So it seems that MMSD isn’t fond of WordPress so I am officially switching my WordPress blog over to this BlogSpot format. Everything remains except the web address!!
To view old posts from 2009-2014, read old posts here but for future posts, read the new BlogSpot blog!
New blog address:
http://okeeffesbackyard.blogspot.com/
I like to end the school year with something that gives kids a little freedom but also gives them enough structure that they are focused and busy during our last classes. Andy Goldworthy is the perfect inspiration for this type of project. He is a naturalist artist who uses only things he finds from nature in his sculptures and then after he is done, lets nature do what it will with the artwork. The kids find him fascinating. How does he do it? What is he using now? How is that balanced? How is that connected? Click here to watch some of the videos we watched in class so we could watch him work.
And some examples of his work:
Today was only Day 1 of our Goldworthy projects. We will continue this for the rest of this week and next week. Here are some pictures from today!
I really just show them some of his work and tell them to go make art. They have so many stories to go with each sculpture! I believe the kids don’t ever get enough outside time or imaginative play time. This kills two birds with one stone, has them working together AND creating art. It can’t get much better!
This project has become a favorite 3rd grade project for both myself as the teacher and my students. I love this project because I am able to hit on all of our ceramic standards easily, I am teaching about a local artist and the mugs always turn out amazing. The kids love it because it’s clay and they love animals!
Bruce Howdle
Bruce was a ceramics professor at the University of Madison Wisconsin from 1994 to 2005 and he is currently at the University of Platteville. Bruce has been a sculptor since 1976. He has a studio in Mineral Point and he is almost always around to talk about and sell his artwork. 
You may recognize some of Bruce’s ceramic murals around town like this mural of mountain climbers. You can find it on the way west side off of Mineral Point on the TDS Metrocom building.
Or this mural at the University Hospital Clinic in Madison. Really, you can find his murals all over the country!
Randall Raccoons know Bruce’s work more for his animal work than his murals. Bruce is famous for his pigs. Each part is thrown on the wheel and then hand put together.
But the kids really love his animal mugs!
Ask your student how they came up with the idea for their own animal mug. What textures and colors did your child use? What details on their mug help you to know what animal it is? Why did they choose that animal?
5th graders have just started a new project learning about the process of Batik. Batik uses hot wax as a resist on fabric to create a design. After the designs are created in wax, the fabric is dyed and left to dry. Once the fabric is dry, then the wax is ironed out of the fabric and you are left with a beautiful piece of work.
Right now, 5th graders are sketching mandala designs to transfer onto fabric where they have started the wax resist process.
 (Students faced blurred for privacy)
Ms. B, our music teacher, told me third graders were learning about Russian Balalaikas in music class and many balalaikas have rosemaling on them. I didn’t know what a balalaika was but I knew lots about rosemaling! My grandma is a rosemaler and she taught me when I was little. Rosemaling was popular in Norway, Russia and many other eastern European countries. Ms. B concentrated on Russia in Music and we learned more about Norway in Art.
This is a balalaika:
Rosemaling is an art for the common person. It was popular when Rococo and Baroque art was popular. But Rococo and Baroque art is really just for the rich. Rosemalers taught each other in groups called guilds and they traveled around the country painting in people’s homes. They painted a lot of furniture. My grandma was taught by a Norwegian friend named Esther. She painted a lot of special places for weddings and babies. Here is a plate she painted for my other grandma and grandpa:
But she also painted plates just for arts’ sake as well:
Grandma first taught me when I was in third grade but the earliest example of my own rosemaling that I still have is from when I was in 5th grade:
Third graders started by looking through some of my grandma’s old rosemaling designs as well as her books.
Third grade balalaikas turned out beautifully!
Check out some of the third graders performance of their Balalaika song here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni76Jmt7yNY
MMSD Art Standards:
Standards One A: Visual Memory and Knowledge – Students will know and remember information and ideas about the art and design around them and throughout the world. Students will identify the subject matter or story communicated through art.
Standard One B: Art and Design History, Citizenship and Environment – Students will understand and value significance of the visual arts, media and design in relation to history, citizenship, the environment and social development.
