Another Exciting Art Residency Coming to the Art Room

During this year’s Artist in Residency, every student at Banks Road will get to experience working with a professional artist during art class.  January 21^st through 28^th  we will be hosting the environmental artist Bryant Holsenbeck. The students will participate in her “Weaving Like a Bird” residency where they will use recycled materials, string, yarn, old sheets etc to weave a wall sculpture that will be installed in the school.

We need everyone’s help collecting fabric for us to use in our artwork! Please send in scrap fabric, old sheets or curtains, ribbons, and yarn! The more colorful, the better! If you would like to contribute but don’t have these things lying around, gift cards to fabric stores like Joanne’s Fabric would be very helpful and much appreciated as well.  Also, keep a look out for information on ways to volunteer to help with this residency.

I will collect all contributions. Please send contributions to Attn: Ms. Stephenson whether you send it through your student or bring it in to the office. Thank you for your support of Banks Road Visual Arts!

For more information about Bryant Holsenbeck’s Residencies check out her web page at:

http://www.bryantholsenbeck.com/weave.html

Contact me with any questions- mstephenson@wcpss.net

 

Another year!!

Its another new year for the Banks Road Art Room, and we have some exciting new additions and changes.

Banks Road is going full force into implementing our new Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS). The art room is embracing this with the use of Compass Coins and Blazer Bucks. Classes earn Compass Coins at the end of class when they work as a team to meet our classroom expectations. Individual students are earning Blazer Bucks for their personal contributions to being Responsible, Respectful and Safe in the art room. The students can then use the Blazer Bucks that they earn in the classroom and anywhere around the school to purchase art from our NEW Art Store!

I've also added a daily warm-up to our class procedures. Each day, the students enter the classroom, find their seats, and immediately get started by looking at the "Warm-Up" section of the board. The warm-up will always consist of a picture of a piece of artwork, some information about that artwork and something for the students to do in relation to the artwork. Some days they may talk with their table or a partner, other days they may write or draw in response to a question or prompt pertaining to the work. This will help prepare our minds and eyes for looking at artwork, thinking about it, connecting it to other subjects, cultures, times, etc. and sharing our ideas with others.

I am looking forward to this year and seeing how our new additions will make the art room experience even more fun!

Art Room Expectations:

Respectful:

-Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

-Listen when others are talking

-Listen during instructions

-Speak constructively about other artists’ work

-Treat art supplies and tools with care

Responsible:

-Find your seat quickly

-Follow directions

-Put things back where they belong

-Clean up your work area

-Keep your table basket tidy

-Help keep our art studio/classroom organized and clean

Safe:

-Walk

- Clean up spills

-Use tools appropriately

-Follow sink safety rules

-Keep hands and feet to yourself

-Sit properly on your stool

Follow Banksart on Instagram

I am so excited to blog about and introduce the new Banks Road art classroom instagram that I have recently set up:

                       Banksart

Instagram is a free app for iphones, and ipads that is so much fun. Its a great way to practice your photography skills, as well as, try out some simple photo editing such as cropping your photo, or changing the contrast or filters on your photos.  I love to take pictures of things that I find interesting, whether they be activities, objects, or even just a super close-up of a texture or color, and then changing how my picture looks by upping the contrast or giving it a filter that makes it appear old or maybe one that brightens the colors, etc.

I have set up a classroom instagram that you can follow to see what is going on in the Banks Road Art Room. I will post pictures of students' finished work, work in-progress, art displays and interesting, art-related things going on in the Banks Road world.

To follow the Banks Road Art Room on instagram, you will need an instagram account yourself. Use your app store on your iphone or ipad to search for and install instagram on your device. Kids, that means get permission from your parents to use their account or have them help you set one up for yourself.

Remember that you must be responsible, respectful, and safe when using online apps.

Here's How:

-Be RESPONSIBLE- You are in charge of the actions that you take and decisions you make, so make sure you are taking and posting pictures that are appropriate. Remember other people can see these pictures, if you allow it, and they can report inappropriate photos. 
-Be RESPECTFUL- You can comment on other people's photos and on the photos that I post. Make sure your comments are respectful. When you type a comment, before you hit that "send" button, ask yourself "Is my comment respectful? Would I want someone to say this about my artwork? Does my comment use appropriate, positive language?". Make sure you can answer "yes" to all of those questions before you post your comment. Usually, if we follow the golden rule "Do to others as you would have them do to you." it'll keep us out of any trouble.
-Be SAFE- Use privacy settings to make sure that only the people you want to follow you on instagram can see the photos that you post. And make sure that you never include personal information such as addresses or phone numbers in your comments, photos or photo blurbs.

Once you have an instagram account, just search for Banksart and click the follow button to begin checking out the photos that we will post. I am looking forward to trying this out for the art room. I, once again, encourage all students and parents that decide to follow us to make sure that any comments are respectful and appropriate for all eyes.

