Non-Objective Pattern Sculptures with Sol Lewitt

Lesson Objective:  

Work with the elements of line and space 

Work with the art principles of pattern and unity

Create a 3-D composition

Use paper Construction

Key Vocabulary: 

Non-objective sculture

Free standing Sculpture

Unity

Materials: 

Note Cards in two sizes

Glue

Black Card stock base

Fine point black sharpies

Focus Artist: Sol Lewitt: Pattern and structures 

Also study: Revisit:  Dongo Artwork to review and connect. 

Project requirements: 

Drawing is non-objective and shows attention to detail

Drawings incorporate 20 different patterns 

Small Group Critique at Midway point

Sculpture is free standing and non-objective

Shows unity through repetition of color and shape. 

Assessment:

Informal: Small Group Critique

Formal: Final Grading

CA Art Standards

1.1 Identify and use the principles of design to discuss, analyze, and write about visual aspects in the environment and in works of art, including their own.

1.4 Analyze and describe how the composition of a work of art is affected by the use of a particular principle of design.

2.1 Solve a visual arts problem that involves the effective use of the elements of art and the principles of design.

2.2 Prepare a portfolio of original two-and three-dimensional works of art that reflects refined craftsmanship and technical skills.

Modifications: 

English Language Learner: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques

Special Needs: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques

Accelerated Learner: Expand on skills learned to create a unique project. 

Advanced art students will be asked to increase the difficulty of their pattern making and increase the final number of  paper rolls from 20 to 30. 

Scaffolding adaptations: 

Students will see several examples of each art element in different artwork shown in the power point. Notes on the elements of art will be taken throughout discussions for added understanding. Creating each side and Constructing the cube will be demo started in class using guided instruction. 

Day 1: 

Go Through Power Point Slides

Review: Dango Artwork to connect learning

Discuss Sol Lewitt’s artwork

Interpret line drawings as Principles and elements of design

State Project Objectives, Materials, Project Requirements, Due Dates

Plan ideas for patterns 

Day 2-4: Students will create 20 different patterns on 1/2 index cards

Day 3: Art Link: Peer Critique feedback on cards 

Focus on Line and pattern

Day 4: 

Art Link: Have students draw their ideas for construction

Roll 5 Cards to begin construction on Day 5

Day 5-8: Students will roll and construct sculptures. 

Day 6: Peer critique on cards and sculpture progress. 

Continue making cards throughout. 

Students who work quickly could be asked to create additional patterns on Cards

Students who work slowly will be checked-on regularly with possible adaptations of fewer then 20 notecards. 

Last Day of Sculpture: 

Art Link: Self Critique: 

Describe, Analyze, Interpret and Evaluate. Draw on your notes and the rubric to complete for 10 points. 

Complete Rubric and turn in sculpture. 

Evaluation: successful for all engaged students and all abilities of students. Wonderful outcome

20 pattern minimum is accomplishable in the 3 days of studio time. 

Additive wooden sculpture with Barbara Spring

Lesson Objective 

Work with elements of art: Form, Shape, Color

Work with principles of Art: Balance 

Create a additive wooden sculpture in the style of Barbara Spring

Key Vocabulary: 

Additive: Is the process by which material is shaped and built up to create the desired image.

Achromatic:  Any color that lacks strong chromatic content is said to be unsaturated, achromatic, or near neutral. Pure achromatic colors include black, white and all grays; near neutrals include browns, tans, pastels and darker colors. Near neutrals can be of any hue or lightness.

Color Scheme: color scheme is the choice of colors used in design for a range of media. 

Assemblage: An assemblage is a sculpture constructed from found objects. Typically an assemblage does not disguise the original objects used, rather it either tries to show them in a new light, or forms a figurative sculpture from the collection of shapes.

Materials: 

Variety of wooden sticks

Craft Sticks

Tooth Picks

Coffee Stirrers

Wood chips

Brown craft crinkle

Glue:  white or wood

Focus Artist: 

Barbara Spring

Video for projection presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJcmv-3aUys

Project Requirements: 

Create a wooden cake in the style of Barbara spring using additive sculpture and assemblage. 

Assessment: 

Informal: Large group Oral Critique

Formal: Artist Statement

Formal: Grading final sculpture

CA STANDARDS: 

1.1 Identify and use the principles of design to discuss, analyze, and write about visual aspects in the environment and in works of art, including their own. 

1.4 Analyze and describe how the composition of a work of art is affected by the use of a particular principle of design.

