Prom Decorations: Enchantment Under the Stars

 

Another prom is in the books. I had a great time figuring out how to hide the cafeteria lunch line with a wall of sets that were a series of photo ops. The lover head lighting fixture provided a structure for hanging clouds and stars on fishing line. One of the lightbulbs was removed so that a converter could be inserted to provide a power source for the LED lights that strung in and out of the clouds. I lost the remote in all of the things I had to move, so they stayed blue the whole night, but it would have been fun to make some purples and pinks appear in the clouds as well.

This is the first year I ever used balloon arches, but they left over from the previous Teacher Appreciation Week events and so I borrowed and rearranged them.

The Rocket and Paper moon photo booths were something I made in 2017 for a church prom, and kept in case the need would arise.

The hot air balloon hooked on to the top of the set. I added the burlap ribbon and rope at the last minute. Originally I thought the balloon would be twice as wide but I cut the angles to sharp and when it closed up it made the entire ellipsoid, instead of just the front half of the balloon. It looks a little more balloon shape this way than the bottom half of the balloon as I had first planned.

Seniors came in early for their pictures. The lighting was better before they went to dinner and came back for "senior lead out" and the dance. A simple color scheme sometimes is enough to have a big impact, but a coherent theme is the icing on the cake. After dancing and chatting with students all night, I have to say it was a pretty enchanting evening...under the stars.

DYI Hot Air Balloon Photo Booth

For our Enchantment Under the Stars prom I thought it might be fun to have sky and air related decorations..so when someone showed up at my classroom with the side flaps from tri-fold boards,  wondered if maybe they could be used to make a hot air balloon.

I started but cutting a the corners at using masking tape to make a template so they'd all be at the same corners. Then I used spray paint to get a little color going.

After creasing the boards where the angles are, I began using hot glue to get  the edges to stick together. 

I did all of the bottom parts before bending them up and gluing the center section. This At this point, I completed the final two edges to make a barrel shape and then finished up the top flaps. With all the guess work of the angles, I was pleased that it resembled a balloon shape.

The basket was made by weaving strips of cardboard. We used two sdes of a large box, with enough cardboard at the bottom to stand up on it's own. I cut out the spaces n between the vertical slats to be about the same width as the slats themselves.  I stapled the ends of the horizontal strips to the vertical slats and let students weave them in and out. We used brown paper lunch stuffed with newspaper for the sandbags, and I made little pendants that matched the colors of the balloon and spelled out Prom 2026.

I glued three pieces of cardboard to the back of the balloon. The two perpendicular pieces had notches cut into them to slide on the top of the wooden set panel and give the illusion that it is floating in the sky. Painters tape covered the seams and imperfections. The night of the prom, I hot glued a banner, and ropes to the balloon once it was hanging. It's always nice when the process pays off.

 

DYI Piñata and Maracas

 So far this semester we've studied Australia and made Aboriginal dot paintings. We studied Ancient Rome and made mosaics. We made batik and shadow puppets after learning about Indonesia. We made kites inspired by China, and brush and ink paintings, calligraphy and wind socks inspired by Japan. But we've got cultures to learn about right here in North America, so we took a virtual trip to Mexico for the week of Cinco de Mayo and learned about pinatas.

Piñatas were originally ceramic jugs filled with seeds or fruits by  ancient Aztecs before breaking open. Catholic missonaries who came to Mexico 500 years ago, incorporated this tradton into their teachings of the seven deadly sins by adding seven points to the piñatas. This object lesson taught that breaking bad habits and overcoming sin yields rewards. Today, children still reap treats from breaking open piñatas at parties. We made our piñatas by wrapping strips of bulletin board dipped in liquid starched around balloons. Two or three layers does the trick.

While some students made animals such as llamas or dogs, most stayed with the traditional coned shape. This was done by cutting a pie slice shape out of a card stock circle and wrapping it into a cone. These usually needed hot glue to attach to the dried paper maché. Then most students used squares of tissue paper wrapped around the flat end of a pencil and dipped into a little glue before adding to the piñata for texture and color. It helps once the piece is positioned on the piñata, to hold the edges of the tissue with one hand while sliding the pencil out with the other.

There were no complaints about making piñatas, as students could work at their own pace and fill the time. Some students claimed this was their favorite project of the year.

Kite Making

The Chinese invented the kite thousands of years ago as a military tool. Today it is used it is used for recreation and sport and the largest kite festival in the world is in-you guessed it-China. As we were doing our sumi ink paintings while studying Japan, it had to be mentioned that Chinese also use ink and brush for calligraphy and nature images. We started our unit by watching a video about China and then comparing and contrasting the two cultures. Which one can claim the origins of Confucianism and which Shintoism? students wrote, typed and printed words and phrases for each other to sort into a tactile Venn diagram.

