Chihuly Chandelier

This year fifth grade students learned about Chihuly and made sea-form bowls out of clay inspired by Chihuly.  To learn about the American glass artist Dale Chihuly check out this other blog post from when we made clay Chihuly bowls!

Each year, fifth grade students create a collaborative piece of art to donate to the school.  This year I decided to tackle the Chihuly Chandelier project with the kids! Here is a picture of one of Chihuly's glass chandeliers!

We started by coloring around 140 plastic bottles with permanent markers.  The kids were asked to design each bottle however they wanted as long as they were using only one color family:

Warm Colors: Red, yellow, orange, pink

or

Cool Colors: Blue, green, purple

After the bottles were colored, each class cut their bottles into spirals.  We started by "nipping" a hole at the bottom of the bottle and then spiral cutting up the side.  We cut off the bottoms and tossed them. If the spiral cut turned out too thick the kids went back and cut more parallel spirals which turned it into a double spiral... or more depending on how many spirals were cut! 

After cutting spirals we made 5 bottle strings grouped by color family.  We screwed the caps onto the sting to make connecting them easy!

I drilled holes at the top of a 4 foot PVC pipe for hanging...

I also drilled and stitched through some holes at the bottom of the pipe (kids helped with the stitching).

We tied a couple strands of 5 bottles to each level of pole string.  Once we got thought the first few stings on the pole we started simply tying the strings of 5 bottles around the entire diameter of the pole and pushed them down as we went until we had all the bottles attached!

I just had to post about this before it hangs in its final place!! Great work kids!!

Learning Goals: I can...

- Work collaboratively with others to create art for my school community 

- Create art in the style of Chihuly

- Created recycled art

- Use a warm or cool color scheme

Chihuly Clay Bowls

One of the 5th grade artists that we now study in Hudsonville Public Schools is Dale Chihuly a living American glass artist.  It is fun for all of us to look at his unique artwork!  Students learned about the different styles of art he creates such as: Chandeliers, Floats, Macchias, Seaforms and Baskets.  Here is the artist's website so that you can take a peak at his art! 

Classes even got to see a video of him creating art collaboratively with his team!  

The kids started by using a thick dowel rod to roll slabs of clay.  Then we traced the rim of some foam bowls to create smooth circles out of the clay.  We gently put these circular slabs into the back of the bowl and gently used it like a slump mold taking the shape of the bowl.  

Then we gently set the clay into the the bowl using the bowl like a press mold.  We added ripples around the edge of the clay bowls to make them like Chihuly's Macchias and Seaforms. 

After letting them dry we painted them with our best acrylic paint. 

We have another collaborative Chihuly surprise coming soon!!!

Here is a video hit from our very own Fredrick Meijer Gardens about what we are up to!

Learning Goals: I can...
- Tell about Chihuly
- Tell about clay
- Use a mold to create a clay form
- Paint carefully being aware not to mix combinations of all three primary colors together.