These are some pictures of our Intermediate drawing/painting class on Thursday's 6:30-8pm.
It was one of our most beautiful days of spring yet and our mixed media class Art Start was able to build outside. They didn't only build a castle from cardboard, they played dress up, got married and drank lemonade. It was beautiful!
We used appliance boxes that Dan from Lowes gladly donated to the arthouse. The students helped assemble the boxes together and made marks where they wanted windows and doors, and decorations. Molly (my assistant) and I cut them out with utility knives. The kids were a bit to young to use such a sharp tool. Although, this didn't stop them from showing us where they wanted the doggy door and intricate details.
Don't forget our royal wedding!
I love the way we can take this material (cardboard) and reuse it for play and art. We'll maybe reuse it 3 or 4 more times in other projects before it actually gets recycled.
One of our creative and distinctive students Gracie West giving me a salute.
Our King Paige Smucker peaking out the castle window.
This project brought the kids into character, they took over the class, it was their time to create, costume design, role play etc... It's the best part of my job, when I can give my students a project that sparks something inside their creative minds and they take over their own education.
Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial highlights the artist’s significant contribution to the field of American art and shows how Dial’s work speaks to the most pressing issues of our time—including thewar in Iraq, 9/11, and social issues like racism and homelessness. The exhibition presents 70 of Dial’s large-scale paintings, drawings and found-object sculptures, including 25 works on view for the first time. Spanning twenty years of his work as an artist, it is the most extensive showing of his art ever mounted.
Visit the Exhibition Microsite.
Grace Roberts is one of my youngest painting students at the Arthouse and very talented and interested in the arts. She came into the arthouse with eagerness to learn as much as she could about art, artists and specific art styles.
This is Grace's second Georgia O'Keeffe study... she almost finished this in an hour! Grace is a very fast and creative painter. She went step by step placing the flower in it's format and composition.
Then she added color washes over each area, giving the flower value and color.
This painting is very mono-chromatic, so she learned about mixing complementary colors and how if you add red to green you can get a shade of green, and if you mix the right amount and add a tint you can create a gray with a slight hue.
She's using acrylic paints which is nice for younger students because they are nontoxic and they also dry very fast.
Grace is ten years old, and I'm so excited for her as an artist and young person. She already has so much talent, and what she could do with that is beyond my imagination! So many possibilities...
We have two young children, maintaining the arthouse and our family life is very challenging. We can't keep business and family separate... because Art is our job and our life! Although, playing with our children and reading to them is very important to us also. Even though we may live at the arthouse, our upstairs we try to maintain as a living space for play, family time and relaxation... This photo was taken by Michelle Spitz. She is an amazing artist photography who has taken most of our family photos recently.
This class starts the 2nd week of June,
The coolest thing about this is your art will be traveling around town, real live unabashed public art! Wow, let's get the party started.