Kindergarten Snowmen

So far in 2013, we’ve had a couple of delays and a couple of early releases due to some wintery weather but no real big snow. That hasn’t kept our Kindergarteners from building snowmen in the art room though.

We read the book All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle and figured out that we first need a big snow that covers the ground with LOTS of snowflakes. We made snow on our paper with white tempera paint and created a snowy texture on the ground by dabbing and pouncing our brushes. Second, we needed to “build” 3 snowballs; big, medium, and small or big, smaller, smallest.

When our snow and snowman was painted we had to think of all the details we needed to give our snowmen and snowwomen some personality. We learned how to cut multiples of the same shape by folding our paper and cutting all the layers at the same time to create our eyes, buttons and arms. We continued to practice our cutting, snipping and gluing skills by using paper from the scrap bin to create hats, scarves, and other accessories for our snowpeople.

The kids did a wonderful job creating unique, fun snowmen with plenty of detail and personality.

Silk Banner Residency-Day 5

The fifth and last day of the residency, we removed the banners from their frames. Mrs. Newell cut the small, accent banners away from the larger ones. 

Only about 90% of the dye adheres to the silk, which means that the remaining 10% needs to be rinsed out in order to keep it from ruining the banners if they ever were to get wet in the future.  When rinsing out the banners, it was important to keep them under cold, running water until all of the extra dye was out. If we stopped in the middle of this process, the colors could  become trapped in areas that we didn’t want them to go.

Though it may seem like we didn’t have a lot left to do on the last day, the students stayed busy helping rinse out the banners, dry them by slowly fanning them, and taking apart the stretcher frames.

 As we took turns completing these activities, Mrs. Newell recapped the process and vocabulary that went along with producing this type of art. We even learned about the process of how silk is made. Many students were surprised, and sometimes a little grossed out, to find that silk comes from a worm! Here is a time lapse video of a silk worm spinning it's silk cocoon.

 

Mrs. Robertshaw rinsing out one of the banners.

A big THANK YOU!!!!! goes out to our wonderful parent volunteers that came in to help during the residency! It was a joy to work with all of you! We couldn't have done it without you! 

 

If you are interested in creating silk banners at home, Mrs. Newell recommended the following website for purchasing kits to get you started. 

Dharmatrading.com

Slowly fanning the banners to help dry them.

Silk Banner Residency- Day 4

Mrs. Livengood and Mr. Richardson adding blue to the car wheels.

Day 4! More painting!!

The fourth day was all about getting the rest of the color on the banners. The students were becoming quite the experts on applying the colored dyes and did a great job finishing up on Thursday. It was fun to see the banners come to life, one by one, and a little bittersweet to see the last areas soak up the remaining colors. 

Parents, students and teachers stopped by the classroom throughout the day to see the banners as they were completed and were delighted with the results. Some of our Banks Road teachers and staff were even able to get in on the action and take part in adding a little color.  Our fifth graders should be very proud of the art that they will leave behind for future Trailblazers to enjoy!

 

Ms. Yanez's class working on finishing up their banner.

Leni Newell with one of our completed banners.

Silk Banners- Day 3

On day 3 of the banner residency, we started adding the color. The color is added using different colored procion-mx fiber reactive dyes. Once the dyes touch the silk, they start to spread through the fabric. This spreading occurs because of capillary action. Capillary action is the same thing that helps a tree pull water all the way from the ground to the leaves at the tippy-top of the branches. This is also a reason that it was very important for us to make sure we made our resist lines solid on day 2. The resist lines are the only things that keep a color from running into another section and blending with other colors.

Before we started painting, it was important to plan out where we wanted our colors to go. We colored a copy of our designs and also placed colored paper directly on the silk banners to get a feel for where to paint the dye. Color is one of our elements of art and we use it, along with our principles of design, to create an interesting and visually pleasing composition.

 

We wanted to make sure each banner could stand on its own, as well as work with the other banners to create a complete piece of art. When choosing where to place our colors, we wanted to make sure to repeat the colors several times throughout the banners . This helps to create unity, and balance across the composition. It can also create rhythm that carries the eye from one side of the artwork to the other. We also wanted to make sure to create contrast by placing light colors next to dark colors.

Contrast, Unity, Rhythm and Balance are all principles of design. If we did not have them, our artwork might look too heavy or too busy on one side and empty on the other. If every banner had different colors, they might not look like they belonged together, as a unified work of art. If we put too many light colors in one area or dark colors in one area, the shapes and lines of the design might not stand out, which could make the design confusing. 

Mrs. Graf getting in on the action. This is her orange helicopter.



The kids did a great job of applying the color to the artwork and helping to make good color placement choices.

Once again, we had some wonderful parent volunteers that came in to help. We couldn't have done this without them.