I take it as my responsibility as an art educator to expose students to the “big eight” social identifiers. Contemporary artists, who represent all walks of life, not only make this possible but make it increasingly necessary.
Contemporary art is far less about beauty and aesthetics than it is about the identities of the artists themselves. Artworks reveal an artist’s experience, their place, or lack thereof, in the art world, or shine a spotlight on their interests and concerns in our increasingly complex, interconnected world. Their mission is to open our eyes to new perspectives and to move ours, if just a fraction of a degree.
Of course, knowing your audience is key. When a 3-year-old asks: “Where do babies come from?” they are not asking us to explain sex. Similarly, if I am teaching about Keith Haring, I do not need to explain to a first grader how he contracted AIDS, but I can describe him as a gay white male artist who called attention to causes he believed in through his artwork.
Contemporary artists reflect the lived experiences of our students in our visually saturated, politically-charged, culturally diverse world. It is our job to show our students how.
Under our Anti-Bias curriculum, students start to really think about what is important to them about who they are. Fourth grade artists were introduced to the work of Glenn Ligon whose work focuses on racial, ethnic, and sexual identity.
As they pondered this slide, students made incredible deductions about the artwork’s meaning: "You're never actually separate from your shadow;" "It seems sad, like he's stuck in the darkness;” and "But you can't have shadow without light!" a student who identifies as black exclaimed. We thought about that statement for a while!
I then noted that in this piece the fronts of the letters are painted black so the neon glow becomes the "shadow," and we thought about all that could mean.
After some assumptive assertions, someone noticed that some of the letters are flipped. We looked more closely. Actually, I pointed out, “we can assume they're all flipped, it's just that some letters are symmetrical. So what do you think he's trying to say here?” One student said, "America is confusing." Another quietly remarked, "America is white." Someone said something about equality. “Are all the letters equal?” I asked.
Students then sculpted continuous line words from wire that are reminiscent of Ligon’s provocative neon signs. They also got to practice their cursive writing skills and strengthen that fine motor function!
Third graders visited the Brooklyn Museum to see Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound. Born in 1943, Scott was diagnosed with Down Syndrome in infancy and was also deaf and largely mute. She spent thirty years in an institution until her sister became her legal guardian and moved her to California. There, Scott became involved at the Creative Growth Art Center, a professional studio environment for the artistic development of adults with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities.
In preparation for the trip, students watched a video about Tommy Edison, a blind man who can’t understand the concept of color. We talked about a variety of challenges people face, and how some have been able to learn to express themselves, despite such challenges, through the medium of art. Students also watched snippets on artists Chuck Close and Paul Smith and made meaningful observations and comments.
Back at school, students focused on how Scott created her sculptures by tightly wrapping, tying, and weaving found and scavenged objects with yarn and fabric. They covertly wrapped small items brought from home while improving their wrapping, tying, twisting, and banding skills.
We always draw our sculptures!
These students learned about the power of titling their artworks and their art show, and tackled the challenges of display and curation. They worked together to design the multi-level platforms that would hold their work for the art show.
“Typewriter artist,” Paul Smith was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy that affected his speech, his mobility, and his fine motor function. Unable to grasp a pencil effectively, Smith taught himself to paint with a manual typewriter.
After watching the video, one fourth grader said, "If he didn’t have this condition he might never have discovered the amazing things he can do."
And so an art lesson was developed to help these already empathic artists experience a bit of Smith’s plight. The challenge: “With limited abilities, what CAN you do?”
With a variety of unusual tools and the rule that they must use only their non-dominant hand, students recreated a famous artwork to the best of their ability. The results prove that when faced with challenges and filled with determination, we can make amazing things happen.
Van Gogh’s Chair with Non-Dominant Hand
Art should be fun, for you and the kids. Keep things fresh while building community by designing collaborative challenges that stretch student thinking… and your own.
