Welcome back! This week's class was called Art in Nature. The classes focused on creating projects with objects that are found in nature. This meant searching for art everywhere! Let me show you what I mean!
POTATOES, BEETS, COFFEE
Beets are one of the most annoying vegetables - they stain everything! But the beautiful purple magenta pigment it gives off looks even sweeter on paper. Our students cut the beets into different shapes to stamp and paint with. Our instructor also brewed a dark pot of coffee for the brown stain and when the brown was too light, our students mixed the coffee and beet juice with soy sauce for an even deeper hue. Potatoes were carved into different shapes and dipped into paint to make potato stamps. The students shared their stamps to create an even more colorful work of art.The classroom smelled... interesting... but anything for art, huh?
FIELD TRIP
We had originally planned for our students to go out to the park for two days, but the weather really wasn't in our favor. The rain also brought out a ton of mosquitos so it really wasn't ideal to take our kids out. For those who were able to explore outdoors, we picked up a lot of rocks, branches, bark, leaves and acorns for our future projects this week. While we were out there, we created land art and hatchets out of stones and branches. A mini history lesson was given about the use and invention of hatchets. The stones and acorns were brought back to the studio for our land art project. The students made an arrangement on a canvas and then glued down. The simple yet sophisticated designs were super impressive!
The other materials like branches and leaves were then incorporated with clay twine to create 3-dimensional dolls. This was actually fascinating to watch. The kids got the stones to balance the branches so the branches have support standing up on the platform. It was incredible watching the kids combine the branches with clay to create their sculptures. Some students even took the rough surface of the stones to make an imprint onto the clay. I have no idea how they think of this stuff!
NATURE BOX
The final project was a box created from recyclable materials and all of the leftover objects from the park. The students were told to create a box that will store their memories and secrets. They layered paper to create a strong hinge and the stones as knobs. One student folded a paper airplane in memory of their most recent vacation while other filled the box with more objects found in nature to create another sculpture at home.
FALL 2018
Our summer program only has two weeks left! Super crazy how fast this past month went. For those of you interested in our fall semester, keep yourselves updated with our blog - there will be an announcement very soon!