2.1 Solve a visual arts problem that involves the effective use of the elements of art and the principles of design.

3.3 Identify and describe trends in the visual arts and discuss how the issues of time, place, and cultural influence are reflected in selected works of art.

4.1 Articulate how personal beliefs, cultural traditions, and current social, economic, and political contexts influence the interpretation of the meaning or message in a work of art.

4.5 Employ the conventions of art criticism in writing and speaking about works of art.

5.2 Create a work of art that communicates a cross-cultural or universal theme taken from literature or history.

Modifications: 

English Language Learner: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques, group activities to check for understanding

Special Needs: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques

Accelerated Learner: Expand on skills learned to create a unique project. 

Advanced art students will be asked to increase the difficulty of their final sculpture They will also be expected incorporate more details and principles into the final project

Scaffolding adaptations: 

Students will revisit Shape, Color and Form from the earlier learning. We will use similar visuals to refresh earlier learning.  Notes on Art history, Key Vocabulary and artists will be taken throughout discussions for added understanding. Creating sketchbook plans and Constructing final sculpture will be demo started in class using guided instruction. 

DIRECT INSTRUCTION:

Art Link: 

Small Group Critique Barbara Spring’s A La Carte 

Describe

Analyze

Interpret

Large Group Critique 

INTRODUCTION: Barbara Spring Video

OBJECTIVE: Create Wooden cake using various wood pieces for structure and decoration

Students will understand new vocabulary as is relates to visual art

Students will discover review the elements of Shape, color and Form. They look at the artwork of Barbara Spring and use additive and assemblage techniques to create cake form with neutral/achromatic color format 

Discussion:

ART HISTORY: Barbara Spring 

Barbara Spring (1916- 2011)  94 years old

An exceptional wood sculptor, 

Barbara Spring's career began in 1935 in her native England 

She studied at the Gravesend School of Art in Kent and the Central School of Art in London. 

Her exhibits in this country span from 1962 to present.

Actively worked at the studio she built in 1972 next to her home in Big Sur. 

"Barbara is Magic.” "She can give an ordinary face so much emotion." says Greg Hawthorne of the Hawthorne Gallery, where much of her work is exhibited. 

She pokes fun at the human frailties of her characters, their pettiness, self-importance and self-doubt

Spring's gentle sense of humor makes them sympathetically engaging. 

Her keen observation of human nature and genius for creating the subtlest nuances are further enhanced by punning titles like "Major Faupar" and "Upton O'Goode".

Watch Video

Key Vocabulary:

Additive: Is the process by which material is shaped and built up to create the desired image.

Achromatic:  Any color that lacks strong chromatic content is said to be unsaturated, achromatic, or near neutral. Pure achromatic colors include black, white and all grays; near neutrals include browns, tans, pastels and darker colors. Near neutrals can be of any hue or lightness.

Color Scheme: color scheme is the choice of colors used in design for a range of media. 

Assemblage: An assemblage is a sculpture constructed from found objects. Typically an assemblage does not disguise the original objects used, rather it either tries to show them in a new light, or forms a figurative sculpture from the collection of shapes.

Teacher Models 

Examples of vocabulary on the board throughout discussion 

Students take notes in their sketchbooks 

Teacher Monitors room throughout discussion

Check for Understanding: 

Monitor room during Pre-assessment in sketchbook

Monitor throughout discussion ensure comprehension and active note taking 

Various Activities Designed to check/enhance student comprehension

Activity: 

Using 24 craft sticks, students build triangle shape for cake base

Using various wood “toppings”

Student decorate the top of the cake using achromatic color palette. 

FINAL PROJECT: 

Rubric Project: Create Wooden cake using various wood pieces for structure and decoration

Students will understand new vocabulary as is relates to visual art

Students will discover review the elements of Shape, color and Form. They look at the artwork of Barbara Spring and use additive and assemblage techniques to create cake form with neutral/achromatic color format 

Students will be assessed on: 

Effort in Class: Studio, Daily Art Link and Discussions 

Additive wood construction precise and cake like. 

Use of a neutral color palette for construction and toppings How sculpture looks from ALL sides

Value Pulling with Mike Henderson

Mike Henderson, Upstairs (not in crocker) Each way is at Crocker…similar

Recap: Colorwheel

Discussion: 

Value:

How do we make colors lighter?

How do we make colors darker?

What is value?

What is shade? 

What is tint? 

