Keep Chuggin along...

As the semester continues along, Aileen has responded to classroom dynamics and interest in a conscious way.  "Sometimes the more casual a classroom seems, the more thought out it actually is," she said last class, and this has stuck with me through the week.  Although, this may make some students anxious, their are reasons for a responsive/ emergent curriculum that make a lot of sense. 

For example, our sketchpad crit, went longer then I know Aileen had planned on Tuesday night. And this is because, many students felt that they wanted a bit more time for feedback.  So she went with the energy of the class and we spent a substantial amount of time critiquing our peers. 




During my critique, William Wegman, and his work he did with manipulaing photographs was brought up by Sarah.  I always loved his work with his dogs, (Even though I know some don't agree), and had never seen this other side of his work.


Here are my drawings from last week.

And here are some of WW's sketches that were discussed.  I love them.

A few other points, brought up in crit that I found interesting were:

• Kids curating.  This could be done in soooo many exciting ways, but the example given was by assigning a project that involved children collecting small objects for 2 weeks or so, and then discussing ways for them to display these pieces.  Which could broaden a discussion/ lesson on found objects and art.
• Framing Areas.  In Jake's sketches this week, he had a small black square cut, framing one part of his drawing.  It made the drawing seem very narrative. By zooming in, it created a loose story for the viewer to follow.  This could be assigned with children as at art and literacy component.



Jake's sketch.

• Aaaand, Mark Making.  My friend Clare's sketches were interesting to many of us because of the marks she used to create the drawing, and less about what she physically drew, i.e. a bird, cat, or tree.  This brought up an assignment that Sarah was once given about creating a drawing using 1000 marks, which I would love to assign with students one day, but maybe a smaller amount of marks would be more attainable for a younger group.  This could be assigned with children as an art and mathematics component.

Mark Making segwayed into a discussion about Lauren Tickle who while studying abroad discovered her love for drawing circles.  You can check out her work at her website: http://www.laurentickle.com/ 




We also started on our next project of making books.  

Aileen's books

Without letting on too much Aileen had us create the covers using thick card stock and either brown packing paper or construction paper. We set up around the classroom and found interesting textures using wax resist. She gave us each a simple white candle that we rubbed on our paper over different surfaces. The wax resist was cool because it has an element of surprise that is fun :). And expanding on this with my own students, I could see an art and nature component of going out side and doing rubbings on trees and rocks/ grass or leaves.


Here are some pics of the process:

what I did the rubbing on.

my book cover so far.

Really excited to continue with this project :)