Wonderful Wall of Wings Mural project

I recently finally got around to reading The Tipping Point. Part of the book talks about how disgusting NYC subways were in the 80's. They were riddled with crime and the transformation into making it a happier safer place started with cleaning up the graffiti on the trains. Making the space look nicer was a step in helping people feel nicer. People act like rats when they feel they're trapped in a rat hole. My school has a lovely campus with trees and playgrounds, but there are some ugly walls that needed a little help if we wanted our workspace to feel like it was a more positive environment.

The parking lot was resurfaced and the wall was power washed: a blank canvas for our paint.

We mixed paint colors and loaded rollers. Even my students who are totally blind could work a roller on a wall. It was almost impossible to do it wrong. Some students worked with brushes to go along the bottom and in the cracks, and the teamwork made for a major transformation in a few hours. Every student was assigned the task of sketching out three ideas for wings: We had bat wings, butterfly wings, steampunk wings, dragon fly wings, and more. When we looked at all of the sketches together students voted on their favorite ideas. Several people did peacock wings and several did dragon wings, so that helped tip the scales in their favor.

We drew the wings on walls with chalk first. I'd worried about weekend rain washing it awan, and so I spray painted a few simple outlines for some of the drawings. And then we painted each pair of wings with appropriate colors. This took longer than I expected because there were so many days of rain and freezing temperatures. Luckily the last week before our Winter Break, we had a few pleasant days when we could knock out the paintings to make a wing wall (between hanging our art show and putting the last parts of our student sale together). I can hardly wait to see students use the wall for a photo op and hopefully be inspired to improve themselves, as we have worked to improve our learning environment. 

 

Student Art Show: People, Places and Things!

The student art exhibition had to do with subject matter. Students made a lot of Portraits in the style of famous artists like Kehende Whiley and Chuck Close.

Students recreated famous portraits by the masters of Renaissance, Surrealism, and Pop Art.

They created still life drawings using graphite, pastel. And they displayed their 3D model of the campus for the giant wooden map of Macon downtown.

Below is a picture of one blind student showing her blind friend her drawing. The lines of the bottles are raised in hot glue. She found her piece using the Braille tag beside the work.

 The Christmas Art Sale was a huge success as well. I love seeing my students pointing out which pieces they made to faculty and peers. They're almost giddy when they say, "I made this one!"

Ceramics & Jewelry Projects for an Art Sale

Getting ready for the upcoming Art Sale at my school has been fun. It gives students, who have varied ability levels, opportunities to learn how to make sellable items Some students are able to use wire cutters and pliers to create necklaces and earrings from sea shells, while others can string beads onto pipe cleaners or elastic string to make bracelets. Some can brush glaze on ceramic Christmas tree trays, and others can add details such as dots for ornaments. I love that students are learning skills and exploring a variety of media, while getting a chance to serve our classroom community.

 

Stenciled T-shirts and Aprons

I am really getting some bang for my buck when it comes to the stencils I bought a few months ago. My students have used them to add pattern to large portrait paintings and spray paint ornaments. In clearing out closets at school I found some boxes of unused t-shirts and aprons that we decided could be used for a fundraiser.

Spray worked on the tight weave of the apron, but didn't show up well on the knit t-shirts, so we used acrylic paint on both. We taped the stencils down with packing tape to give a wide enough border for mistakes to be made. A stencil brush is ideal, but a foam brush is the second best thing. The trick is to dab up and down rather than using strokes which cause the paint to be pushed under the stencil plastic and mess up the image. Things really got fun once students started varying the colors within a single stencil, such as adding more red to the orange or a lighter green to the outsides of the stenciled image. It ended up being a project that can be done within an hour, teach medium and contrast, and still have a wow factor.

 

Festival of Trees 2024

Every year our local Museum of Arts and Science hosts a Festival of Trees, and I like to sign up for my students and I to execute a fresh idea for a tree design.

