Art Club - 9/12

This week in Art Club we sanded off some rough edges on our ceramic project greenware to get it ready for bisque firing. Then we tried our hand at some leather tooling. It got very noisy with all the mallets hammering at once. First we dampened the leather pieces and after demonstration, students experimented with using our leather stamps to create designs. Many of the finished pieces went straight home but a few remained for me to snap a pic. I'll show how the leather can be stained next week for those who want to continue working with leather.

Solar Eclipse Paintings

Students created a Solar Eclipse inspired painting in the style of Amate Mexican Bark paintings and Huichol Mexican yarn paintings. Each student wrote a short poem to accompany their work. They chose to write their poems as either a Haiku, Cinquain, Limerick or Free Style poem. Once the paintings were finished and hung on the wall, students participated in the evaluation process that gave them a chance to show how well they could use art vocabulary to make a statement.

Art Club Ceramics

In Art Club we used bits and bobs of natural flora (plants). Students formed a small slab of clay. pressed their plants into the clay surface and draped the slabs over a newspaper form to give it a curve. Here is the finished first step. When the clay dries it will be "bisque" fired in a ceramic kiln. During firing, the plant materials will burn away leaving only their impressions. Stay tuned for pictures as we complete this project.

Art Club First Meeting

After reviewing some of the nitty gritty info like having a FNSBSD club activity form completed and on file, we dove right into some paint, hands first.

Percent For Art Opportunity For Students

Eunice Kim, one of the Percent For Art artists creating public art for our new Ryan School space, visited the 4th period art class and left us with information about an opportunity for Ryan students to contribute to her installation.  Students are invited to submit up to 5 photographs for consideration, that show life in Fairbanks and Alaska. Student photographers will have their name displayed with their images if chosen. Ms. Kim stressed that students pay attention to using settings on their digital devices that will insure they capture images using the highest resolution possible. She provided instructions for taking and sending photos to her. The public art piece in the Ryan Library Loft will be titled "Wonder Matrix". In addition to the high resolution color photos there will be action verbs included, that students in other classes voted on. A sample list of possible action verbs were presented to students to work from, as well as additional action verbs students thought should be added. Images and verbs together will create a thoughtful collage that represents our lives in Fairbanks, Alaska and as members of the Ryan Middle School family.

Welcome to Art Club

Ryan Art Club will meet once a week on Tuesdays from 4:15-5:15 during first semester. August 28th is an organizational meeting where I'll share the art club letter home to parents/guardians. An after school activity form must be on file with the school and reliable transportation is a must since there are no school buses provided for return home at 5:15. There is no fee for participation. I look forward to sharing this wonderful artful experience with our Ryan artists!

Welcome to First Semester

We have completed the first full week in the Ryan Middle School art room. My syllabus has gone out to parents/guardians and an introductory project has been completed. This portfolio cover design project takes students through the start to finish process for a project in the art room. Since it will be a 'project of choice', not all students may have chosen to fully complete this art project. For those students who did complete it, they have turned in their first of four required projects of choice. Here are some of the examples.