Erika White's Classes: Learning Summary

Erika White’s Classes

ewhite@cssu.org 

We have had a great start to the year in the art room.  The middle school students have been working very hard to produce some great work. 

Alpa 6:  Students began the year working with a poem they had written in L.A.  They took a line from the poem to illustrate.  We made beautiful collage papers with a variety of painting and printing techniques.  Using these papers we illustrated their poem in collage.  Students wrote their line form the poem around the work to frame it.  We then worked on a printmaking project using trees as our theme.  Students planned a design, transferred it to a printing block and carved it out.  Different colored inks and paper were used for the printing.  

Holden 6: We began the year looking at trees for our inspiration.  After drawing trees we moved on to a sculpture project: wire trees.  Students bent, twisted, and formed wire into a trunk and branches using their hands and pliers.  We made paper beads to use along with glass beads to adorn the trees.  Most recently we have drawn intricate mandala designs focusing on pattern development.  Currently we are designing and carving a mandala design into a printing block. 

Winton 6: We connected with a social studies project to make collages in response to interviews the student conducted about 9/11.  We sketched, planed, made colorful collage papers then created our final collage.  Most recently we have drawn intricate mandala designs focusing on pattern development.  Currently we are designing and carving a mandala design into a printing block.  We will use colorful paper and inks to print these awesome designs.

Symphony 6 and 7:   We began by connecting with the book “Seed Folks” that students were reading in Language Arts.  Students had to pick a word that was an overarching theme from the book as the basis for their artwork.  Some of the words were: love, community, grows, diversity, beginnings.  We then carved these words into printing blocks paying careful attention to the way the word was written.  Students were asked to design their font to express their word.  We then printed with bright inks on a variety of papers.  Our next project was working with clay.  Using a coil method we created unique vessels.  We worked with high fire clay and glazes.