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.

 

The Makin Macon Art Project

Ocmulgee River runs through the park on the edge of Macon on our giant community made map

California artist, Kiel Johnson, who has made art projects all over the world including projects for Disney, Vans, and TedTalks. His latest project is called Makin' Macon. He painted a giant, almost accurate map of Macon on wood and brought it to the Wesleyan College's Leadership Lab, where the entire community was invited to help make iconic Macon buildings and houses to add. Sky lifts, dog parks, ferris wheels, and enormous cat towers were added as locals used their imagination.

Our totem poles stand in the sensory garden near a flagpole, bird bath and a couple pavilions

GAB Art students were invited by the director of the Leadership Lab to participate in this community project, and so we did! We made GAB's Admin building, Hendricks Building, Green House, Cottage Six, Sensory garden totem poles, a bus, and the gym. Some students used their imagination to make towers. One student made the twin towers on 9/11, while another made a chocolate palace. The project will be featured at the Leadership Lab on Cherry Street, Macon through October, so bring your family and add to the fun!

One of our dorms, the greenhouse, and the gym

Original building designs from boxes & blocks

It's fun to place for my students to show their work starting the very week that their show came down at GA College and State Universiity. And there's more to come because just as the Makin' Macon project comes to an end, my Art students will decorate a tree at the Museum of Art and Science. I'm so proud of these young people for being a positive part of our community! 

 

Cyanotype Mural

A couple of months ago, my art students made a giant cyanotype mural which served as a backdrop for our Spring Art Show, and remains on the school lobby wall.  Emily Gomez, photography professor at Georgia College, introduced them to this process.  To make a cyanotype, a photosensitive solution of potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate are added to a piece of fabric or paper. The dried surface is than placed in the sun with something on top to make a silhouette. After about 10 minutes, the surface is rinsed and the shape of the object blocking the sun remains light while the rest turns a beautiful dark, Prussian blue.

When I was a kid, my mom had us make cyanotype prints using paper snowflakes for Christmas cards.  Small pieces of fabric (that can be purchased at art stores like Dick Blick) were used by students to make hand prints. Several of the students, however, got to lie on the treated king-sized sheet and make prints of their bodies, canes, wheel chair, and large cut out letters. They'll never forget sun bathing, fully clothed in the middle of a busy college campus. And neither will I.

Unity and Variety in Art

E pluribus unum. Out of many, we are one. It's true for a great nation and true for a great class.

I started this school year, a couple weeks ago, by trying to create a sense of community in the classroom, so I asked students to talk about the things we have in common. We all live in the same state, spend our days in the same school; we all like music, on and on. Then everyone shares something about themselves that makes them unique. They each have something special to offer the group and it helps when they recognize it and say it out loud. We listened to each other's favorite songs, and looked specifically for repetition in the music and how it unifies the piece. Then we listen again for variety and how the words are changed up or a bridge is added to make it more interesting. This is how it works in visual art as well. Repetition is one way to create a sense of unity in a painting or sculpture. Variety within the repetition makes it interesting. We chose to spend an entire week focused on making circles. One shape, repeated again and again would be pretty boring except that we made them with a variety of sizes, colors, and decorated with different patterns.



We ended up cutting out half of the circles to make a collaborative art piece on the hallway bulletin board. The words, "Our commonality unites us. Our diversity strengthens us," were in the center in print and braille, along with the art standard which requires that each student "Discusses and applies concepts such as...variety within repetition." Empty toulle spools were used to make some of the circles pop out from the board, at varying depths. The students stapled circles, while I hot glued spools and they were pretty pleased with the results. Here is to a year of unity and cooperation among my art students, and to finding the common ground to unify us as a nation and as human beings.

Mosaics

Mosaics are pictures made from tiny tiles. Usually these are ceramic or glass squares. For my students, I cut up colored foam for an inexpensive alternative. Each student spray painted a piece of cardboard as a backing and used Elmer's glue to adhere the tiles.

This is a great project for children to gain fine motor skills and learn that many small things add up to make a big difference. There were some students who cut the foam in different sizes and shapes if they felt their image required it. And for students, who are blind, we left large spaces without tile, so that they would be able to feel the shape of the image without the confusion of having the background and foreground filled with texture. Maybe we'll try using ceramic tiles and grout in the future, but I found that this was a great way to introduce mosaics to children.

Personal Symbols Flag

Symbolism isn't just used in literature. Visual art is also full of symbolism. I try to tie my art lesson about symbolism to social studies and U.S. history. I ask students to come up with a list of things that represent America: statue of liberty, the flag, Uncle Sam, the Liberty Bell, a bald eagle, etc. Then we dig a little deeper as to what those specific symbols mean. The flag alone is packed with meaning. I ask. why 50 stars and 13 stripes? Why red? Why white? Why blue?

Then we get personal. What if you were a country of one? What would your flag look like? What are your interests? What colors represent you and why? Most of my students who do this project are functioning at a very low level cognitively, but they still have preferences, whether it be pounding on something, or humming to a favorite song.

We used felt, glue, and puff paint to each make our own flag using personal symbols. My hope would be that each parent could come and pick out their child's flag without being told which one it was. Symbols help us find a hamburger or a hotel from the high way, use an app on our phone, understand a poem or song, and read a map. It's important for students to understand that colors and shapes have meaning in art and know how to read those too.

Wax Paper Stain Glass

Stained glass window crafts are always a winner with kids. I've had my students sandwich colored tissue between two pieces of clear contact paper or color with sharpies on scraps of laminator plastic, but this time I took the melted crayon craft from my childhood.

