Our long-time partner Studio in a School recently finished two 14-week visual art residencies with our kindergarten and first grade classes with exhibits in our school’s auditorium. Every year, Studio in a School teaching artist Belinda Blum starts each residency by meeting with our teachers, talking through areas of focus and potential ties to the curriculum.
The kindergarten classes created self-portraits. Students began by learning what is a self-portrait, naming the parts of the face, and breaking the face down into basic shapes. Using mirrors, students closely observed their own faces and created their self-portrait drawings. They explored tempera paint using primary colors and white to mix secondary colors, tints, and their skin color. With these skills, students created a self-portrait painting. They then added to their portraits (on top of their heads!) a collage of an object that they like — their favorite hobbies or food or toys. Through the process of collage they learned about big and small shapes, layering, overlapping, and details. The art-making process, both painting and collage, required students to observe closely, sketch ideas, and learn about different mediums in order to create a painted self-portrait and representational collage.
In writing, kindergartners work on personal narrative. We start with what they know — themselves and their favorite things. Then, this year, they got to represent that in art, in different media, as well. They presented themselves to the world in verbal and non-verbal ways. The students also wrote about their creative process, the way they conceived and realized their paintings and collages. — Matthew Levy, Kindergarten teacher
It was exciting to see the children spend so many weeks working on their self-portrait tempera painting. They were so committed and invested in what they were doing from week to week. This is wonderful to see since a lot of children these days move so quickly from one thing to the next. I also thought putting the object of their favorite food, hobby or thing on their head was a new way to express in a self portrait what is important to them. — Belinda Blum, Teaching artist
The first grade classes decided to focus on landscapes. Students began by learning the meaning of texture and exploring this through various blind and observation drawing exercises. They used drawing pencils to create different types of lines and marks to draw what they felt and saw. Students explored these concepts and used the observational skills they honed to create texture with paintbrushes and other non-traditional painting tools like Q-tips and sticks. The landscape paintings that students created depicted a range of compositions, and they incorporated a variety of textures to show how grass, sand, or rocks might feel.
The creativity that this program offers my students is wonderful! I also notice that my students continue to use descriptive vocabulary well after Belinda leaves the classroom. This drawing and painting residency also connected beautifully to our science unit where we are studying solid and liquids. My students are also noticing, naming things, describing, and reflecting, amongst other things, which all connects back so wonderfully to what we are doing in our classrooms. — Sandy Long, 1st grade teacher
This year’s choice for the first grade to focus on texture proved to be rich in subject and experience. It connected so seamlessly with the first grade’s science curriculum overlapping in both vocabulary and utilizing their observation skills like scientists. As these young artists made blind drawings, used magnifying glasses to draw objects close-up and used non-traditional art tools like sticks, sponges, pine needles, cardboard and feathers to make their landscape paintings you could tell when they talked about their process that their understanding of what art making can be expanded. — Belinda Blum, Teaching artist
Photo credit to Nisha Nair