It continues to be a busy time in the Workshop. We can wind things up for the year and keep working on projects.To wind things up, finishing touches are made to work as we prepare the portfolios to go home. This includes mounting small pieces, and collecting all share/ planning papers in folders. Once in a while an artist will decide to work more on a piece.

To generate continued learning, third, fourth and fifth grades are adding some geometric designs to their portfolios. Someone asks,”What is a design?”. According to my American Heritage dictionary, meaning 4 under noun is “A visual composition or pattern”. We used the geometry templates for the shapes for the “disposition of forms…” Individual conversations and questions arise during this exercise. Considerable thought went into tracing the shapes then adding to them to hold the plan together visually, with more shapes, or color. 

Considerable enthusiasm arises as the kindies and first graders meet George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog, and find out why he’s blue. When he’s not blue what are some colors he can be; salmon proved to be popular.  Each interprets the dog in his or her own way.https://georgerodrigue.com/
 

Winding down means the gears in the hall will be coming down over the next weeks, so the  individual gears  can go home in portfolios. Third, fourth and fifth graders went into the hall, chose a “machine” and completed a reflection paper for the Gears. How to scale down a large work in a small space was the challenge. These pages  also will be included in the folders coming home in June.

One of the final decisions for K- 4 th graders will be  selecting  a piece of work from the portfolios to leave at school. These will be mounted and displayed In the halls in fall of 2016. The selections  from 2015 will be in portfolios in June.

It’s been another great year in the ARTISTS WORKSHOP. We bring 2015-16 to a close and we look to next year. Kindies through fourth graders will be planning their portfolios for 2016-17.

from the Artists Workshop
                                                                 STEAM !!!!

Gearing Up   

When you visit the school to shop the book fair or to meet with a teacher, you will find the walls near the ramp going to fifth grade or kindergarten and the walls near the library have been decorated with some interesting art. These are the gears all the students have decorated, cut out, glued to another piece of oaktag and cutout again. They do spin and some even will turn their neighbors. I know they will be touched, please be careful. Some have designs, some have favorite imagery and some have abstract coloring. Together they make  fabulous, magical machines.

GEARS! GEARS! GEARS!                               STEAM
In keeping with the year's theme we've been doing art on a gear shaped canvas using paint or

sharpies . This project has included cutting and pasting! After the gears have been cut out and laminated, they will be arranged as a single machine and hung for display in the hall. These  machines will be up during the May parent conferences and  book fair.

As part of this project art classes have been building with blocks and gears. Working in 3-d is always fun. Some classes have been sketching the sculptures. Another art word we have been using is perspective.

Here are some structures built by the 5th graders

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 27^th; 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

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

  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.

Art Work To Go Home
We started working on the work to accompany the TM 2 report card on March 11. In honor of the beauty of the season, I shared Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" with Friday's classes. The illustrations are by Susan Jeffers.
Different groups engaged with different things: all knew snow angels. Then black papers as well as white were used to create whatever came to mind.

 https://www.google.com/search?q=stopping+by+woods+on+a+snowy+evening&espv=2&biw=1777&bih=887&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0ahUKEwilwvve5_TKAhUKTCYKHWLxB_cQ_AUIBygC&dpr=0.9#tbm=isch&q=stopping+by+woods+on+a+snowy+evening+susan+jeffers