I always start my lessons talking about how this project fits into the art world. There are beautiful stained glass windows in the European cathedrals of the 13th and 14th century that are still bathing its viewers with intense colors. Tiffany lamps illuminate front he inside out. Frank Lloyd Wright windows with geometric shapes to go in his buildings.

With real stained glass, some of the coloring is anti-intuitive. copper oxide produces a turquoise and gold makes the glass red. When it comes to melting crayons however, what you see is what you get.

We used a hand-held pencil sharpener to sharpen crayons. The colored shavings were arranged on a piece of wax paper, and then covered with another piece of wax paper. It's important not to get the shavings too close to the edges or the crayon may leak out. 

We discuss how crayons melt in hot cars and dryers, but this can can work to our advantage if we want to them to change their state to create an image with a technique other than coloring. An old towel or sheet can be placed under and over the wax paper-crayon sandwich, and rubbed gently with an iron. I used a medium setting. The fabric did get stained quite a bit.

After the colors melt, we created contraction paper frame. This was done by putting two pieces of paper together, folding them in half, and cutting out half a shape starting and ending on the fold side. The edges can be cut to the desired shape as well. The "glass" part is glued between the front and back of the paper frame and taped to a window to let the light shine through. This can also have a ribbon added and hang from a branch of a Christmas tree. As long as there is a light source it will glow. Color can't exist without light after all. And art can't exist without someone making it…so what are you waiting for?

Collage Project for Kids

Some of my young art students are very challenged when it comes to fine motor skills. So, although this lesson can be used to teach children vocabulary, such as, "medium" and "collage,"or concepts such as "overlapping translucence shapes creates new shapes and colors," and, "repetition creates a sense of unity," it also hits on the extremely basic skill of tearing tissue paper.

That's one of the things I love most about art education. You can use the same project to reach children with a huge range of ability levels. Some will go home to tell their parents about the importance of Abstract Expressionism in American history. Others will go home knowing how to pat down a piece of glued tissue on paper.

After talking about the medium of collage, I introduced the students to printmaking.  I found some dot makers, which I believe are used for BINGO. Is there a more simple way to learn stamping?  Some students made multiple pictures, entirely with dots, since it takes so little time. Sometimes I  stress to them the need to slow down and make conscious decisions. 

In the end, though, I found there wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

Leaf Bowls

Last fall when my art lessons all about leaf projects (see the blog with leaf collages, prints, and ornaments), my older students made leaf bowls. They each made a large slab of clay using the slab roller. Then they pressed the vein side of leaves into the clay and cut out around the edges. It was as easy as making sugar cookies. There were a variety of styrofoam, plastic and stainless steel bowls to use as a mold. Students each chose a bowl, turned it upside down pressed their clay leaves together, texture side out around the the bowl. They added either individual feet or a donut shape of clay for one foot. It ended up being a nice way to marry function and aesthetics in project.

Toilet Paper Roll Crafts

Empty toilet paper tubes are easily accessible and accumulate quickly with the help of school custodians and parents. Here are a few projects we did in my art class recently, using those tubes.

Relief Art

We cut each cardboard tube into 4 or 5 rings. Then we painted, arranged and hot glued them together to form several pieces of wall art. From a distance it looks like metal. I was more involved with this project since most of my students can't use a hot glue gun safely, but everyone kept busy with our collaborative projects and a few made their own ornaments and wreathes.

Tube Owls

These owls took about 30 minutes to make. I offered googly eyes and feathers, but most students chose to use markers and construction paper, with charming results.

Pattern Prints

The ends of tubes can be dipped in paint and stamped on paper to create circles. If those ends are cut with slits or triangles and fanned out, flower or star shapes are created. Tubes can be folded into triangles or squares as well. Since the tubes were free, there's nothing to loose with a little experimenting. Stamping is a form of printmaking and pattern/repetition is a principle of design, so we're covering the art standards in a way that is fun.

 

'Tis the Season to Make Artwork

Ceramic Ornaments

Texture is so important for blind students, which is why I loved giving them this pendant assignment. We used shoe soles, thread spools, combs, and whatever we could find to stamp slabs of clay, which were then cut out with small cups. The colors changed drastically when they dried, and then were fired.

We used acrylic to paint the ornaments. A dry brush with contrasting color helps the texture show.
Then we added ribbons or embroidery floss and tags. Each student took one home and we made about 70 extra to stuff faculty and staff boxes.

God's Eye

When I was a kid I thought popsicle stick and yarn ornaments were just a Christmas craft, and didn't realize the spiritual significance these had in Native American traditions. The Pueblos of New Mexico and the Huichol and Tepehuan of Mexico held these objects as a way to be recognized or a way for the gods to be able to watch over the weaver. They were also thought of as portals for the gods to pass through to get from one world to the other. I have a few students who have disabilities which make it difficult to even draw a line without help, but they were able to do this project independantly.

Tooling Foil

Heavy metal foil and a handful of tooling…uh…tools, kept my students busy for weeks. I wrote some of their names backwards and then flipped it over so they could experience the letters in tactile print rather than braille. Then they'd decorate those. Some pictures were Christmas themed and others weren't. Some were colored with Sharpies and others weren't. I used hot glue to attach the foil to the frames for these. I taught about the Bronze Age and Iron Age and we discussed types of metal and things that are made from metal.  You can try this at home with disposable pie tins and a wooden dowel that has been sharpened with a pencil sharpener.

 Set Design

Insulation foam scraps from a recent home improvement project were transformed into ornaments to decorate the stage for our school's Christmas concert. I bought a green rope and thin wire to create a string of lights. Everything hung with fishing line. Students researched ornament designs, painted the lights, poured glitter, and beamed with pride when it all came together on stage.  

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, happy creating!