Dress Me Up

This morning at the OKCMOA I had an eager group of toddlers join me for a fun class revolving around our new exhibit, Sketch to Screen: The Art of Hollywood Costume Design. It is a glorious exhibit filled with over 85 garments and accessories worn in Hollywood films that are on loan from private collectors and Hollywood Studios. IT IS AMAZING. It was a lot of fun to share with the children. In this class we gathered ideas from the exhibit and translated them to a collage person.

To begin we created a background for our costumed people. I gave the kids tag board and cut squares of construction paper. The used a glue stick to apply.





Next we visited the exhibit for inspiration and returned to create our little people. I had an assembly line of fabrics, felt, yarn, buttons, sequins and more for the kids to go through and take back to their workstation.



The kids made design choices, but the parents were on hand to help to cut the yarn and fabrics.





To finish we glued our people on our backgrounds and called it a day! Here are some of our finished projects.

1,2,3 Paint with me

Happy Birthday Jasper Johns!

One of the most important American artists of this century, we celebrate you today! This morning at the OKCMOA a great group of kids ages 3-5 joined me for an exciting artistic journey through paint and collage to celebrate Jasper Johns.

To begin I shared a little bit about Johns and we looked at examples from a few books. We created our own version of his numbers series and they turned out FANTASTIC.



We began at our first workstation. I had 11x14 paper set out along with newspaper scraps, glue sticks, paintbrushes, q-tips and paint palette.



To give us texture like Jasper Johns we used newspaper scraps. Rub your glue stick on your paper and apply newspaper randomly.





Then we used our cool color palette and covered our paper.







We moved to a second workstation to paint our numbers. I precut the numbers 1, 2 and 3 and laid them out on newspaper. Here we used warm paint palette plus white and used paint brushes and q-tips.











Then we glued our numbers on top to finish our masterpiece! While our pieces were drying we gathered beneath the glow of a Chihuly chandelier to read Chicka Chicka 123 by Lois Ehlert. It is a wonderful book all about numbers. We visited the galleries and returned to the class to pick clean our workspace and collect our artwork.

Close up of the newspaper under the paint.




You will need:
-11x14 student grade watercolor paper
-newspaper scraps plus newspaper to catch mess
-scrap white paper pre-cut into numbers
-green, blue, red, yellow, orange and white tempera paint
-brushes
-q-tips

Here are a few of our finished works!

Questions for Teaching Artists/Art Educators

I mentioned the Toolbox I went to and the small groups we broke into discussing the problems we might face in the classroom as art educators. I wanted to ask you...what are some of the biggest problems you run into? I'm sure you are not alone. It felt good to hear other people are having some of the same issues as I am. Maybe we can solve them together.

I also had a question for you. Do you ever draw or paint on a child's work? (note: I don't) and as a parent...would you say anything if you noticed this repeatedly happening with your child's work?

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