Clay Celtic Knot Trivets and Wall Hangings

Celtic Knots may be trending in tattoos and jewelry lately, but these interwoven designs have been around since at least, the 7th century. These knots are woven lines that have no beginning and no end, and studying them gives us a peak into world culture and history, as well as the use of symbolism in art. My students were especially interested in how the meaning of things can change with as the people change. The Trinity Knot now represents the holy trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but in pagan times, the same knot represented birth, death, and rebirth, or youth, adulthood, and old age.

After learning about various knots, the students produce their own knots, not with drawn lines, but clay coils. This is a great way for students to merger meaning with ceramic techniques and skills . The fact that the finished product can function as a trivet, is yet another bonus.

 

I printed a bunch of various famous knots, laminated them and hot glued the edges to make templates that my blind students could use. They could also choose to make up their own knot design and symbolism.

One student laughed when I told her that rolling a coil was a skill, so I let her try to roll one without any instruction. Her first attempt took a long time to get a dried, flattened slug like shape. With a few tips she made a longer, rounder coil in a fraction of the time. The trick is to start with your fingers and hands together and and roll them from the tips of the fingers to the bottoms of the palms while spreading the distance between the hands and fingers to stretch the length. Most people beginners just roll the length of their fingers, and they are not creating distance between hands and fingers before coming back to the middle to roll and stretch it again. It's important to be sensitive to where the thick parts are and apply more pressure, while lightening pressure at the thing parts. If the coil does flatten a little, twist it like a candy cane (minus the hook) and continue rolling.

Once the coils are made, the weaving can begin. Wherever there is overlap, or ends joining together, score each side (scratch using a needle) and apply slip or water before pressing them together. The clay should be wet enough that the coils don't crack when lifting and bending during the weaving process.

A simple knot of two verticle loops and two horizontal loops can be made by keeping the loops open until the weaving is done with one side of the loop and then the other. I like to close the loops where there is already going to be some overlap with another coil. Here you can see me in the beginning stages of starting a knot that has 3 loops going each direction. It's a good idea to tent it with some plastic over night so that the drying process is slow and even, otherwise you'll get some clean breaks at the spaces between overlapping, where the coil dried too quickly. Enjoy the process and enjoy the product. 

Monster Pencil Cans

I have a clear memory of a youth fundraiser at the mall in the 1970's or '80s. What was being sold that was so memorable? Monster pencil holders. Specifically a furry fabric covered tin can with big blue feet and beady eyes. I thought students might enjoy a chance to express themselves by choosing felt, pom-poms, foam, feathers, and yarn to create their own friendly monster. Scissors and tacky glue (or hot glue) are all it takes assemble these fun crafts, and within an hour, kids walk away with something they can put on their desk or give to a parent as a gift. We began by brainstorming about types of monsters found at halloween (Frankenstein, vampires, goblins) and then sharing our favorite famous monsters (Grover, Sully from Monsters, Inc.) Kids can sketch out their ideas before they start and give their character a name and backstory. Whether you make this a quick rainy day craft, or an elaborate character development exercise, it's sure to get some smiles.

 

My First Goal Ball Tornament

Goalball has been called (by a T-shirt I bought) "The coolest sport you've never heard of." It was created after World War I to give soldiers, coming home without their vision, a sport of their own.  

I've played myself once, but like the low-vision or totally blind athletes, I had to wear eye shades that don't allow any light in. 

The point of the game is to make more goals than the other team. The goal, is wider than a soccer goal, in fact, it's as wide as a. basketball court, which makes it hard to block. The ball has bell and so when it comes you throw you body in the way to keep your opponents form scoring. Then you take the ball and roll it back to them. This may not sound very challenging, but when you realize that it's like doing burpees for a 12 minute half, you'll understand. There are a lot of core muscles at work with the blocking and the going up and down so many times. There's also a challenge of making sure you roll the ball the right direction. There are tactile markings on the floor to help you play your zone, and it helps to back up to the goal before rolling, in order to orient yourself.

I was able to help chaperone my school's goalball team this past month and it was very interesting to watch the tournament. We competed against teams from Canada, Florida, Arizona, Utah, and South Carolina. It's not like football where there are teams in every high school in your area. You need to travel to find someone to play against. But with the tournament so close to the ocean, I asked if there was anyone who had never been to the beach before. A couple high schoolers admitted, they hadn't had that experience despite growing up a couple hours from the coast. One of girl asked, "What's a beach?" There's something about experiencing the difference between walking on loose hot sand and hard wet sand, smelling and tasting salty air. Feeling the water moving the earth beneath your feet. Just ten minutes and the stresses of the trip and the previous week, were swept away. Sports teaches more than athletic skills, and these trips teach more than how to compete. I'm so glad I get to see life through the my student's, even the eyes that don't see well.

 

Clay Beads

I love using clay for art projects for little kids and multiple complex needs students. It's good to give them sensory experiences that help improve fine motor skills. For the clay bead project, I had my students pinch of tiny pieces of clay to roll into balls. Some started with a coil and cut off uniformly sized chunks as well. Something the size of a Tootsie roll or smaller is a good place to start.  I taught them that to make a ball they could put their hand on top of the clay and roll it in a circular motion, but to make a cylinder, they would roll forward and back with the same piece of clay. We poked a hole large enough to allow for shrinkage, and even went back with tooth picks when the beads were leather hard to make sure the holes hadn't closed up. 

Kids pushed cards, metal embossing tools, or skinny paint brush handles into the sides of the beads to make interesting textures and patterns. One day we worked with porcelain and another we worked with terracotta. The colors were so beautiful that we decided not to paint or glaze them. We used Twisteezwire to string them, and it was the perfect size to fit over an adult head )with some overlapping twisted part int he back) for a necklace. The moment that a child realizes that they just made a piece of jewelry out of basically mud.

