Spring Student Art Show: Edifice Sweet Edifice

 

Our architecture unit included a trip to an architecture firm, videos, audio described slide lectures and writing assignments on types of architecture and the great buildings throughout art history. Students made elevation drawings, blue print inspired cyanotypes, cardboard and clay sculptures of houses, shops, castles, and churches. And a totem pole of some of the most famous buildings in the world. It's been a productive couple of months culminating in our student art show: Edifice, Sweet Edifice!

Normally, student shows are just a couple pieces by each of my high school pieces, but this show had everything made by all 15 of my daily high school and middle school students. The 80 pieces total, also included the simple cardboard houses made by my multiple complex needs students.

Our multi-purpose room at the school is newly renovated, and with the freshly painted walls and new floors, it felt like a pristine gallery space. The large cyanotype were the most difficult thing to hang messing up the new walls, but enough painters tape was fine on a smooth wall. The cinderblock walls required taping the fabric to dowels and hanging it from the ceiling.

Having students problem solve with where and how to position each item was a real-life lesson in how to curate an exhibit. One student said that installing a show was like making an whole new piece of art: you need to arrange colors and shapes in a way that creates a unified and coherent body of work.

Our totem pole buildings were fresh out of the kiln after their bisque firing, so we put those in the show, and they ended up being the best conversation starter, as all of the faculty who came to the show opening were quizzed by art students on the name of each famous building.

The students came in waves with middle school students comeing first and then high school, and the parents coming the next day right after the spring concert.

 

Art shows are usually 2D work, but this one had so many sculptures that it was more interactive and meaningful for blind students who were able to touch all of the clay and cardboard houses. I heard "This is so beautiful!" from people with no vision.

History of Architecture Ceramic Totem Pole

I'm always trying to balance my art assignments between personal and collaborative projects. There's such a wide range of abilities within a group of students: a range of vision, a range of cognitive levels. It's nice, in group projects, for everyone to have a chance to do as much as they can, to contribute to something better than any one of them could do by themselves. 

This is the third totem pole that we've made for the sensory garden on our school campus, and we may continue to make one every other year as long as interest prevails. I don't know. For the history of architecture totem pole, we started by brainstorming to come up with a list of famous buildings, most of which were chosen from student writing assignments. We talked a lot about which ideas made the most sense in terms of representing a range history? Which contemporary buildings are represent modernity and are recognizable symbols? Do we need to use both the Parthenon and the Pantheon? If we're going to do one, which should it be?

There were many problems to be solved. How do you stack pointy buildings? What should go on top? The pyramid of Giza? The Eiffel Tower? The Empire State Building? How do you use the ones that are not on top to help build a solid structure?  How do you create a long skinny Great Wall of China in a way that will wrap around a pole? How do you create a straight tower that incorporates the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Art isn't just about going from point A to point B. Want a picture of a dog? Just draw a dog! It's not usually that simple. We seek to find the best possible solutions in a world of infinite possibilities.

And then there was the engineering? We didn't want all the skinny buildings on top on the bottom, but how do we arrange varied sizes and shapes in a way that is structurally sound? It turned out that the Taj Mahal sat more solidly on top of a thin pole with a bas relief of both Notre Dam cathedral and the Empire State Building than it did on top of the larger Parthenon sculpture. I hope my students could see the importance of playing around with, not only ideas, but of physical forms. Everyone pray that all of our buildings survive the kiln.

 

Clay House Assignments

I love that architecture can be an umbrella to teach 3D techniques and 2D techniques, such as drawing. For the clay house assignment, students were focused on learning to rolling slabs and using scoring and slipping techniques, but they had a lot of leeway for their own concept development: craftsmanship and originality.

Each student took their freedom seriously and came up with an idea they could get excited about. 

We talked about the concept of a house: a tree house, a light house, a gingerbread house, a fairy house, etc. Students paid attention to form an color to communicate their idea, while adding doors and windows to something like a mushroom or beehive to make it a house where a human could live. For students who were totally blind, I used painters tape to stop out all of the parts of their sculpture they didn't want to be a specific color, so they could work as independently as possible.