March Newsletter!

Studio 220 Newsletter: March 2011

Here is what is happening this month in the art studio:

Kindergarten artists continue to work on sculpture. We will begin by exploring how a sculpture is different from a drawing. We will then experiment with how a 2D material can be used for 3D work. Students will bend, fold, crumple and twist paper to create three-dimensional work.

First grade artists are finishing up their block collages inspired by Romare Bearden and Mari Takabayashi. Next, we will continue to explore how the city can inspire art making through printing. Students will use etching and collograph printing to create a cityscape. We will focus on how from a distance, buildings overlap and layer. Students will explore foreground, middle ground and background in their printmaking. We will look closely at Georgia O’Keeffe’s The Radiator Building to see how light and dark shapes create depth in a cityscape.

Second grade artists are working with clay! This is a favorite material for so many students. We will explore how artists create vessels with ceramics. Students will each create their own vessel using the coil method. We will learn about the very important method of attaching clay called scratching and scoring. Students will become familiar with the geometric period of ancient Greek ceramics when we begin to paint our own work. We will explore using different lines, shapes and patterns to make our work more interesting and add movement.

Second graders are also working with illustrator Melanie Hope Greenberg this month! She will be doing an author visit and will then spend two Mondays working with all second graders in the art studio. She will be sharing how her own neighborhood and city inspire her work and will collaborate with students to create a piece about Brooklyn.

Fourth graders are working with charcoal. We are exploring how we can use this drawing media to create a variety of values and textures, as well as create form. We have linked our unit with the fourth graders’ studies of colonial America. Students have been learning about what life was like for colonists and what they needed to survive. Taking these ideas, students will imagine that they have created their own new settlement in a realistic or fantasy place. We will look at the work of colonial cartographer John White and at the work of mapmakers who depict imaginary places. Students will each create a map of their own settlement. Each one will include the sources of food, water and shelter. They have begun sketching out their ideas and will soon create a large map with charcoal.

Fifth graders are finishing up their Op Art pieces and will begin working on one-point perspective. Students will take what they have learned about creating the illusion of space and begin to explore how artists create depth and realistic special relationships. We will look at a number of artists whose work illustrates this idea. Relying on what we have learned about foreground, middle ground and background, we will add one-point perspective to our drawing to create landscapes that show depth.