Conference Art Contest

 I started submitting my student's artwork for the national Insights Art Contest in conjunction with the American Printing House for the Blind Conference. Every year, I had at least one or two win awards, which was pretty exciting for me because it meant getting to see kids fly on a plane for the first and possibly only time in their lives. They also rode on trains, escalators, elevators, and walked for miles using their canes in an unfamiliar city.

This year, there was no Insights Art Contest, but the Georgia Vision Teachers Educators Training (GVEST) conference committee offered me a venue to showcase my student's work at a state level. I'm always looking for new venues and chances to show off what they've been working on, so I set up a table, and put out a voting box for the hundreds of attendees to help choose a favorite.

The results are in and other than a cash prize for the first place, it was just certificates and pats on backs. I don't discount the value of a pat though. Students need a chance to be recognized even if it is just in front of their class. They need a chance to show off their work. This is a line on a resumé, and it's the 3rd college campus some of my students have shown their work in the past 2 years, which is something I would have loved to have done when I was in high school. Letting otherwise marginalized kids have a chance to shine makes my heart happy.

Tactile Caulk Painting project

To wrap up our relief sculpture unit, I had student's create tactile images by using caulk on canvas or wood. Many of them started with a drawing in marker or Wiki-Stix, if the students were totally blind. Then these were traced using caulk from the hardware store. Once the paint was dried, Under paintings were completed and by the 3rd day my students were able to paint work on the top layer of their painting.

Some students placed their canvas on the potter's wheel and squirted the caulk down onto the base. By touching the tip of the caulk gun to the surface, there was more of a mechanical feel, where as just squirting it from the air, felt more organic. The colors reflect the nature of the line. 

Some students used masonite (the back of scraps of bead board from a home improvement project to be specific), and used spray paint for their under painting.

The tactile quality allowed for my blind students to feel where to paint. Because this spider web was black, my student spray painted the entire image black, and then filled in the negative space with white, so the black lines would feel more like the foreground. She finger painted acrylic, dripping tiny strands as she went. There was not a single student who wasn't happy with their finished painting.

 

Plaster Cast Relief Sculptures

Casting plaster is a fun way to learn about bas relief sculptures. For this project, I took my students on a little walk around our school campus to find leaves and flowers. 

Then we rolled out a slab of clay, preferably not terracotta, arranged some plants on top of it, and rollecd it again to press the plants into the clay. The ones with needles worked best: rosemary, cyprus, etc. Picking all the little plant parts can be hard, but it's best to start with the stem and then pleal it back gently.

I made shallow boxes of mat in standard frame sizes: 5"X7", 6"X8", 8"X10". The boxes only had to be about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch deep to allow for a 1/4" thick slab and plaster. Once I put the clay in the bottom of the box, I tapped up the corners. Students mixed plaster powder with water and once it was the consistency of pancake powder, they poured it into the box, on top of the clay. We pealed the box away from the clay/ plaster layers and then pealed the clay away from the plaster. The plaster is strong enough to rinse off some of the mis-color, and even some gentle rubbing with a paint brush under the stream of water.

For any Print or Braille words, it is important to write (carve or emboss) everything into the clay in reverse. The plaster will be a mirror image of the clay. So mind your P's and Q's. 

For students who wanted to add a little color, they could use water color pencils. Everyone was amazed at how clear and accurate the casting was. The details are wonderful and the finished product is one everyone "felt" great about.

 

Plaster Word Art

 Dick Blick offers a Topographical Typograhy lesson that I was happy to try out for our relief sculpture unit. My students who are Braille readers, don't spend much time thinking about how fonts each have their own vibe. But even blind kids can grasp the idea that text for a five year old birthday card, requires playful letters whereas, a wedding announcement might ask for elegant lettering. Now what that means can be different, but rounded letters are less serious than sharp edged letters. Calligraphic texts with the slanted letters and varied weight of line harkens to romance or tradition. So students began this assignment by picking a word and a style for their type.

My students wrote and  transfered their best idea to a piece of mat board using pencil, marker, or Wiki Sticks depending on their vision. Then they taped 1/2 strips of white posterboard on it's edge to follow their lines. The following day, a lot of the tape had curled up so I started hot gluing it for them the day they tacked it down with fewer pieces of tape. 

Then they took pieces of plaster cloth and dipped it in a bowl of water for just a second or two, smoothed out with a couple of fingers in the air to fill in some of the holes in the guaze-y fabric. Then draped it over the raised lines and smoothed it down. 

Some students stuck to an initial or two.

A couple Braille readers opted to make just one initial or a simple picture, since they don't read print at all. I was okay with that since a picture is worth a thousand words. Ultimately we were able to do 15 small projects (5" X 8" to 8" X 10" ) with a 5" wide X 3 yard strip  plaster fabric. Some students used watercolor pencils and some used spray paint to finish up the surface, but I liked the white, unfinished surface. It's a fun project that can be done somewhere between 15 minutes and 3 hours depending on how elaborate you want to get.

Foil Paper and Oil Pastel Project

The reviews are in: foil paper is really fun to use in collage. For this mixed media assignment, students drew an image of a landscape, still life or animal onto a piece of mat board. Then they colored the image by cutting and tearing pieces of foil paper to collage each area. They used the same tools that we used to emboss foil (for the previous assignment) to scratch texture and designs onto parts of their picture.

Finally, oil pastel was added to create contrast. The scratch lines would maintain the shine, or at times, some of the oil pastel was scraped back, pushing the color into the scratch marks. Students with low vision used magnification devices, and those who were etotally blind, used hot glue or Wiki Stix for tactile edges of shapes. The smooth and shiny surfaces added a "wow" factor to what could have a picture done in crayon or marker, and I think all of my students enjoyed the process.