Standard Three: Students will design artwork organized by compositional principals, expressive features and sensory qualities. Students will identify and use color, shape, line, texture and space in works of art. Students will identify repetition.
Standard Four: Creates – Students will create images and objects that communicate and express ideas using varied media, techniques and processes. Students will recognize and use previously introduced elements, media, techniques and processes and will continue to expand their knowledge which includes drawing as a tool for planning and techniques and processes of color mixing which include secondary colors.
Standard Six: Reflecting – Students reflect upon and assess the characteristics and merits of own work and the work of others. Students will participate in group discussions describing the artwork.
Standard Seven: Interpreting – Students will interpret the visual experience with a range of subject matter, symbols and ideas. Students will identify the narrative qualities of artwork such as cultural meanings and illustrations. Students will create artwork with various subject matter, symbols and emotional content.
Standard Eight: Understanding – Students understand the function and structure of the visual arts in relation to human history and cultures. Students will view styles and techniques of a limited number of artists and/or cultures past and present.
Standard Nine: Making Connections – Students will make connections among the visual arts with other disciplines. Students will start recognizing the principles of art in various art disciplines and recognize the endless relationships between visual arts and other disciplines.
MMSD Music Standards:
Standard Eight: Relating – Students relate music to all other arts and disciplines. Students will identify similarities in the meanings of common terms such as form, patter and contrast used in music and visual arts.
It’s that time of year again.
The Wisconsin Art Education Association Youth Art Month Southwest Art Show is up!!
Place: UW-Baraboo/Sauk County, 1006 Connie Road, Baraboo (Campus Building – Aural M. Umhoefer Classroom & Administration)
Hours: Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Show Dates: February 17 – 22, 2014
Closing Reception: Informal, Saturday, February 22, anytime from 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
This year Madison has THREE schools participating: Blackhawk Middle School, Crestwood Elementary and Randall Elementary.
 
 
Congrats to our ten Randall participants!
Eleanor, Daquan, Thomas, Emilie, Griffin, Daniel, Quinn, Jett, Mirra and Jou
Results-
1st Place Daniel (Daniel’s work will be at the Capitol show in March!)
2nd Place Griffin
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Roy Lichtenstein is an American pop artist. Pop is short for popular. Pop Art uses images, ideas and people from popular culture. Comic books are from popular culture and Roy Lichtenstein often used the format of comic book art in his work. He used speech bubbles and onomatopoeias as well as primary and neutral colors. Often his work featured some sort of drama as well.
Randall 5th graders chose an image from popular culture to create a comic book style drawing of their own. Craftsmanship was discussed often in this project. Students were careful to fill the entire space, use contrasting patterns and color neatly using solid lines.
MMSD Art Standards:
Standard 1: Visual Memory and Knowledge
Students will know and remember information and ideas about art and design around them and throughout the world. 5th graders will identify the purposes, subject matter, stories, feelings or symbols communicated through art.
Standard 3: Designs
Students will design artwork organized by compositional principles. expressive features and sensory qualities. 5th graders will identify and use color, shape, line, texture, space and movement in works of art. 5th graders will identify and use contrast, repetition, emphasis, unity and variety.
Standard 4: Creates
Students will create images and object that communicate and express ideas using varied media, techniques and processes. 5th graders will recognize and use previously introduced elements, media, techniques, and processes and will continue to expand their knowledge which includes: Drawing as a planning tool to interpret and express personal thoughts, Drawing with contour line, textural elements, and value and figure drawing.
Standard 7: Interpreting
Students will interpret the visual experience with a range of subject matter, symbols and ideas. 5th graders will identify subject matter and feeling found in art, identify the narrative qualities of artwork and identify the purpose of various artworks. 5th graders will define, discover and understand symbols and emotional content used in specific artwork.
Standard 9: Making Connections
Students will make connections among the visual arts with other disciplines. 5th graders will recognize endless relationships between the visual arts and other arts and socials studies.