Process art is about creating art experiences where the act of doing and discovering is the focus. Outcomes vary widely as children are encouraged to make their own discoveries and seek their own solutions. Problem-solving and critical thinking skills are practiced with each decision.
With process-based art making, my role is facilitator, guide, and support as students develop at their own pace.
Students watched videos of tapeart group Kitsch Nitsch and clips from the Nordic Post-It Art Challenge in Denmark. They were then challenged to work in small groups with non-traditional two-dimensional materials like tape, Post-Its, white labels, and paper with hole punches to create collaborative art pieces.
Students needed to explore, plan, innovate, and compromise in order to meet this timed challenge successfully. Along the way, students discovered that using the same material repeatedly reveals patterns and creates a sense of unity in the work, resulting in strong visual impact.
Third and fourth grade artists viewed clips of artists El Anatsui, Andy Goldsworthy, and Tara Donovan at work for a challenge using three-dimensional materials. The discoveries and conversations were rich and made for an inspired start to our year of art-making!
What artful thing might you do with yarn?
Toilet paper rolls and paper clips?
Creating parameters and restricting materials tests prior knowledge and forces innovative problem-solving, as seen here!
Calling all nail-biters! Have we got the solution for you! Fourth grade artists partnered, planned, designed, and built prototypes for this 2-day design challenge.
On day 2, partners wrote copy and made presentations explaining and touting their problem-solving inventions!
As they watched a video of Sarah DiNardo, tape artist, third graders wondered: Can artists be changemakers? Inspired by DiNardo’s rolling technique and armed with rolls of masking tape artists explored this non-traditional art material for themselves.
They discovered the properties of tape, its challenges, and its benefits as a sculptural material. They used studio habits of mind like persistence and patience to come up with sculpting strategies and to negotiate and compromise with their team of artists.
The resulting sculptures remind us of densely populated metropolitan areas, ships, craters, tanks, nests, city squares, and so on. Third graders broadened their own minds about using tape as a sculptural material. Have they changed yours?
Inspired by their experiences with non-traditional tools and materials, fourth graders were charged with making their own drawing and painting tools with a variety of natural and man-made objects. The innovation and design thinking expressed was astonishing, especially considering their limited resources!
Artists then explored mark-making. What kinds of marks can each tool make? Students shared tools and explored textures by dragging, stippling, spinning, and pressing their tools to the paper.
Their large, abstract group paintings led to a lesson on Abstract Expressionism, the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world. Students were excited to identify Jackson Pollack—whose home/studio-turned-museum is open to the public on Eastern Long Island—as an important figure in the movement.
Graphic design gives young students power. In our increasingly visual and politically charged world, it is important to help kids navigate the noise, to help them identify an article from an ad, a logo from a brand, a poster that advertises a product versus an idea. We want our youth to become critical thinkers, conscious consumers, and social justice advocates.
Teaching the principles of design and providing instruction in both digital and analog graphic design skills provides kids with the proper tools to voice their ever-evolving ideas and opinions.
This ever-evolving unit teaches fourth grade artists to deconstruct highly effective historical posters and identify the three critical elements required to make a powerful poster: color, image, text.
Students familiarized themselves with design principles—simplicity, strong shapes, strong colors, hierarchy, positive/negative space, and cleverness—and learned to identify these principles at play in strong sample posters. Discussions then turned to topical issues including homelessness, equality, and the state of our environment.
Based on interest, students divided themselves into small design teams and took on specific roles including: researcher, slogan writer, image designer, layout designer, and font designer.
Negotiating ideas and agreeing on a clear message was challenging at times, but these fair-minded and persistent teams found ways to compromise and find common ground, while remaining invested in upholding design principles that would help communicate their messages effectively.
For this 30-minute challenge, quick thinking designers made incredible connections as their silhouetted hand gestures helped lead to slogans that run the gamut from social to environmental to political concerns. All messages were positive in nature, some even urging a call to action.
For their final public art campaign, they turn the camera on themselves. Designers learn to take high quality portrait photos with their iPads.
