Design Time: Zentangle Collaboration

Repetition is a Principle of Design, which is used to create pattern, textures, and rhythm in art. Some patterns have names: check board, basketweave, zig zag, polka dots, while others are waiting to be invented. It's good to break out of your doodle comfort zone which is surprisingly small for most visually impaired people and try to repeat marks that you haven't tried before.

My students created their own chart with a handful of different patterns before contributing to the larger group composition. Tables were covered with bulletin board paper and when students finished their own work, they could contribute to this group composition. It's fun to work together to learn and create.

Zentagle Portraits

My friend, Matt Forrest, who volunteers at my school, got a grant to buy frames and easels for my students to have an exhibit in the community. We sat down with my high school students to brainstorm and vote on a project that interested them. They decided to make portraits that used various patterns.

Once their drawings were done in marker (any color as long as it was dark), I emailed pictures to Matt, who produced the images on plastic and then used photo emulsion and the images on plastic to produce silk screens.  When he came back to the school, my students printed their images with black ink, on to high quality printmaking paper.  The wet ink can be flocked with a powdered plastic that melts when met with a heat gun, making the image tactile. Finally, students colored their prints with water color. I try to have my all my art projects for the year on the calendar before the first day of school, but sometimes, unexpected opportunities and the group decisions make for some nice side trails and beautiful vistas.

Tessellations

Math becomes meaningful for art lovers, during tessellation projects.

I  introduce my students to tessellation project by showing them images of E.C. Escher's amazing work and letting them handle a pop up book of his pieces.  How is it done? They want to know. How does he make black geese fly one direction and white geese fly the other? How are tessellations made. I tell my students I will show them if they can try to figure out how to change the perimeter of a card without changing the area.  We do the math together to find the perimeter and area of a football field or an iphone. I hand them a card: 3"X5" or 3"X3" or 3"X2". They figure out the perimeter and diameter of their card themselves. Then I show them how I can draw a line that starts on one side and ends on the same side.  I cut along the line and then slide the card to the opposite side and tape it to the edge. (This works well with graph paper, for students of vision). Did I change the area? No. I didn't throw any part away, and I didn't add any piece from a different card. Did I change the perimeter? Well if the shortest distance between two lines is a  straight line and my line is now curvy or zig zag to get from one point to another, than I increased the distance, so yes.  I like to encourage my students draw and cut from corner to corner so that students can easily line the edge up to the opposite side without needing to grid card to line it up. The rainbow tessellation at the top is an example of what it looks like with only one shape cut. If you want something less boxy, you can cut a second shape from another straight side before sliding and taping it to it's opposite side.  Now you have a template.

The template can be placed anywhere on a piece of paper (we use 12"X18") and traced, and then slid (not flipped, not turned, but slid) so that the right side of the template fits into the left side of the drawn shape. This repeated pattern fills the page. Some of my visually impaired students use devices to see the edges better, but my blind students had to trace their template using wiki sticks which later served as tactile barriers for coloring with markers. A few students traced with a 20/20 pen and then I went over their lines with hot glue so they could feel their edges.

This is a piece done by a co-worker as I walked her through the process. The element of design we focus on is shape, and the focus principles of design are repetition/pattern and balance (crystallographic). The project is rich enough that there many ways to teach it, and that's important to someone like me, who never wants to live a boring day.

Word Mandala

Mandalas are repeated patterns using radial balance. They are used in some Indian religions and ancient architecture to symbolize the universe.

After my 12 year-old daughter came home with the painting above, I had my own students create mandalas. First I  folded a square of 12" X 12" paper in fourths to make 4- 4"X4" pieces and then diagonally to make 8 identical triangles. I cut them out and gave one to each student. They wrote a name or word that was meaningful to them. (My daughter's says "APPLES.") This can be done with the bottom of the word against the longest side of the triangle or one of the shorter sides, but the letters should fill the space. The word needs to be traced with marker so that it can be seen well enough to trace. We used a light table to trace the word into one section of paper and then flip upside down on the next section and trace it again.The flipping and tracing continued the entire way around the paper. Some people might want to do every other space with the word reading correctly, and then flip the word upside down and fill in the mirror images in the missing spaces. Either way, the results are the same: 4 mirrored pairs of the word.



For my students who are completely blind, and read Braille, instead of print, I wrote the word for them and traced it in hot glue. Their job was to color them using the tactile lines.

These two say "Kind" and "Faith." 

I wish I had taken pictures of the finished pieces because they looked fantastic. This project really helped students who felt like they couldn't come up with a pattern or design themselves, realize that they could. It also helped some of my students think about negative space, and find ways to repeat color for sense of wholeness.

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.

Coil Pots

A thousand years before I moved to the south, there were Native Americans here making amazing pottery with the same Georgia clay, and the same coil methods that we use today. I taught my art students the styles and techniques used by the Mississipian and Creek nations, beginning with the shapes of their vessels.

I needed to make drawings with puffy paint for my blind students who couldn't see the slide show.

They each sketched their own variation of pot, using the correct terms for the parts: neck, lip, shoulders, foot, and handles. Some students tried to replicate what they felt in my drawings, using wiki sticks.

Then the students made coils "or snake like shapes from clay by rolling their hands on top of the clay and moving each hand and finger further apart to evenly stretch it.The bottom coil rolled up like a spiral and was smoothed out top and bottom. In the end, I didn't want the coils to show at all. 

The Ocmulgee Indian Mounds is a National Monument in our town. It has videos showing how the coils were smoothed and used to create walls. Then wooden carvings were pressed into the sides of the pots to create pattern. I required my students to use a repeated texture too.

There is a school wide media fair coming up, during which each teacher will show case how their students learned about the people and history of the state. We will showcase some of our pots in the bisque fired state so that they look more authentic. Once the show is over, we will glaze and fire the pots again. Maybe, they will be ready just in time for Christmas. Who wouldn't want an ancient style, modern twist, home made, coil pot!