Pop Art, Pope Francis and Perry Milou

One of my 5th graders shared with me that her cousin was commissioned to create a painting of Pope Francis. Of course I asked if it was her famous, Philadelphia based cousin, Perry Milou who she has mentioned to me over the years.

How exciting! She brought in a print (below of Pope Francis with the art museum in the background) the next day and I felt so happy to see his amazing work and it's connection to this historical first visit of Pope Francis to The United States. Regardless of religious affiliation, this visit has been impactful in numerous ways to those of us living in this area. See the beautiful cathedrals on television and seeing fine art connections has been fabulous.

A Pop artist, Milou has depicted countless famous faces with his rich palette. His "Faces" collection of Pope Francis can be viewed on his website. There is a nice video towards the top of his site that talks about how this collection was a perfect match as he realizes so many personal connections to the Pope and his visit to Philly.

http://perrymilou.com

I am truly thankful to my student for keeping me up to date on some amazing local art that is being created and influencing the world. Milou's paintings are quite special. 

All images are from perrymilou.com

Grade 5 (and Art in the Park) Candy Paintings

Fifth graders are finishing up candy wrapper paintings right now. The focus on these has been...sweet! 

I will post the images as they are finished but wanted to share photographs from this past summer when I taught a similar lesson during Art in the Park.

We began by selecting a wrapper that had a composition that appealed to each student and had awesome colors. 

This summer at Art in the Park, we did not have access to computers so the kids worked from real wrappers vs. my 5th graders had time to use online resources to find a wrapper from present day or decades ago.

My 5th graders cropped their wrapper down and enlarged the image onto to their paper. 

We spent a full class period observing and drawing the enlarged design followed by fun times painting in the wrapper as realistically as possible. 

Yummy, candy wrappers drying in the summer air

Students hard at work carefully painting in their drawings

Stay tuned for more delicious results!

1st Grade: Jim Dine Hearts

Jim Dine is an American Pop Artist. He does an awesome job using the heart (shape) as his subject.

 Kindergarten created oil pastel and painted hearts for their Square 1 Art project in September but I really wanted to show the 1st graders Jim Dine's work. So for this project, we did a Jim Dine spin-off.

After viewing Jim Dine's work and talking about the similarities, 1st graders practiced drawing hearts to fill a rectangular 5"x7" space. Next, they glued foil to a piece of mat board and smoothed it out. They transferred their heart drawing to the foil and outlined in sharpie marker. 

Next up was to use a ruler to make the hearts look abstracted and fragmented. Then they filled in their fragmented parts using repeated lines, shapes and/or other designs. 

and here's some examples of progress made today (unfinished)....