recycle and recreate

We have a New City School tradition the week before winter break called PODS. The fifth and sixth graders choose a special class to take for the whole week offered by teachers and administration.

Students could choose birdhouse building with Bill from buildings and grounds, jewelry making with Laurie the school counselor, piñata making with Nina the spanish specialist, music making on iPads with Ben and Liz our music and tech specialists, or exploring thingiverse and printing on our maker bot with Eric the science specialist. Wow! Our students must have had a tough time deciding which one to choose!

This year, I offered a recycle and recreate class using my hoard of plastic water bottles. I have seen water bottles being used in so many amazing ways from bottle cap murals to mobiles so I wanted to give it a try.

I highly recommend it! It was lots of fun to make and you can't help but to smile when you see these hanging in the hallway. The installations are so colorful, catch the light beautifully, and are a great example of how artists can transform the everyday object into art.

kinder colors

The kinders have been practicing a little color theory! They have been working with warm and cool colors here and here for example.

This is the last project in our color unit, a collage inspired by the question- what is your favorite color and why? The kinders LOVED the collage process but even more, I loved their responses to the question. We spent some time before we started, to close our eyes and visualize our favorite colors and then did a quick share. While they worked on their collages, I came around to record their thoughts. Their color responses evoke a memory, feeling, family, or nature- all of them lovely!

(I did get permission to share this secret with everyone!)

sixth grade color investigation paintings

I love these free form color investigations! I first saw this project here created by Olivia Gude (love all of her work).

The directions are simple (download the complete project details here):
1. Choose a shape and make it your mark in your painting.
2. Choose a hue. Make many variations of your color without it becoming a different color. Push green until someone calls it blue!
3. Vary the color in hue, value, and chroma.
4. Now choose another hue and use variations as an accent.

The sixth graders did a beautiful job with their color investigations. I certainly enjoyed hearing the excitement and joy of new discoveries being shared along the way. Not wanting to waste any of their color combinations at the end of class, some of them even made abstract monoprints from their color mixing palettes!

war weavings part 3

It was interesting to see how many of the third grade textile stories were related to war. Boys and girls created epic battle stories with ultimate destruction and rebirth, historical war references, or man versus some destructive element (robots, aliens, fires, etc).



Good versus evil is a part of any good storytelling, but I was struck by the number of stories dealing with death and destruction coming from my lovely third graders! I thought perhaps that this might be a way for some of them to process what they might be hearing or seeing on the news, in the media, etc. I thought of ways to relate these battle story weavings to the way another culture might retell their own battle stories in their textile art. While pondering these thoughts via a little googling, I found some interesting information. Athena is both the Greek goddess of war and weaving. Neith is the Egyptian goddess of war who wove all of existence with her loom. Or how about the Norse story of woman weaving on a warp of human guts and using arrows as a shuttle!



How amazing to think that this war and weaving relationship is so ingrained that it has become an intuitive part of human expression. These third grade war weaving stories are a primal retelling of our human story.

And one more connection to share, I found this video on the Penn Museum website featuring information about its show: Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan.

Notes from Afghanistan: War Rugs from Penn Museum on Vimeo.

third grade weaving part 1

Our third grade artists have created some beautiful textile pieces using the ancient art of weaving. The words "text" and "textile" come from the same Latin origin meaning, “to weave.” We have discussed how text implies a story or words and how storytelling is very much a part of textiles and weaving. With this in mind, our artists were asked to tell a story using color and pattern in their weavings. The third graders had some wonderful stories to tell!





I love this Doctor Who inspired weaving!






















Many students commented on how much they enjoyed the calm and quiet of weaving. This was the perfect project to take outside and enjoy in our school garden.










Shark Attack Ocean Story I'm glad this artist decided not to trim the edges of his weaving. It adds so much energy and movement- and looks like a jelly fish!








This artist did a beautiful job experimenting with the warp and weft.