Fantastic teacher workshop!

I just attended a fantastic teacher workshop today and learn very interesting art activities to do with my classes. The Cheekwood and Frist Center staff got together to co-host a Chihuly workshop. This was a day and a half (well, a day and 2 hours) long workshop that was at both museums. We started out at Cheekwood for a tour of the nighttime Chihuly exhibit. Then we reconvened at Cheekwood this morning, toured the mansion, and then trekked over to the Frist center to see that exhibit and work on hands-on art activities. One of the really interesting projects utilized acrylic gloss medium and acrylic paint. The gloss medium and paint are mixed together (the less paint you use, the more transparent the finished project will be) and poured out on parchment paper or lamination film and a cookie sheet. It is allowed to dry completely, and then it could be cut up and wrapped around objects or attached to itself. The gloss medium sticks to windows and plastic without the aid of glue.

Embroidery floss can be added into the wet gloss medium to simulate Chihuly's baskets that use strings of glass to mimic the woven designs of Navaho blankets. I can't wait to try this with my class.

Cheekwood Topiaries!

One of the classes I taught this summer at Cheekwood was a class called Wild World of Art for 10-12 year olds. I had a great class, and they worked really hard this week. One of their favorite projects was the topiary project that I found on the Dick Blick website. We used a wire mesh and wire to sculpt the form of the topiary. Next, the students glued squares of tissue paper to the wire form. When the form is covered with tissue paper, plaster was poured into terra cotta pots and a wooden dowel rod was placed into the plaster before it had set. Using wire and hot glue, the tissue paper covered form was attached to the dowel rod (after plaster set of course) and brown string is then wrapped around the dowel in order to simulate wood bark. When we were finished, the students were able to take their topiaries outside and choose a place in the gardens at Cheekwood to "install" their topiaries, and take pictures.

http://www.dickblick.com/lesson-plans/tissue-topiary/

Now Featuring: Jewelry!

I have finally gotten around to posting some images from my jewelry class at Cheekwood. I have been very busy with camps this summer, with five half day, week long camps at Cheekwood, and two week long camps for the school district, I feel like I haven't even had time to breathe! The pictures below show the sculpey pins that are based on some of the Chihuly work that is featured at Cheekwood, specifically the Sun sculpture that is on the lawn of the mansion. The last picture is a paper bead that was created by a student.

Summer Art Camps!

Well, I am back from my vacation, and now starts the art camps. I am very busy this summer with art camps, and will be taking a ton of pics to show off our work. My first camp starts on Monday at Cheekwood. I am teaching a class called Simply Charming Jewelry for 7-9 year olds. It will be exciting, we will be creating paper, sculpey and friendly plastic beads along with a variety of other projects. I will post pics at the end of the week! (well, I will try to at least!)

Summer Camps...time to prepare!

So, even though school is out for MNPS students, I am preparing to teach a variety of summer art camps. A local museum and botanical garden, Cheekwood, is celebrating it's 50th anniversary in a big way. Working in conjunction with the Frist Center and the Nashville Symphony, a large Chihuly exhibition is being held at both Cheekwood and the Frist, while the Nashville Symphony performed Bluebeard's Castle using sets designed and created by Chihuly. I got to see the symphony, and it was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! Chihuly is one of my favorite artists, and I, of course an so excited to use this opportunity in my summer camps. I am teaching 6 different camps at Cheekwood, which means that my students can have some hands "off" (after all, we can't touch the art) experience with Chihuly. I am also teaching at Art-al-Sol, a 2 week long summer art camp provided by MNPS. There are 2 sessions, each a week long for students 8-13 years old. Of course, I am planning Art-al-Sol around Chihuly, and found an amazing wealth of lessons online to incoporate in the camp. I found a couple of great lessons at http://www.dickblick.com/ including this one using dura-lar, hot water and Vitrea 160 paint. http://cdn.dickblick.com/lessonplans/classroom-chihuly/classroom-chihuly-chihuly.pdf


This one is so easy! I cut three organic shapes out of the dura-lar, one large and two small. Then, I bent and curled the plastic into very organic shapes, and dunked it into boiling water, which caused the plastic to retain the shape I had bent it into. After drying off the plastic, I painted it with the vitrea 160, a glass paint that can be baked onto glass ware for a permanent finish. With the dura-lar however, you cannot bake it, just let it dry. I can't wait until the kids try it!