Clay Masks

The first time I'd heard of Julie Taymor was when I saw an exhibition of her work at the Wexner Center in Columbus, OH decades ago. Yes she's a theater person, but I've always loved the relationship between visual and performing arts,so  I showed my students  videos and a slide show of her amazing costumes from "The Lion King," It just so happens that the Chorus took a field trip to see "The Lion King" the week before so the timing of this lesson was perfect.  And then we saw her actual Scar and Mufasa masks at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta,

My students each made sketches, newspaper forms, and then used clay slabs to create their own mask.  These are much too heavy to be worn, but holes were made on each side for wire, which makes it easy to hang on a wall. It was so gratifying to see them fired, glazed and displayed within two week's time.

Clay Heads

Having never made a life sized clay head myself, I was a little apprehensive about assigning it to my students. But with the thanks of YouTube and a little playing around, I managed to get the courage. I had students start with with a ball of newspaper, with a little newspaper roll or empty paper towel roll attached to the bottom. Then we made slabs of clay to wrap around the bottom for a solid neck and then  more for the head.

A line of symmetry helps provide guides for where the eyes, nose, and mouth should go.

Then, clay is added and shaped in those areas. The hair is the crowning touch. Even students with cognitive impairments can pinch and place little pieces of clay, or roll coils for braids and dread locks.

Once it looks finished, we slice the top of the head off with a wire cutter, to remove the newspaper. One problem we found was that the clay was still too soft. I was taking some of the students on a multiple-day field trip, so I was trying to fit a week-long assignment into 3 days. A few of the heads started to collapse. It's better for the clay to be almost leather hard before taking this step.

We smoothed out the inside and then slipped and scored to rejoin the top of the noggin.

Then we bisque fired the pieces. 

Some of the heads were painted with acrylics and a few of them sold at a silent auction fund raiser. Others were glazed. I think the students really enjoyed this project and I love that little their personality comes through with each face.Students glazed or painted their pieces

Kite Making

Kites can be canvases for drawings or paintings. Kites can be sculptural. Kites can be functional works of art. For our kite-making unit, I offered my students a variety of kite styles to choose from. Then they decided if it made more sense to use wooden dowels or straws as the support. They chose whether to make the body from plastic, paper, tissue paper, wax paper or fabric and decided whether or not to draw using oil pastels, markers, or colored pencils. Art making is about choice making.

It seems like a big stretch to tie this into American History, but we did probably spend forty minutes discussing the accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin. He was famous for his electricity experiment using a kite and key, but when he was much younger, he also tied a kite to his toe, curious to see if it would pull him across a pond if he were to float on his back. It worked! I suppose you could say we studied aerodynamics too when we tried to fly them with some success.

The tissue paper didn't hold up very well for the box kite or tetrahedron kite, and had to be remade using bulletin board paper. Live and learn.

Some students re-purposed their batik assignment and the acrylic that had soaked into the fabric gave it a little more wind resistance than plain fabric.  

You may recognize the motorcycle on the kite below from Prince's Purple Rain Album. Everyone has to bring their own ideas to the project.

Four people who made tetrahedron kites put them together to make a much larger one. This kite wasn't finished until the weather got too wet to fly, but we may try it out if the sun ever comes out. The blue on the top was originally one kite with four tetrahedron components, each component requiring 6 straws. String is pushed through the straws and tied together before gluing paper around two sides.