Louise Nevelson was a very strong, Jewish woman who was also a sculptor of assemblages. An assemblage is really just a gathering of things that don’t normally belong together, found objects. Nevelson would take things from the side of the road and put them together. She created unity by painting the sculptures all the same color. We watched part of this video of artists discussing Nevelson’s work. (starting at 1:50)
“I fell in love with black; it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color… Black is the most aristocratic color of all… You can be quiet, and it contains the whole thing.” -Louise Nevelson
“Women at that time were supposed to look pretty and throw little handkerchiefs around… well, I couldn’t play that role.” -Louise Nevelson
This assemblage by Nevelson is called Homage to 6,000,000. One art critic claimed “Each box is the same, yet the interiors are each different. This huge installation speaks of the unbelievable number of Jews who died during the holocaust. Perhaps for her, each box was the remnants of a separate life, all combining into a formidable wall of remembrance.” When students analyzed this assemblage, they really understood this idea the artist was trying to get across.
In this portrait of Nevelson, she looks like a living assemblage!
Students chose to create their assemblages in a radial symmetrical design, asymmetrical design or mirror image symmetrical design. The found objects were found in my grandma’s basement! My grandma is an artist herself and when she moved into assisted living, she had to give up most of her supplies. Some of the boxes had stuff in it I never thought I could ever use, but it was perfect for an assemblage project! Fake butterflies, small straw hats, parts of old blinds, fake flowers, doll heads, doll hair and so many more odd and interesting things.
Students loved going through this box of miscellaneous stuff! I think I could have made this project two months instead of two class periods and they would have been just fine with that.
And some of the finished assemblages..
MMSD Art Standards:
3rd graders began this lesson with a close reading of Diego Rivera’s murals. Students got into groups and began sketching their plan for their own group mural. As they began painting, they needed to review how to mix for secondary colors. They also needed to know what kinds of brushes to use. It makes sense to say out loud that you would need a small brush for details and a large brush for the big areas, but it is something students needed to be reminded of to think about.
Students really started to learn what the word craftsmanship means through this project. At various stages, students needed to be on the lookout for different ways they could see in their murals that they were really doing their best work and not rushing things. In the painting stage, that meant being White Spot Inspectors. When they were finished painting, that meant getting out their black markers. If you click on the links, you can see the videos created by another art teacher that students watched on these craftsmanship concepts.
After painting the murals, students learned about gesture drawings to help them create the workers for their murals.
After a month and a half of work, here are the results!
Standards in this lesson-
MMSD Art Standards
Identify the subject matter or story communicated through art.
Identify and use color, shapes, line, texture, and space in works of art.
Recognize and use previously introduced elements, media, techniques, and processes and will continue to expand their knowledge which includes:
Close reading is the new buzz word in our classrooms. It is traditionally associated with literacy, the close reading of text. But text can be many different things, not just a traditional book or article. Text can also be a painting, sculpture, piece of music or graphic. Close reading might be the new buzz word in our elementary classrooms but it is something we art and music teachers have been doing for decades.
Essentially, close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension. A good example of close reading in the art room is the lesson third graders just finished. They began this lesson with a close reading of the text of Diego Rivera’s labor murals in Detroit.
In close reading, there is a focus on observing and analyzing. The same questions that classroom teachers use to probe for deeper understanding in reading are the same questions we art teachers use as well. Remember, the text is the murals.
The questioning could go on forever. Once the students get started in this line of questioning, they get really excited about it. I’m also very excited because students start to see the artwork in a whole new way!
After an in depth discussion prompted by the close reading of the text, students brainstormed what labor they see in their own communities.
From here, students got into groups depending on which labor group they wanted to focus on and started brainstorming the people in those groups. Who collects our garbage? Who grows our food? Who delivers our mail? Who fixes our pipes? Who builds the buildings? etc.
The next class, students started sketches of murals they would then create in groups inspired by labor in their own communities and Deigo Rivera’s murals.
Standards in this lesson:
Common Core Standards
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.3 Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.6 Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
MMSD Social Studies Standards
MMSD Art Standards
Identify the subject matter or story communicated through art.
Identify and use color, shapes, line, texture, and space in works of art.
O'Keeffe's Backyard 