Trees are an important symbol of Christmas, but they also represent knowledge and growth. Because Georgia Academy for the Blind is a place of growth and learning, GAB Art classes decided to incorporate the elements of trees to our "Festival of Trees" design. Our campus has twenty-two acres of land and 170 trees from which we collected pine cones and sticks. We painted, gllued, wrapped yarn, and strung wooden beads to make these ornaments. All of our students are blind, but the tree incorporates sensory experiences beyond vision: the smell and feeling of the prickly pine cones and sticky sap, the taste of cinnamon and orange, all contribute to the rustic and outdoorsy holiday experience our woodland tree provides.

students explore the museum

Once we do the hard work of making the ornaments, we get to the fun part: the field trip to go decorate the tree. The museum has been so generous in working with our special needs. We always love to explore the minizoo and the artist's loft and the hands-on science exhibits. This time, students got to pet an alligator!

And then there's the Festival of Trees Gala, which is the main event and fundraiser for the museum! It's nice to see all of the community sponsors sharing ideas and the Christmas spirit! I love being part of my school and I love being part of Macon, GA!

the gala food is always to die for!

The cakes hung from the ceiling like ornaments

 

Ornament of Christmas Tree from Sticks

Who loves the irony of hanging a Christmas tree on a Christmas tree? I do! For this year's woodland Christmas theme, I had students collect sticks from campus to break or bend into a triangle, which I hot glued with a small stick being glued at the bottom for a trunk. 

Students wrapped the tree frame with green yarn and placed wooden buttons to the top. these buttons were decorative, like ornaments on on the ornament, but they were also structural. Gluing them on the corners helped strengthen the entire ornament.

Ribbon or twine, looped, or tied, with our without beads, topped off each tree, as a hanger. Some students used yarn sparcely, while others wrapped and wrapped. Some kept their yarn going zig zagging horizontally, while others went every which way. Every option brought a charming, homey results.

It doesn't take long for young people to make this quick decoration or gift.

 

Pine Cone Christmas Tree Ornaments

Pinecones are free and abundant in Georgia. My students and I collected hundreds of them just from walking around our campus. Students painted the pine cones with either white or red paint and then used some creativity to decide whether to add stacked wooden beads, ribbon, twine, or silk leaves and flowers to decorate their pinecones and make it possible to hang on the tree. Hot glue is an ornament maker's best friend. Fuzzy twin can fit through wooden beads one you fold  the end of the twine into the fold of a piece of shipping tape (or masking tape) and cut the tape close to the twine and cutting the end into a point. If you want to add bling to a tree or wreath you can spray paint the pinecone with gold or silver paint or brush the edges with glue and roll in glitter. We were trying to create a rustic look and I think it worked well.

Orange Slice Ornaments

 Orange slices are easy to dry and are a fun way to decorate a tree on a budget. I bought four oranges for $4 and was able to get about 8 slices per orange. They should be 1/4 inch thick. They can dry on a cookie tray, and baked in an oven at 175 to 190 degrees for 3-4 hours. Turn every hour. Slow and steady is probably best. If they are not completely dry, you can set them out overnight and if they're still a little sticky, put them back in the oven for another hour, but keep checking on them every 15 minutes because it doesn't take long at that stage for them to start to brown. Once a string is thread through the orange rind,  it's pretty much an ornament but you can get fancy by hot gluing rosemary or cinnamon to the orange, or by adding beads and ribbon to the string. They smell great and when set near a light give a glowing, stained glass affect.

Stenciled Wooden Christmas Tree Ornaments

Wooden ornaments have a warm, home spun feel to them. In the past I've had students paint or draw on wooden discs, but this year, I had stencils that I bought for another project, and realized that a quick few sprays of spray paint could produce 4 or five ornaments in the matter of seconds, which means that 100 ornaments could be made in a morning. The stencils were large enough that it could cover two ornaments at a time to get a less centered design. It only takes a couple minutes to dry so I would rotate a board with about four ornaments being prepped while the last tray was drying. I loved how they turned out!

Easy Oil Pastel Portraits

 I'm not one to waste. If I'm going to print out a picture for each student to use as a reference for their value drawing or to trace for their transfer drawing, they're going to use that copy for another project later whether it be to tear up and put in a collage, or to use as a base for a mixed media piece. 

This time I had them color their black and white images with oil pastel. Enough of the value showed through that a blending few basic colors could make it look like a colorized antique photo. Some students got creative by using arbitrary color and some needed me to hot glue the outlines of features so they could feel the boundaries of the shapes. It's not just a filler activity, it's a way to explore media under the umbrella of our portrait unit. This can be done by little kids with more interesting results than a coloring page.

