The Line that Connects Us All

It has been a great start to the year! Our opening project that all of out students collaborated on is "The Line that Connects Us All." We are all unique but when we come together, at school, our lives touch and we are all connected.

Each student was asked to create an artwork that represents themselves. In order to make it collaborative, the students were asked to draw a line between 2 dots on their papers (3 inches up from the bottom). When placed directly side by side each student's art connects with all the other students' art! The line that runs through all of the artworks is "The Line that Connects us All." We are all unique but when we come together at school our lives touch and we are all connected.



Once students bring these home they can connect their artworks at home with their siblings' art and a new collaborative work is born. In this case, the line illustrates their family connection.

The book I used to kick off this project was Andrew Drew and Drew which I give a whole hearted 5 stars for creativity and artistic encouragement!

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

This year will be a BLAST!

Welcome back! It's been a great summer and now it's time to go back to school!
These murals were painted by Mrs. McManus's, Mrs. Laansma's ( Forest Grove Elementary) and Mrs. Rich's (Bauer Elementary) 2013-2014 classes!  We saved them over the summer and they are hanging and ready to welcome everyone back! Each student will add their own star to the mural on the first day of art!

Learning Goals: I can...

- Explain what a mural is

- Use art to create a welcoming environment

- Collaborate with other students on a group project

Thank You Volunteers!

A special thanks to all of our parents who came in and helped hang our artwork! You really help make our school look great! I know this takes a lot of time and sometimes great balancing skills!  You have not only helped make our school look great but also you've helped each student show off his or her artwork!  HUGE THANKS!

At the end of the year, Mrs. Laansma's class helped paint this mural to thank our volunteers at Forest Grove! Great job 2nd graders!

An Eagle with Many Colors

Every year the Forest Grove 5th grade class creates a piece of collaborative art to leave behind at our school. This year the 5^th grade class of 2013 created a piece in the style of artist Chuck Close.  Chuck Close is an artist that uses a grid technique to enlarge and paint portraits.  Using the same technique, 5^th graders enlarged the Hudsonville eagle logo and added colorful circles around the eagle.  

Chuck Close is an inspirational artist who has overcome exceptional difficulties in his life.  He was born with a neurological disorder called face blindness.  This disorder makes it so that he does not recognize faces, not even the faces of family members.  He also struggled with dyslexia in school.  Later in life, after becoming an artist, he lost the use of his legs and much of the movement in his arms.  In spite of it all, Chuck Close has become a hugely successful artist whose style has been borrowed and adapted by many artists.  Here is a video link about Chuck Close if you want to learn more!