Fun at Artsplosure!!!

Ms. Garvey and Ms. Bethel checkin out the sculpture garden.

I hope you were able to make it out to Moore Square this weekend to check out Artsplosure. I visited the festival on Sunday with Ms. Garvey and Ms. Bethel, two of our wonderful first grade teachers. We checked out the Impressionist sculpture garden. It was cool to see these figures that were originally part of impressionist paintings turned into 3D, lifesize sculptures.

Me with Logan, the designer of the necklace.

There were lots of tents filled with artwork for sale. We looked at photography, paintings, wood carvings, pottery, and so much more! One of my favorite things to look at is the jewelry. There are so many different ways to make jewelry. Some people make it with beads that they've created themselves with glass, some people use found objects or metal that they cut and bend and hammer to create interesting and original designs. I bought a necklace that was actually designed by the artist's daughter, Logan, when she was only 5 years old! She drew out the design and picked out the words and her mother made it using metal. It just goes to show that you don't have to be a grown up to create wonderful artwork.

We also saw an awesome sand sculpture and watched as people worked together to help create a community art installation. Installation art is a genre of art that is created for a specific area and is often meant to change the way you see and understand the space that it is created in. Sometimes art installations are permanent and sometimes they are only meant to stay for a short amount of time.

Thanks for all the "Thank You's"

A big THANK YOU to all of the wonderful students, parents and PTA members at Banks Road. You all made me feel so wonderful with all of your cards, gifts, and flowers during teacher appreciation week! I am truly blessed to work at this school!

Artsplosure This Weekend!!!

What an exciting weekend we have coming up!!! We'll kick it off Friday night with the Banks Road Spring Carnival! I hope to see you there! I'll be in the dunking booth from 8-8:25pm, so come and see if you can knock me into the water!!

Artsplosure the Raleigh Arts Festival will be going on all weekend in downtown Raleigh at Moore's Square. This free festival includes artists selling their work from booths that surround the square. You will see painters, ceramic artists, potters, sculptors, jewelry makers, wood carvers, and much more. Even if you don't plan on buying anything from these artists you can still enjoy looking at their work. Take advantage of the opportunity to ask the artists questions about their work. Try asking them how they created it or why they created it. Ask them how they come up their ideas and what inspires them.

Throughout both Saturday and Sunday there will also be performers creating music of a variety of genres for you to enjoy. In the surrounding area you will also find art displays, an Impressionist Garden with life size sculptures and a sand sculptor. There will even be a stage completely dedicated to activities for kids! Click here to check out the Kidsplsure schedule.

I hope you will take advantage of this wonderful festival that we have right here in our city! Its fun for the whole family and has so much art to look at, listen to and enjoy. I hope to run into you there!

Second Grade Pinch Pot Creatures

Hallway display

Second Grade students learned about pinch pots, their history and how to make them. Pinch pots are created by inserting your thumb into a ball of clay and pinching the walls a little at a time as you turn the clay. We learned that pinching clay was a method of creating pottery before the invention of the potter's wheel but people still create pinch pots today. Just because pinch pots are simple and easy to make, it doesn't mean they have to be boring.

 We took our clay pots to the next level by turning them to create the mouths of our creatures. Students used their imaginations and creativity to create a monster or creature of their choosing. We had a range of creatures from silly to scary, alien to gremlin. To create the additions for making the arms, legs, eyes, etc students practiced rolling coils and pinching and pulling to manipulate the clay to make the forms they envisioned. They then learned to secure the additions by slipping and scoring the clay. After the creatures emerged from the kiln the students used acrylic paint to add color. To display them in the hallway the students created a background that they thought best illustrated where their creature would live.

I was very impressed by our second grade artists and the variety of creatures they created. Each creature had its own personality just like the wonderful second graders of Banks Road Elementary School.

Click here for ideas about creating pinch pots at home.

First Grade Still Life Paintings

First grade looked at work by artists like Vincent Van Gogh and Gustave Caillebotte to examine a style of painting called a still life. A still life is a work of art that shows common, everyday items such as flowers, fruit, glasses, and jewelry.
Students started by creating their table and background. We talked about creating texture by blending different colors with our brush strokes. We learned how to cut symmetrical shapes and used that technique to create our vases which we filled with painted flowers. To add a little
surprise to our still lifes we made some 3D flowers to spring off the page.
Throughout the project, each student was encouraged to choose their own colors and give their picture their own individual flair. Students used the classroom color wheels to help them pick colors that would contrast against each other or blend well together.

Creating Art with a Computer

Beverly Sills, a famous opera singer, once said, "Art is the signature of civilizations."

Just by looking at the artwork of a certain time period or place you can learn a lot about what is important to those people; their beliefs, their culture, the important events happening during that time, etc. You can also learn a little about the resources they had through the media with which they chose to make their art.

Some of the earliest examples of art that we can still look at today are the drawings done on cave walls such as in Lauscaux, France. These paintings often portray animals and hunting, both of which would have been very important to the survival of the people creating them.

Throughout history, as technology has changed and civilizations have changed, artists have continued to create art with the tools and materials available to them. One of the tools that has become popular in the art of today is the computer. There are many programs designed to create art on the computer. Some allow you to manipulate photography, others allow you to draw and paint, stamp, and design.

Using the classroom computers, students have had the opportunity to experiment with some of the free programs available on the internet for creating artwork using a computer. Here is some of what they have come up with.

Check out some of the links in the sidebar to the right to try creating your own computer art!

Just Dance and the Arts

Recently, the specialists collaborated on a project that brought together movement, visual art and music. We hooked up the Wii to the projector and used the huge screen that we made for the holiday program to project the game Just Dance 2.

We learned about how dancing is not only a fun way to get your heart pumping, making you healthier but a way that many cultures around the world, and throughout time, have expressed themselves. We also learned about how the design of the video game itself needs an artist or designer's eye to make it the best it can be.

The designers could have just made plain backgrounds with plain people to go with the music and dance and you still could have a good time playing the game. Instead, they brought in more by dressing the characters up in clothes that represent the time period, culture or subject of the song. The backgrounds also help to enhance our experience by providing us with landscapes of other places and even some very famous architecture such as St. Basil's Cathedral and the Taj Mahal.

Sometimes it is easy to forget how important art is in our lives, but if you stop for a second and look around, you will probably notice it all around you. It is in the music you listen to on your way to school or work, in the posters on your walls, the design of your video games. Throughout time art has been a way to add a little spice to life and a way for people to express their feelings and ideas. We can learn about different places, cultures, time periods and even the person we sit right next to everyday through the art they make. Go and leave your own mark on the world! Be creative! Go make some art!