Chuck Close inspired Fingerprint Portraits

Blind students use hot glue lines and their finger prints to fill in the value for their portraits

There's more than one way to build value on a drawing. Graphite and charcoal are the popular ways to draw value, but why not follow the example of a young Chuck Close and use fingerprints. 

Studying Chuck Close is especially meaningful to my students because he is an example of someone who never let disabilities get in the way of making Art. When Edgar Degas and Georgia O'Keefe lost their sight, they just changed their medium. Chuck Close turned to Art when his learning disabilities kept him from exeling academically. He tackled his Face Blindness head on, by actually painting the heads of people he knew to flatten them out make them more recognizable. When he became paralyzed, he strapped a brush to his hand with a velcro brace. He stopped climbing ladders, and instead inserted a slit into his studio so that the canvas could be lowered into the floor for him to reach all parts of the canvas from his wheel chair. his hyper realistic style changed, to something more colorful and abstract, but it was still quality representational art, that allowed him to be Clinton's Presidential Portrait artist. After watching a PBS video of him telling his life story while completing a self portrait over the course of the month, we made our own fingerprint portraits in his early style. All you need is an inkpad and a piece of paper. It helps to have a black and white photo to trace and replicate the value. Start with the darkest parts and then as the ink lightens move to some lighter areas before dabbing the ink pad again for dark ink. The biggest issue I saw, was students going directly from the ink to a light area and making a dark mark. It can't be erased. With that warning, try this project on your own and see what you come up with!

I also showed this video of Chuck Close writing a note to his younger self. He died three years ago, but the advice he gave to never let anyone define what you are capable of. "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us show up and work," he explained. And he teaches you don't have to invent the wheel every day. You just keep doing what your doing and you'll eventually get somewhere. After seeing this, a few students wrote a letter to their younger selves, and I did too. It's a powerful exercise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxR3ELuZjLw

Transfer Drawing Portraits

I have loved making transfer drawings for decades, since I discovered Paul Klee and his art. I like to use a breyer and relief ink to create a tacky surface on paper, which I then flip, ink side down onto my artwork. I draw onto the back of the inky paper, to transfer the drawing onto the final surface. It works like carbon sheets, but it has a lovely speckled texture and ephemeral aesthetic. I didn't have any relief ink, but I had some oil paint and I thought I could paint that on a surface to create a similar affect.Above are my first two attempts at this process, as I took a planning period to figure out the process to teach my students.

Instead of having students pick something to draw, I printed out pictures of them, a family member, or celebrity. This took the subject mostly out of the equation. We were staying in our "Portrait Unit" perimeter, but focused more on media and process then anatomy.

student self portrait

Most of the drawings were hidden in the dark mass of transfered brush strokes. It looked like the project was going to have to be trashed, but I realized that edges could be defined and harsh lines softened by using oil pastel. 

Painting a piece of paper to transfer, left bits of paper sticking to the final product. Likewise, using scrapbook or decorative paper for the base was also problematic as it would tear as we pulled the tacky paint off. Ultimately painting on a piece of laminating plastic and transferring to wall paper samples worked best.

I love the distressed, unfinished look with the vintage wall paper patterns peeking through. It's just another tool in the box of how to make an image.

 

Kehinde Wiley Art Project for the Blind

Visually Impaired Middle and High School Students' attempt at portraits in Wiley's style

Kehinde Wiley is one of the great portrait artists of a generation. He takes every day people and elevates them to classical aristocracy of the 18th century. He draws inspiration from Ingres and Jaque-Louis David, and their work. 

The first Wiley paintings I saw was in Detroit

His subjects are graceful and commanding, but they share the viewers attention with the pattern that fills the background. In fact, sometime's the pattern competes to the point that it creeps into the foreground. Even the presidential portrait of Barrack Obama has the leafy background come forward to cover some of Obama's legs. Studying Wiley is a great way to teach students about negative space,  figure-ground relationships, activating the background, and creating figure-ground confusion. These can be tricky concepts even for people with vision, but it's an extra challenge for my students who are are working with little to no vision.