Draw a value scale

Artist: 

Born in the small farming town of Marshall, Missouri, in 1944

Mike Henderson was supposed to work in the local factory with his father. 

His passion for art led him across the country to one of the first integrated art schools in the United States, the San Francisco Art Institute. 

He earned a B.F.A. in 1969 and an M.F.A. in 1970. 

Henderson has been teaching art and art history at the University of California at Davis ever since

He is considered a prominent figure among the second generation of Bay Area abstract painters.

Project: Create a Mike Henderson inspired Value piece by pulling paint

Step1: With the long side of a craft stick, pick up white and any pure color

Step2: Place it on your paper and pull it across to create a new color

Step3: allow the mixing to show, so you get many colors in each pull

Step4: try and create a rectangle with each pull

Step5: repeat the process with each of your pure colors with black and white

Use a paper towel to wipe craft stick between

Step6: feel free to break your stick to get new shapes with your pulls

Materials: 

White paint 

Black Paint

Pure colors of paint, primary and secondary for each student

Pulls: pop sticks, illustration board 

Large Card stock White 

Recycled Robots with Clayton Bailey

Two Day Project

Discussion: Form 

Sculpture

Robots

Artist: Clayton Bailey (1939-       )

Born 1939- Clayton G. Bailey is born in Antigo, Wisconsin .

1960- Inspired by the abstract expressionist work of Peter Voulkos, he begins to make ripped and torn ceramic forms, and begins a series of unique "pinch pots". 

Bailey receives a B.S. Degree in Art Education in January 1961, and continues in the Graduate Program. Littleton hires him as studio technician, and instructor of a beginning pottery class.

1962- Bailey receives an M.S. Degree in Art and Art Education. 

His students in ceramics are children aged 4 to 18 years old, and adults of all ages; and his classes meet six days of the week. 

The slogan, "Think Ugly" is painted on the wall of the ceramic shop by one of Bailey's students as a rationalization for the ugly sculptures they are making.

Bailey notes that "beauty" is an attribute of the familiar and the comfortable. The artist, he claims, should seek to discover the new and unusual, and should not strive for beauty.

He moves to Northern California in 1968.

1968-The Funk Art Festival is organized by Bailey and Coelho at U.S.D., Vermillion. California artists Roy DeForest, David Gilhooly, David and Maija Zack are the invited guests.

During the next decades, this toy collection will grow to many hundreds of battery operated space and robot toys.

He is a featured ceramic artist, along with Peter Voulkos, Toshiko Takaezu, and Paul Soldner, in the ABC-TV prime time special; "With These Hands; The American Craftsman", sponsored by the S.C. Johnson Co.

Roy DeForest coins the term "Nut Art", saying that "it has to do with phantasmagoric ideas and fantasies. 

Bailey and friends often meet at the Dairyville Cafe or at the Rainbow House in San Francisco 

He is a panelist for the California Arts Commission Fellowship Program.

For additional information: http://www.claytonbailey.com/

Project: using collected cans create a robot sculpture

Step1: find two matching can legs

Step2: find a body

Step3: Find a head

Step4: help students glue them together

AFTER ALLOWING BODY TO DRY OVERNIGHT: 

Step5: add fun hardware for eyes, hair, body parts (switches) shoes etc...

Materials: 

Recycled cans of all sizes

Clear Silicone glue (Home Depot)

Hardware from around the house

This project was inspired by Jane Hastings Robot artwork for more info on Jane visit her on pinterest: http://pinterest.com/jane_hastings/?d

Tooling Foil Masks with Folk Artists

Discussion: Mayan Masks

Pattern

Tin Art

Folk Artists

Folk Art Tin work, known in Mexico as hojalata, goes back to the 16th Century. Artists use natural, oxidized and brightly lacquered paints to create ornaments, nichos, mirrors, lanterns and other decorative pieces. Our interesting variety of tin work comes from Oaxaca where the artists use more natural and lacquered tin, and from San Miguel de Allende where oxidized tin is more popular.

The Maya occupied a vast area covering southeast Mexico and the Central American countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. Mayan culture began to develop in the Pre-Classic period, around 1000 B.C. and was at its heyday between 300 and 900 A.D. The Maya are well known for their writing, of which a great part can now be read, as well as for their advanced mathematics, astronomy and calendrical calculations.

Mayan masks had a wide variety of uses: 

Some of the most complex masks were created to adorn the faces of the dead.

The Mayan's wore masks during important events, including during battle.

