Adult Pottery Class

Over the Fall I taught an adult pottery class at the Orange Art Center, to four ladies.  Two of the women had worked before in clay and the other two had never.  Here are a few examples of each of their final products.

Coiled bowl and slab leaf pressed plate

Woven coil box

modern slab vase

thrown sgraffito cup

Starting January 23rd I will be teaching another Spring Teen/Adult Functional Pottery Class where students will learn all types of techniques for making Tea and Coffee sets including, cups, saucers, trays, creamer/pitchers, covered jars, tea pots, and utensils.

Realistic Color, Abstract Rhythm

Students progress again this week was very impressive! 5-8th graders at the Orange Art Center mixed acrylic to paint the colors they saw in real fall leaves, then drew organic rhythmic lines in the background.  Inspired by Cherie Roe Dirksen's style paintings.

Progressive Abstraction

So proud of my 5-7th grade students at the Orange Art Center tonight they have worked hard the past three classes on their progressive abstraction of an object. Each student depicted their chosen object through a range of materials; detailed pencil drawing, tonal watercolor, and abstract collage.

Here are the results

Symbolic Fans

Grant Middle School 3/10/2013

Day One:

8th Grade Girls practiced drawing traditional Indian symbols repeated and connected into a design that covers your paper.

board on the first day

I created two Mehndi symbol reference packets

-with common symbols and their meanings such as the cross, turtle, and diamond

-how to construct them

-variations on the symbols

girls practicing symbols

Day Two:

Students drew and cut a fan shape out of colored paper, then drew henna designs for protection on the front and giving on the back.

-the compass tool was used to trace and cut circles to make a fan shape

-fancy blade scissors were used to make an intricate edge.

-rulers were used for straight protection lines

Day Three:

Students continued adding symbols of defense to one side and giving to the other side of their fan and fill up the space well.

left side is giving, right is protection

example of space used well

good use of adapting symbols

Day Four:
Students traced their detailed designs with metallic paint.

board on day three of the project

independent careful worker

half traced 

girls shared pallets to conserve paint

student watered down paint
and applied layer over drawn details

student had good control over paint
and could follow fine lines

Final Day:
Students glued wooden sticks between both sides of their fan design to give it structure, then embellished the final fan with folds, ribbon, and rhinestones.

straight lines and symbols for protection

beads and rhinestones were added on the handle

curved lines and symbols for giving

rhinestones were added to accent areas in the fan design

all of the fans drying on the radiator 

Mixed Media Jewelry

At Grant Middle School on 3/7/13,

 6th graders combined metal and fiber in new ways to create a structured and functional piece of jewelry.

made by wrapping yarn around bent metal hair pins

Day One:
Students will bend hair pins to make closed shapes, which they will order into a pattern to be linked together.

supplies provided: ribbon, scissors, wire, needles, hair pins, and yarn

Day Two:
Students will knot, thread and wrap around through and hanging from metal shapes.

student wrapped all of her links in pink and red yarn and now is braiding yarn 

threading braid through wrapped linked pieces

Student's final bracelet

heart and diamond shaped links wrapped and hanging from ribbon

wire bangle, top linked hearts wrapped in pastel yarn, and wire base wrapped in pastel ribbons

the tool bow with curled ribbon hanging down adds extra dimension

this bracelet has a very rich feeling with thick yarn that is wrapped and wound tightly

student hand crotched a piece for around the neck

 

the weight of this piece is clearly centered and focused in the center

this necklace has a nice sense of asymmetry and is  simple clean and balanced

Store Front Design Project

8th grade students at Grant Middle School invented their own unique store front and turned it into 3D paper model with real store elements such as doors, windows, and signs. (2/7/13)

                                                     Instructional Boards for the First Day

Brainstorming sheet to get students thinking creatively 

about what type of store they could possibly come up with.

Each student filled one out before forming their 3-D model.

Some outside the box ideas from the first day:

Second Day

My example that I demoed parts of for every class.

Order of Procedures was especially important for this lesson.  

One class I did not emphasis this enough and a few students ran into trouble

 trying to add color after their store was already three dimensional.

Available Materials: colored pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, brainstorming sheets, brushes in cans of water (for applying glue) glue palettes, pencil sharpeners, and exact-o knife (that I came around with to help students with small hard to cut shapes.

A few students were so into their design and didn't get to finish in class

 so they came during their lunch to continue working.

Students experimented with folding and gluing paper flaps

 to get signs and elements of their store front to pop out.

 Two simple very successful store fronts that had a strong presence and concept behind their products and cliental.

In the last class a student who finished early decided it would be cool to arrange the stores as they were finished, making a store complex.  Which was continued on in the other classes. Setting the store fronts up together was a good reflection exercise to compare results and share interesting store concepts with each other.