Students started with a drawing of a person. Some used waxy-strings for their drawing to make it tactile.

I traced the Wiki-Stix with hot glue to make a more permanent way to feel where the lines are. Then they painted the background. Some low-vision students asked that I trace the lines with paint so they could see the shapes better and stay in the lines.

Once the background was dry, students picked out a stencil or two and a color of spray paint. They would decide how to space the stencils and then came the magic of activating the background. The figures were then painted in the foreground with as much value as each student could figure out. 

I used painter's tape or paper stencils to help protect the background for some students. A big part of my job is providing accommodations for each child to work as independently as possible.

Bits of pattern coming to the foregroun

The final part of the project was making the back ground a little more busy: adding colors and shapes so that it held more visual weight than simple wall paper. And of course, students had to find a way to bring some of that pattern in front of the figure. Most students used paint pens to add more colors and complexity. I offered simple stencils for those who needed help making pattern by hand.The students were all very happy with the added pizzaz the pattern brought to their paintings and I think they have more respect for Kehinde Wiley's style and message as a result.

Inktober 2024

sketch for prompt "trek"

sketch for "exotic"

 Every October, my husband try and I try to participate in Inktober. It's a great creative exercise to see what you can come up with, given prompts that you didn't choose yourself. It's a great way to keep up with or sharpen your drawing skills, specifically ink skills. It's also a great way to be part of something bigger than yourself join with thousands of other artists in tackling this project in tandem.

Each day, I post a drawing, even if it's rushed and not great just to check off that it was done. There's something motivating about the accountability from friends telling me that they were looking forward to seeing my sketches, so there was another layer of motivation. The joy of just sitting with a sketchbook is motivation enough. I forget how relaxing and fun it is to draw if I go too long without doing it. So pick up your sketchbook, give yourself 15 minutes of mindfulness therapy, and remember how fun it is to doodle.

Art in Paris

For decades, it's been a dream of mine to make it to Paris. The Louvre feels like a a pilgrimage for many artists, and I am no exception. So when my artist husband and I found a good deal we booked a trip and grabbed a couple of our grown children and flew across the ocean to check out the art in person.

First stop was D'Orsay. The Museum Orsay has a wonderful Collection of Impressionism in the amazing refurbashed train station. Three hours is probably the right amount of time to spend there. The cafe at the top boasts the giant clock from Hugo, which you can look through to see the city. I can't tell you how happy I am that my children love art appreciate art museums even more that they've had history of civilization and art history classes in college. It also helps that they've been visiting museums and galleries since they were born.

family Portrait with Winged Victory

Next, the Louvre. We were coming in tired, and I didn't want to be too worn out for this exhausting museum, with miles of walking. We went right after lunch and practically ran through in a few hours to see our "must see" list, which I had actually written down. If I had it to do over, I'd have waited until the 2nd or 3rd day of the trip, and gone Thursday evening when things start to clear out. They're only open one evening a week, but I hear that it isn't so busy at night. I'd intentionally decided to avoid the Mona Lisa with it's crowds, but since so many of my favorites were right by the room where she hangs on the wall, I stuck my head in. No regrets.

Modonna on the Rocks, looking dark

I was sure that my favorite DaVinci was "Modonna on the Rocks, but it seemed very dark in person. Maybe it would brighten up with a cleaning, but his Madonna with St. Anne, was very vivid, so until the restoration, St. Anne is getting my vote. Reproductions are important, but seeing real work in real life provides surprises. The texture, the size, the depth, the frame: There's nothing like the real deal.

The Palace of Versailles is packed with Art. Ceilings were covered with views of heaven and historical scenes painted by artists who probably needed massages or a good chiropractor at least once a day.

The Pantheon isn't an Art Museum, but it might as well be with so many enormous painted panels covering the walls. One of my favorite walls portrayed the story of Joan of Arc. Tres French!

And as a TVI (Teacher of the Visually Impaired) I was happy to discover the final resting place of Louis Braille in the basement, along with other notable French men and women (Marie Curry, Victor Hugo, Voltare).

Our trip included other treasures, but I could have spent an entire week in Art Museums alone. Next time maybe.