Whatever the use of masks in battle was, today’s scholars are able to learn a lot about the Mayan civilization from surviving masks made by the Mayan people.

There were also masks that showed the faces of people. We know that some masks were used in wedding ceremonies, 

There were masks made to commemorate many births and deaths.

The Mayan's also used masks for entertainment.

The uses of masks by the Mayan people were as varied as the style of the masks themselves.

Tips for tooling Foil: 

Use dull pencils (we used colored pencils

Work on a pad of folded newspaper

Project create a two tear tooling foil sun mask 

Step1: On the first square, draw a new pattern on each of the four sides

Step2: cut the corners off the second square turning it into a circle

Step3: Think about what type of mask you are making, add eyes, nose, mouth, ears hair, etc. 

Step4: using sharpies color both of the tooling foil pieces

Step5: using a large bead hot glue the square pattern foil underneath the round, mask foil 

MATERIALS: 

2 sheets of 5”x 5” tooling foil

Dull pencils

Newspaper

Sharpie markers. 

Hot glue gun

Beads

Warm and Cool 3-D Watercolor Ships with Paul Klee

Upon Arrival: 

Students create 1/2 cool page of water color and salt

Students create whole warm page of red and oranges

Discussion: 

Balcutha

What is it? 

What does it look like? 

What are you expected to learn there? 

Why are you studying the Balcutha? 

Warm and cool colors

Warm colors make us? 

Cool Colors Make us? 

How would you draw this ship? 

Show many examples leading up to Paul Klee's Adventurers Ship

See the ship as shapes

What lines do you see?

What shapes do you see?

Geometric? Organic?

ARTIST: Paul Klee 

(1879 – 1940) 

Swiss painter of German nationality.

His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. 

Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it. 

His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes child-like perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. 

He and his friend, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art and architecture.

PROJECT: 

Step 1: using a pencil draw out the balcutha in shape and line, draw lightly

Step2: using small sharpie go over all of the outside line in black

Step3: add all details, windows, stripes, etc. 

Step3: using colored pencils add in the color on the ship

Step4: cut out your ship

Step 5: work with students to staple the ship onto the warm paper allowing it to 3-d off the page slightly

Step6: add your blue water on top of the ship to create the final 3-D illusion. 

Materials: 

Glue

Watercolor paper 1and 1/2 for each student

Liquid water color

Large brushes

Salt

Spray bottle

Colored pencils

Scissors

Thank you to Ms. Little for this fun art project for fourth grade students in California!!!

Form in Wire with Claire Falkenstein

blue tape on the left side of the picture has the students name for identification for upcoming art show. 

Discussion: Form

What is form? 

How is it different then a painting?

what is space?

Negative space?

Positive space?

Claire Falkenstein, 

Body Centered Cubic

on display at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA

Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997) 

American artist and sculptor

Through her long and prolific career, Claire explored every medium, from sculpture, drawings and paintings to prints, wallpaper and jewelry. 

An Oregon native who worked in Paris, France, the San Francisco Bay area and Venice, California. 

Falkenstein is best known for her monumental sculptures as well as her more intimately-scaled prints and jewelry. 

Falkenstein experimented endlessly, learning about metals by melting them in spoons over a kitchen stove. 

Soon, she was manipulating gold, silver, platinum, brass, copper and steel into necklaces, brooches, rings as well as large-scale sculpture.

Working in Italy in the late 1950's, she made one of her great discoveries, devising a way to virtually "fuse" glass and metal—two very different materials in behavior and chemistry—into single pieces. 

This combination of materials became the hallmark of her creative production.

While she was working small, Falkenstein was thinking big. 

Gradually abandoning traditional media like wood and clay, she began producing large-scale sculptures, fountains and other structures using innovative glass and metal techniques first explored in her highly experimental jewelry.

SAFETY discussion is necessary for this project. I gave the students 3 feet of wire. If students are too close together someone could get hurt. If you can not spread students out, coil up the wire while children work and remind them at all times to be safe.

Project: create a small wire sculpture with beads

Step1: know that you must be gentle while working with wire

Step2: decide on a shape, our artist used the shape of a square. YOu finished product should be no bigger then your fist

Step3: as you begin to twist and mold your wire into a shape remember your beads 

Step4: add in all beads into your sculpture 

Step5: add in a small colored wire as your last step

Materials:

Beads

Wire 3 feet, Dick Blick wire for students. 

1 Twistezze per child, Dick Blick