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.

 

Valentine Mosaics

 After a week of studying about ancient Greece, my class moved on to learn of Ancient Rome. Mosaics weren't invented in Greece or Rome but that's where they were perfected, and Rome is full of beautiful micro-mosaics that look almost like paintings. Rome was home of something else too: a saint named Valentine. As legend has it, he secretly performed weddings for Roman soldiers who were forbidden to marry, and for this he was put to death. Another story of perhaps another St. Valentine (It seems there were a couple martyrs with the same name) says that he visited downtrodden and mistreated Roman prisoners gifting cards... or that he was a prisoner who fell in love with a girl who visited him, maybe the jailor's daughter and that he signed a letter "From your Valentine." The Christian based holiday of St. Valentine's was a replacement for the Pagan mating rituals of February, Lupercalia. Roman's went people being killed for being Christian to being killed for not being Christian. Valentine's Day today has references to both Christianity and Pagan history: St. Valentine, who was a Catholic, the Greek god Eros, whose Roman name is Cupid, and his mother, the Greek goddess of Love, Aphrodite, whose Roman name is Venus, although I'm guessing most people aren't thinking about religion at all when they sign their Valentine's Day card.

To make our Valentine mosaics, my students used hearts that were cut from painted or colored mat board, a smaller heart was cut from within, and smaller pieces of half a small heart at a time were cut and glued. It's too hard to keep track of very many cut pieces at a time, so we focused on 4-8 at a time. The other small half and then the outer heart, half at a time were glued into place leaving little cracks. We talked about the idiom "broken heart" and played a game to try to see how many song titles we could name with the word "heart" in it. Normally, I'm not a fan using art class to make holiday crafts, but it fit so well with the curriculum of ancient cultures and art history that I couldn't resist.  A glued piece of ribbon on the back makes it easy to hang on a wall or on the door nob of a loved one as a gift. Love big everyone!

Assemblage Project

A few weeks ago, my class studied the amazing artist, Louise Nevelson, and each student created their own, Nevelson-inspired, assemblage sculpture. 

Nevelson offers a great lesson in art history and moving forward in life with confidence and work habits. She built large sculptures using wooden objects in boxes and painting them one color, black, white, or gold. It was fun to watch students search through piles of materials and find something that was meaningful to them. I offered my students pieces of cardboard and wood, used water bottles, wire, and small, used toys.

 Art classrooms often becomes the garbage cans of the school, as people show up with paper towel tubes , bubble wrap, and a "Can you use this?" But that's a good thing when teaching students environmental concepts such as reducing and reusing, as well as art concepts such as "found objects" and assemblage. Conversations can go back to Duchamps "ready-mades" and the big question, "What is art?"  Bliss for me as a teacher, is the spot right between the profound and the whimsical.