Wednesday, March 16, 2016

rom the ARTISTS WORKSHOP
March is Youth Art Month. All the art teachers in the SAU select works to hang at the Exeter Town Hall. The exhibit is open weekends in March, noon to 4:00 each day.
EKES is represented by fifth grade art work done after the pouches were finished. They drew their project as part of their assessment of that project. The requirements were to fill the page visually, add color with either colored pencil or crayon, express the texture/pattern of the woven pouch, and, of course, sign the work. The students whose work met the requirements are on display at the Exeter Town Hall through March. They are Emerson MacBride, Sarah Ricker, Amanda Cook, Ryan Dixon, Christina Cashman, Conner Conti, Gabby Harrington, Jack LaBroad, Robert Berthel, Isabelle Rice, Eliza Friend, Isabel White, Ethan Cook, Max Keegan, Sarah McManus, Calvin Bork, Dylan Senter, and Amanda Varney.  The gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays  through the 27th; all are welcome. I always look for middle or high schoolers from EK whose work is included.

The upcoming exhibit at EKES will be the “gears project” which began on STEAM Day. Each student will be painting, coloring or collaging on a gear shape. These will be attached to a larger piece of paper to construct machines of our imaginations. They will be on display in April during the book fair and the two Wednesdays of parent conferences.
Presentations and discussions in art class have revolved around the differences of appreciating and creating 2- and 3-d art.  We built simple sculptures using blocks and drew quick sketches of them. A   peripheral component of this project is how groups within the class and the whole class work together to create objects. Two sculptors whose work is presented  at varied times during the 3-d work are Alexander Calder, http://www.calder.org/ and  Augustus St. Gaudens.http://www.nps.gov/saga/index.htm

Thursday, March 10, 2016

I'm preparing the art work to go home tomorrow, Ma.11 with students' report cards. The works span all the types of art and all the themes - from hearts to monsters to overlapping lines of beeswax crayons on black paper. Parents get to see their child's work,
 I am privileged by seeing all of them.
I came across this article this morning and thought it fitting.
 http://clydegaw.blogspot.com/2016/03/teaching-for-artistic-behavior-is.html


Saturday, March 5, 2016


  Students in grades K-4 will be bringing home art work this week. Some third and fourth graders have done small weaving projects. The fifth graders finished small polymer clay pots and items to bring home.
Other grades have done 2-dimensional work specifically to bring home to share with you. It shows what was important at that moment. Sometimes the picture in a child's work is hidden in the lines and colors on the paper and my look like scribbles. The thoughts or emotions are intermingled with the color, movement or energy of the work.

If I am unable to see a specific image, I ask " What were you thinking about when you did this? or "what do you see now ?" Sometimes a child's work doesn't look like anything recognizable to adults; a child may be creating an abstraction of sheer joy of using the media, or are self-editing because he/she has sensed that the art work they sometimes do isn't quite how they want it to look. It's not perfect, so not attempted.  But that does not imply that it is not an important work for that moment. That' s one of the things I like about teaching art, a creative expression is not what is represented by the artist but what it makes the viewer thinks about or question, and everyone's creative expression is different. My job as art teacher allows me to support the efforts, and direct work as appropriate for  each child.