Day 2 we began to work on flags. students used bamboo skewers, wooden dowels, or straws as the skeleton for kites in various shapes and forms. Kids with some vision drew on on bulletin board paper, while those who were totally blind used dot makers, tape, stencils or collage to decorate their kite. Tales were made with string and with ribbons tied to them, or crepe paper streamers.

Then came the test of flight. The week before kite week was breezy but there was no wind on the days we tried to fly our kites. Students would run and hold their arm high to get it going, with a few glimpses of success. For for someone who'd never seen a kite, much less tried to fly one, it was pretty fun. Next breezy Saturday when my students' families are looking for something to do, maybe they can consider taking a kite to the park and trying it again.

 

Koi Fish Wind Socks

Spring time ushers in the Cherry Blossom Festival, which is a big deal in my town of 300,000 Cherry Blossom Trees. This is the perfect time to introduce my students to Japanese art forms, including ink painting.

I spent weeks working on just a horizontal brushstroke in my college Chinese Calligraphy class, so I know that using a sumi brush and ink is more than a week long project, but this lesson was more about exposure than mastery. We learned some brush strokes to make bamboo and after a couple of days, some of the students really started getting the hang of it. I also taught each student how to write their name in Katakana, which is the Japanese alphabet specifically for foreign words and names.

Younger students made koi fish wind socks out of bulletin board paper, and they used the ends of toilet paper rolls to stamp paint on the paper to make scales. I brought artifacts for students to handle from Japan, including paper lanterns, model of geisha in kimono, bamboo, and a wooden daruma doll, which uses the same principle as the American weeble wobble toys: fall down 7 times, get up 8. This leads to a great conversation about emotional resiliance and endurance.

Spring Student Art Show and Mushroom Sale

The day before Spring Break, my school had a Spring Program that included not only a concert, but a small exhibit of student artwork, the showing of a couple of stop motion art videos, and a presentation of art contest winners.

The day after we came back from Spring Break, there was a three day plant sale at the school greenhouse raising money for horticulture students. This year, Art students got to participate by selling their clay mushrooms: all 108 of which sold out soon after the first day of the sale at $5 a piece.

Art students do better when other departments can help give a place for them to shine. Collaboration makes everything better for everyone. I'm glad to have colleagues that are inclusive.

Phoenix Area Art

The Heard has an exhibit about stars right now, which is magical

It's unusual for me to get back from a New York Trip, hang my exhibit, and fly to Arizona all in the same week, but it did make for a very Art-focused and family-focused spring break. (I'm so lucky to have a family who loves art!)

The Day I got off the plane, my brother took me to downtown Mesa for tacos and visit to the Mesa Museum of Contemporary Art, which is free and fun! They had an exhibit that focused on sound and included this sculpture with armholes you can hug while listening to the resonance of your voice and breathing.

The Heard Museum was an extra special treat because I had never heard of it before (no pun intended ) much less been there. This museum is a treasure, with lots of history. It is a place for artists with Native American ancestry to show their work. There's a wonderful sculpture garden, and some lovely courtyards in this Spanish style building.

Sandra Day O'Conner, the first woman to sit on the bench of the U.S. Supreme court used to be a docent at this museum, and a life long supporter, so it's only fitting that they name one of their galleries after her.

There is a permanent exhibition on the Indian Boarding Schools, which took children away from their parents and took the identity away from the children in order to get them to integrate with white American culture. It's an important history lesson. But whether your there for history, traditional crafts, or contemporary masterpieces, you'll find it at the Heard.

It's not far from the Heard (in Pheonix) to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). We walked around the historic Scottsdale touristy places (that look like an old western town to buy boots and hats) and a Mission church which was a lovely place to sit, before walking into the SMoCA.

Kevin knows that I'm a huge James Turrell fan, and although it's not as big and fancy as the Turell piece they have on ASU campus for free, it was still worth the trip to sit in this installation. James Turrell is an artist who is more interested in what's happening behind your eyes than what's in front of them. A hole is a ceiling can look like a 3D disc. It's an elipse form one angle, a circle from another. I was impressed at how few clouds there are in Arizona. Even the jetstream from a plane evaporates almost as quickly as it is formed in the desert sky.

I also loved the room with floating lights that changed colors, I wish I hadn't been carefully avoiding them while I walked around. Seeing them swing and move by people who bump into them is part of the experience.

Other than the art of the area, I enjoyed the Desert Botanical Garden very much, the Mesa Easter Pageant, all the wonderful Mexican food, and of course, Organ Stop Pizza, for the whimsical show. As hard as it is to have my siblings flung across the country, it is nice to get to visit and see the sites with an experienced and loving tour guide.