CLAY: MINI MONSTER MASKS
WHAT IS CLAY?Clay is very fine particles of dirt which floats in a stream or river and then sink to the bottom, where they press on each other and stick together. You can generally find clay along the banks of a river or stream. This occurs by the river pulling dirt down off mountains or hills and dropping in a quiet, still part of the water body.
What is also so cool about clay (besides that it is rather easy to find in Michigan) would be that it is squishy when it is wet, so you can make it any shape you like, and then it dries hard in the sun, fairly fast, as the water evaporates out of the clay. If you dry clay in the sun you can make it soft again just by throwing it in a bucket of water and waiting between one to three days. If you put your clay or sculpture in a fire, or in an oven (an oven for clay is called a kiln) and bake it to specific temperatures, the clay is even harder and it will not get soft again even if you put it in water for a long time. This is called firing. People first began to fire clay about 6000 BC. Over the course of history, clay has been used for many important reasons. For example: clay has been used to build houses making bricks and drying them in the sun. Sometimes the builders would fire the bricks to make them harder and more waterproof; generally they always fired their roof tiles, which had to be more waterproof than the walls. Potters (individuals you make pottery) use fired clay to make dishes, plates, cups, cook pots, and other functional tools for household use. Sculptors (artists who specialize in creating sculptures) use fired clay to create statues or other three-dimensional works of art which can range from busts, masks, figurines, abstract and non-objective works, etc. |
BEHOLD THE BOLD UMBRELLAPHANT - GRAND RAPIDS SYMPHONY
UP-CYCLE ART: MAGAZINE BOWL
5th grade artists are currently beginning work on their up-cycle art magazine bowls. Using pages from donated magazines, students will be carefully creating bowls from materials that are commonly thrown in the trash when they are no longer wanted or needed.
Steps to create an Magazine Up-cycled Bowl -- Step One: Fold magazine pages into strips for strength and consistency. Step Two: Roll magazine strips, tightly. Use scotch tape (invisible) to adhere strips to one another. Step Three: Repeat step two roughly 100 times or until desired size of bowl is met. (3 inches in diameter or larger.) Step Four: Form bowl. Slowly extend the magazine strips to the desired bowl height. Step Five: Apply two coats of Mod Podge with a foam brush to finish up-cycled art with a glossy seal. |
UNNATURAL LANDSCAPES
To begin 5th grade art, students are creating unnatural landscapes inspired by the artist Wolf Kahn. Wolf Kahn's artwork is known for his combination of realism and color field--his convergence of light and color has been described as combining pictorial landscapes and painterly abstraction.
For their first project, 5th grade artists have studied the horizon line, one-point perspective, vanishing points, foreground, middle-ground, and background, while sketching their landscape's outline. Once their outline drawings were finished, 5th graders used black oil pastels to thickly trace their pencil lines. To finish their landscapes students will use chalk pastels to apply color to their drawing paper in an unnatural, non-realistic style.
For their first project, 5th grade artists have studied the horizon line, one-point perspective, vanishing points, foreground, middle-ground, and background, while sketching their landscape's outline. Once their outline drawings were finished, 5th graders used black oil pastels to thickly trace their pencil lines. To finish their landscapes students will use chalk pastels to apply color to their drawing paper in an unnatural, non-realistic style.