Using the app ArtStudio, they digitally manipulated their portrait photo into a black and white graphic image, then flipped and inverted the image in preparation for the laser cutter!
Analog to digital and back again!
Life-size wood printing blocks fresh from the laser printer!
Inking the plate
Discerning designers chose their printing papers carefully
Designers choose a final print, plan their layout, and put all the elements together!
A documentarian and visual storyteller by nature, I enjoy using video and slide presentations to support learning, encourage reflection, and to inspire wider audiences of teachers. Here are just a few of our projects.
A look at 1st through 4th grade art
The making of the Bottle Cap Mural, a year-long multidisciplinary first grade project.
Every student and teacher created a 2 x 2-inch tile depicting their hope and dream for the school year. Then, the Student Council went to work voting and getting approvals for its installation.
During an all school assembly, we used video call technology to stream the reveal from the school’s foyer to the Athletic Center. This was something of feat in 2011!
Hopes & Dreams Mural, 2011-12
Museum visits and other art and design-related field trips are essential to an effective visual arts education. When students engage with actual art in artistic environments like museums, galleries, and artist’s studios, their knowledge of art and artifacts is enriched beyond what can be taught within the four walls of a classroom. Visual art field trips offer students an immersive experience with artists, concepts, and endless combinations of material, social, and aesthetic concerns. They inform the mind, activate the senses, and provide nuanced experiential learning opportunities. “Through the sensory and kinesthetic learning that takes place in artistic environments, students gain a better understanding of the world around them and the roles art plays in it.” (NAEA, Position Statement on Field Trips/Field-Based Learning/Equity)
Equally important are the pre-, during, and post-trip experiences. I create customized activity sheets for students to help them become more engaged learners. These activities often include both language arts and art-making components. Read more about how I use museum resources and create my own resources here.
Brooklyn Museum, 2014
Brooklyn Museum, 2013
Students take the shapes of El Anatsui’s sculpture installation
MoMA, 2012
Brooklyn Museum, 2015
MoMA, 2015
Museum of the City of New York, 2019
Two-dimensional artwork offers endless learning opportunities. Drawing and painting materials can be as varied as one’s imagination! In addition to traditional tools, I love unconventional ones, like tape, water, stamp pads, and objects from nature. Printmaking, too, offers innumerable materials and techniques for creating imagery. Not to mention collaging with paper, fabric, or any combination of relatively flat things. All the while, students are learning the elements of art and design like line, shape, color, and texture. Design principles like composition, scale and proportion, and perspective also come into play, overtly or covertly depending on developmental age.
A thoughtful talk with second grade artists about collage, identity, and the characteristics we share with animals such as fierce and stealthy, led to this collage project inspired by contemporary German artist Annegret Soltau.
Second grade artists learned to move a viewfinder over their drawings until they found a new composition in their original drawing. Observing and planning carefully, artists then scaled up these new compositions onto 8.5-inch square paper. Next step, acrylic painting!
Students used their color mixing knowledge and blending skills to create stunning acrylic paintings!
Artists observed each others’ paintings using Project Zero’s I See, I Think, I Wonder thinking routine. They noticed color combinations, blending techniques, and where students used tints and shades in their paintings.
Fourth grade artists traveled to different stations to observe and depict the still life with the materials available there. Here, a drawing with chalk pastels.
Collaged fruits with paint color swatches
Collaged fruits from magazine pages
While most students used the colored tape to make a 2D collage, a clever pair of students made a 3D version of the still life! Made my day!
Fourth grade artists choose a geometric or organic object to depict by way of highlights, midtones, and shadows. Choosing a just right point of view makes all the difference in this light and shadow study.
Some drawing techniques are best learned from a student’s own work. Here, sculptural “ribbon words” inspired by Ed Ruscha are engineered, photographed, and then drawn with attention on value and attaining light and shadow using hard and soft pressure.
