Local

I attended the second installation of The Teaching Artist Toolbox put on by the Arts Council of Oklahoma City. We met at the City Arts Center (who has a really awesome exhibit right now by NYC artist Jason Hackenwerth).



He creates these awesome organic underwater animal like balloon sculptures. Just beautiful. You will never look at balloons the same. City Arts is offering free buses for schools. Give a call to see if you can arrange to share the exhibit with your classrooms. They even offer a teachers resource guide. I know I am going to have to take my boys and create a project around this. Will keep you posted. Visit his website. So inspiring!

The toolbox was productive. We heard from different organizations in the city that utilize teaching artists and educators to share their knowledge and skills with children in all sorts of settings.

Then we had an opportunity to break into small groups and share our strengths, weaknesses and how to solve those problems using our strengths as a group. I met new people and it was very productive. I also won a door prize. Bonus! It was an 80 pc. art set and a class pack of chalk. My boys are really pumped about the chalk.

The Oklahoma Arts Council had a lot of good info and I will be signing up for their conference in October... Art at Work: Creative Strategies and Proven Concepts Oct. 12 & 13 in Norman, OK.

I began my painting for The Children's Center and will share the progress soon.

Don't forget this weekend is ARTini! Did you buy your tickets yet???

Texture Tots

This class for toddlers ages 15-36 months was all about texture. To begin we gathered in a circle and read a book filled with objects to touch. Then I had several objects out for the children to hold (cotton balls, satin, foil, marbles, rocks, sponges, etc). We talked about how these objects felt and used descriptive words to label them.



We visited the gallery and returned to the classroom to create paintings with lots of lumps and bumps. I mixed tempera paints with sand and a little bit of cornstarch to thicken it up. What fun we had! This is a great sensory building technique that is a bit different than plain old finger paints.

We used craft sticks, combs, and forks to drag through our paint to give us extra texture! Fingers work great too!



For this hands on fun you will need:
-canvas paper to stand up to the weight of paint
-paint
-sand or cornstarch
-craft sticks and/or other objects to apply paint

Here are some of our works.

Mother's Day Brooches

Happy Mother's Day!

Today my class of kiddos ages 3-5 came in with the favorite men in their lives to make something very special for Mom. We designed a fabric brooch for Mom and pinned it to a hand made card. Very special indeed.



I focused on fabric/textiles and design of this brooch to revolve around the exciting new exhibit at the OKCMOA, Sketch to Screen: The Art of Hollywood Costume Design. This new exhibit has been years in the making and was put together specially by our curators specifically for the OKCMOA. If you are local, I encourage you to come see this unique new exhibit that will be up through the summer. It has something for everyone of all ages.



This took a bit of prep work. I pre-cut all of the pieces. I cut stiff green felt for the backing and several fabrics of different colors and textures in 3 sizes, the largest circle being the size of the green felt.



The kids worked with their dads to assemble their brooch. They made design choices by deciding which fabrics to use and what order to put them in. When they were fully assembled with fabric, the dads used a yarn needle to attach a medium size flower button through all the layers to the top. To the top I hot glued a little sparkling gem to cover the thread and hot glued a bar pin to the back.





When the brooch was finished we worked on a card to pin our brooch to. We used construction paper and crayons to decorate the card. They wrote their messages and pinned on their brooches and we left the class to visit the exhibit. Perfect little gift full of a lot of love!









For this project you will need:
Brooches:
-Stiff green felt for backing
-fabrics of different colors, textures and sizes.
-flower button
-gem
-needle and DMC thread
-bar bin
-hot glue
-scissors for trimming

For cards:
-construction paper in different colors
-glue stick
-construction paper crayons
-scissors

I know my shapes

In this fun class for ages 3-5 we talked about shapes. We read a book and hunted for shapes in the OKCMOA's 3rd floor gallery. We have a lot of great examples of geometric pieces that the children love to explore. I have taken children through a lot of exhibits and all through our permanent collection but the 3rd floor always seems to get them excited.

I think it's because of all of the easily recognized colors, shapes and lines. It connects quickly with them and their shorter attention span. It is immediate happiness as they declare the things they see and know.



First we applied foam shapes and other cutout papers on top of our student grade watercolor paper. If you get the sticker foam, do not use the adhesive or the "magic" will not happen.





This could also be a good project for discussing positive and negative space.

When we had all our shapes on paper we used the spray bottles. For this class I had premixed liquid watercolor and water in small spray bottles. We used red, yellow and blue to spray on our paper. Be sure you use bottles that can "mist". You don't want a hard spray.





After a visit to the galleries we return to take our paper and foam pieces off and see what sort of magic happened.



Cool! Wow!

You will need:
-student grade watercolor paper
-spray bottles that "mist"
-liquid watercolor
-paper or foam cut to shapes

Local

Things have not slowed down much around here but look what came in the mail.



The latest issue of Downtown Monthly and here I am for the Allied Arts, ARTini article. I had no idea it would be such a large picture. A bit shocking!

I was also delighted to see the latest copy of the OKCMOA's Magazine, Connect. There is a super full page article about Taking your child to an Art Museum with a really nice plug for my blog.



Thanks to both publications for their wonderful work.

I am beginning a new piece for Button Day. It is an exhibition celebrating the Children's Center.

My idea is a small still life. A bowl of sewing goodies-including of course, buttons as that is the criteria for the show. This is just an example for me to use for proportion. I will change up the colors and stuff but this is going to get me painting. I will keep you posted on the progress.



Be sure to save the date for ARTini. It is coming up quickly, Sat. May 15th.

I am also excited to be asked again to serve on the committee again for OVAC's biggest fundraiser, 12x12 which will be Sept. 25th. Mark it down now! Details to come.

Audubon Birds

With Spring full steam ahead it's hard not to notice the birds. For a class of children ages 3-5 we focused on birds from the artwork of John James Audubon.



I gathered the kids around to look at works by Audubon. We read a silly bird story, Bird, Bird, Bird!: A Chirping Chant. After that we listened to bird calls from an iPod App. We talked about birds and all of the parts that make up a bird.

Without specific instructions or restraints the children used pencil then marker to draw their own birds.



After that we used watercolors and watercolor pencils to add details.

You will need:
-watercolor paper
-pencil
-marker
-watercolors and brushes
-watercolor pencils

here of some of our works!

Celebrate Earth

I have enjoyed reading all of your artistic art projects that celebrated Earth Day. Here at our house we didn't get around to art projects but we did a huge project in the backyard that I thought I would share with you.



We made garden art. My husband built raised beds and we fenced them to keep our very large digging dog out. My children helped me plant seedlings and seeds. It was a real learning experience for them. They took notes and have been helping us water and weed. I can't wait to see what we grow. It's going to be a learning process for us all.



What did we plant? There are a total of 3 beds. The fenced beds have 6 kinds of lettuce, cabbage, radishes, 2 kinds of carrots, cucumbers, okra, onions, yellow squash, zucchini, several kinds of beans, peas and all sorts of herbs.



The other bed is filled with 6 tomato varieties, strawberries, red, green and yellow bell peppers, jalapenos, peppers, leeks and more onions along with other full sun herbs.





A fun book for gardening is Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. I think we might make some vegetable drawings this week. Stay tuned!