Larger than Life

Beginning of the year, meant lots of self portraits in various forms.  6th grade channeled all of their social media knowledge and took a look at avatars and cartoons.  We discovered that avatars often have exaggerated physical features.  We then compared these to Japanese manga and anime.  I was surprised many knew some mangas (Dragon-ball Z and others from my high school days). We also talked about the literary form of exaggeration (I like to use the fishing story example). We used faceyourmanga to exaggerate our physical features and of course had to blow them up to larger than life size!

We used a grid to help us enlarge our avatars and keep the correct proportion.  We then talked baout what we want to exaggerate about ourselves.  Often we focus on the things that we do not like rather than the things that are good about ourselves.  I have then make a list of the things they love about themselves and things about them that they want to exaggerate.   These are written in the background of their portraits.

I absolutely love how these turned out!  They did a fantastic job enlarging something that started so small to something so big!  They got a kick out of seeing our 3 and 4 year olds seeing these large portraits out in the hallway.  For some reason they were mesmerized by these portraits! 

Let's Catch up!

Hey everyone!  Miss Thrun certainly has been missing in action for quite a while.  There has been a lot of news, both happy and sad as well as a lot going on!

A few months ago, we found out that St. Leo's will be closing at the end of this school year.  It is a heartbreaking development and I will miss all of my students dearly but we still have many months to go so we should all look forward to making this the best school year ever! Drama club is in full swing and art club is learning stop motion animation this month!  Our three short films will premiere at our Variety Show in May and Drama club will be performing two songs from Oliver Twist to open and close this end of the year extravaganza!

With in this post are some snap shots taking from these past months but I'll be back with some more details project posts soon! 

Rizzi City for Meet the Teacher Night!

First artwork of the year is up! I wanted to have some work for the parents to see at meet the teacher night. Grades K-8 learned about NYC artist James Rizzi. Rizzi lived his community and you can see it,in his playful paintings. We focused on his buildings that seem to take in a personality of their own. Students were asked to think about their community and specifically our school community here at St. Leo's. After discussing the important, favorite and their own role in the community students were asked to create a building that commucates their role or something about their personality.  Put them all together and you get a Rizzi city of unique and wonderful artists!

Miss T's Summer!

School has started! And there has been complete radio silence here on this blog.  I figured I would update all of you what I have been up to this summer!
I had the wonderful opportunity to work with local mural artist Augustina Droze on a mural that was installed on Grant Street in Buffalo, NY!  We are currently finishing one that will be located in Clarence Hollow.  It was amazing to learn how to create something so large!  The Grant Street mural is 32 by 80 feet!  I am now itching to create a mural at St. Leo's this year, definitely not as large but I think I now have the confidence and skills to organize a large painting with my students.

I also taught an Around the World Art camp at Monkey See, Monkey Do...Children's Bookstore!  I had a blast with my 13 lovely young ladies exploring different cultures and making some fabulous artwork!  Below are only some of the 9 projects we were able to make!

I'm incredibly excited for my third year at St. Leo's! Year. three. I can hardly believe it! I have so much planned for this year! Stay tuned for projects and art fun!

Mexican Animalitos

5th grade "traveled" to Mexico earlier this year and learned about Oaxacan wood carvers and their beautiful and whimsical animal carvings.   These remarkable wood carvings are also known as alebrijes for their similarity with the fantastic paper creatures made in Mexico City.  

We made ours out of air-dry clay. And painted them with acrylics.  I absolutely love how they turned out!  I wanted to keep many of them for my own.  If you want to see some of the real things, click here.  One day, I plan on owning one of these beauties! 

Mask Making: Venetian Style

I adore Carnival in Venice, Italy.  I few years back, my grandparents gave me a beautiful Venetian mask from their travels there.   I knew that eventually I wanted to teach a lesson inspired by these gorgeous wearable works of art.  I started this lesson during Mardi Gras which is our equivalent to Carnival.  I  showed some videos from past years festivities and many of the gorgeous masks and costumes.  I had my 7th graders look for themes in the costumes and masks.  There were ones inspired by music and love and much more.  We then started with brainstorming some themes of our own.  Their mask had to represent a specific theme.  Many of them were very literal in their first sketches.  After sharing we discussed literal versus interpretive.  I wanted them to take bits and pieces from their inspiration. 
After sketches were locked in, we moved onto constructing our masks.  This masks were constructed by applying plaster strips directly onto the face, making each mask a custom fit to the wearer.  This is my second year teaching this lesson and boy, did it go differently.  Last years group at first giggled when applying the petroleum jelly and plaster strips to each others faces (they worked with a partner) but then there was complete silence in the art room.  I believe it was the quietest it had been the entire year.  This years group, however, has a few perfectionists and could not stand the thought of someone else applying the strips to their face, luckily I have plenty of mirrors.  And the complaining....these kids didn't want their hands dirty for more than a minute.  Regardless, I always get a hoot at how they react to this very messy art.

Can you guess what their themes are?  

St Leo's Auction 2012-2013

St. Leo's Auction was a success!  All of our group artwork found loving homes.  It's taken some time but I finally have photos of these wonderful works! Above is the Starry Night Chair inspired by Vincent Van Gogh.  This chair was hand-painted by my 7th graders.  I was very tempted to keep it!
5th grade learned about the work of Louise Nevelson She creates this amazing sculptures from found materials that have incredible depth and details. Each 5th grader received a puzzle piece and built it up with foam shapes and other found objects. Spray paint it a solid gold, and voila!
  4th grade made a reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh's Cafe Terrance at Night. Each student received a square of the painting to recreate with oil pastels. Precision was the key in order for lines and objects to match up and I think they did an excellent job! They were so proud of the work, once they saw it put together. 3rd grade did a super quick and easy work with Popsicle sticks. Each students had to create a pattern or design on these small canvases. I love the quilt effect that it created once all together. 2nd grade experimented with alcohol ink, special ink that stays on smooth surfaces like ceramics. These tiles were sitting around my artroom, begging to become coasters! We were able to auction off a three bundles of these beauties! 1nd grade learned about the hearts of Jim Dine just in time for Valentine's day! They created these lovable hearts with oil pastels.
  Kindergarten colored on sandpaper with crayons. These designs were ironed onto fabric and sew together to create this darling pillow! 8th grade did a screen-printing unit earlier this year. We used these screens to create a class quilt! It was backed with fleece to make this a super comfy blanket to snuggle with! Last but not least....This was a super quick project that K-8th all added too! Inspired by the movie Up, students colored their finger with washable marker and contributed their print to make balloons to hold up our school. Luckily our school principal got this one!