Working with clay is an essential medium for PreK-12 students and beyond! Clay is an organic composition of mineral and water that has truly magical qualities. The tactile feel, mental stimulation, and creative expression provided by pushing and pulling and molding clay in one’s hands supports personalized learning, sensory development, problem solving and risk-taking skills, self expression, discipline, and self-esteem. In addition, clay has well-documented therapeutic qualities that settle and calm individuals of any age.
As children grow and learn to craft a myriad of vessels and sculptures using pinch, coil, and slab building methods, they are developing the essential fine motor skills and core body strength that are rapidly diminishing in our tech-heavy society.
While exploration and creation with clay provides endless learning and creative opportunities, the medium of clay can quite naturally be integrated into your academic coursework to solidify curricular concepts and help students bring their other academic subjects to life.
Ceramic students ages 7-10 learned to use the ancient art of coiling to build large, deep pots.
Rolling long, thick coils is challenging for little hands! But these kiddos got incredibly skilled at rolling, coiling, and then doing the hard work of blending the coils together both inside and outside of the pot.
Here, Wes turns his pot over for easier access to the base and more efficient blending.
The fruits of their labor!
Functional objects are soooo satisfying!
Second grade artists apply Parts of a Whole thinking to their animal research project!
Artists cut each part of their animal out of a clay slab, then use overlapping and their understanding of “in front” and “behind” to create these incredible textured relief tiles.
Artists add animal name in both English and español!
Anthony Gormley-inspired animal figures
Helen’s rabbit-esque conscious creature
Piggy Bank by Isabella. Can’t go wrong with the classic!
Polar Bear Bank by Rafa, who cleverly realized an open mouth could replace the traditional slot at the top.
Piggy banks in progress… and unicorn banks, and unipig banks, and owl banks, and…
For young learners, clay is a process! Exploring what clay can do and being in the moment is the beginning and end (and beginning!).
Challenges keep kids learning through exploration, collaboration, and trial and error! Here, second graders are challenged to build a beam bridge all the way ‘round the table!
Hooray!
There are endless ways to treat the surface of a ceramic object. More advanced learners got the chance to explore both pre-fired and bisque surface decoration techniques. Bubble glazing was clearly a big hit!
Working with texture and slip!
Working with 3D form is essential for developing spatial reasoning skills, becoming familiar with the capabilities and characteristics of various materials, engineering physical forms and understanding how things work, and of course, strengthening small motor function.
For tiny hands, playing with materials like paper, foil, and clay for their tactile qualities alone is where the learning takes place. As kids develop, they become increasingly able to understand spatial concepts like layering, positive and negative space, parts of a whole, foreground, mid-ground, and background, point of view, and scale.
Before iPads, trying to teach the concept of scale to third graders was tricky in every context. Gridding? So hard. Imagining their sculptures 10 stories high? Assessment not possible.
After transforming their 2D design work into a 3D sculpture, students learned to photograph their work and each other using a “green screen.” Then, using the app Brushes, they worked with layers and the eraser tool to show their understanding of scale!
After developing many paper manipulation skills through practice and fun challenges, third grade artists thoughtfully chose three colored papers to create these elegant paper sculptures.
Then, attending to their point of view, students drew their sculptures capturing the nuances of perspective, light, and shadow.
Cardboard bird sculptures created by second grade artists. The assignment was inspired by the work of artists James Castle and Pablo Picasso.
In keeping with their grade-wide essential theme, Parts of a Whole, students broke down photographs of birds into basic shapes, then constructed these relief sculptures by layering and adding color and texture.
Grant Wood’s American Gothic by Olivia
Third grade artists deconstructed master paintings into foreground, mid-ground, and background, painted each part, and reconstructed them into 3D shadow box versions of the paintings.
Van Gogh’s The Sower by Nathaniel
Chagall’s The Fiddler
Observation skills aren’t just for drawing anymore! Here students observed and sculpted forms from still life arrangements.
