolled up in kimonos. Details on that lesson here. 

 When I was absent for a couple of days attending the NAEA conference in San Diego, I left my "But I'm Not an Artist!" sub directions on teaching the kids to draw these pandas. And, much to her surprise, her drawings, as well as the kids, turned out great! This also meant that I could come back to work with a lesson already started and simply bust out the watercolor paints for the kids to finish them. Details on those ceramic stars to come.

One final look at 1st grade before we move onto the...

 Again, the idea for these signs came from Painted Paper. Each set of signs was hung right above the hallways leading to that grade level. 

I really loved the work that my 2nd graders created this year. Some of my favorites were their circle loom weavings and their cherry blossom paintings. 

 Every year, I have my 1st through 4th grade students right an autobiography to hang with their artwork. This also proved to be a great sub lesson when I was out for a different occasion. Can't remember what. Booze Cruise, maybe? Wishful thinking. My 2nd grade also took part in the Viking and Kimono fun. 

 We hang ALL the artwork that the kids have created ALL year. Which means that one class can take up a whole lotta wall space. I have yet to find what sticks the best to cinderblocks in the muggy pre-summer heat of our halls. We've tried every kind of tape, that blue sticky stuff by Dapp, double-sided tape by 3M and hot glue. While hot glue works great, it's a headache trying to get it off the walls. Next school year, I'm begging and pleading for more cork strips.

 Paper marbling was a fast and fun project to teach about the Japanese art of Suminagashi. 

 I liked this lesson so much, I blogged about it twice. 

 I've always struggled with a circle loom weaving lesson where I loved the results as much as the kids did the process. In the past, we wove on CD's and unpainted white plates. The results were fine...but when we painted the plates this year, it seemed to take the weaving to a whole new level. 

And there you have it, ya'll! The 2-dimentional masterpieces by kindergarten through 2nd grade. Stay tuned in the next coupla weeks as I share the rest of the art show as well as lessons with ya. 

Until then, how do you know it's officially summer? Well, it's 1pm and I'm still in my pajamas! May your days be filled with pjs and craft projects, teachery folk! For the rest of ya, take a day or three off, you've earned it. Tell your boss a crazy art teacher said so!