#9 Out Of The Box

Learning Areas: The Arts- creating and making, exploring and responding, Thinking- inquiry, creativity, Science- patterns, order and organisation, Communication- listening, viewing and responding
Materials:  refrigerator box (or similar), boxed assemblage art (if you have access to it. I am lucky to have some good pieces by an artist friend at my home) 

Welcome back!  This term we are continuing our big project called Because of me. One of the most exciting things about this project is that we are creating it together – we don’t really know what the final result is going to be like.

What do we know?

It is about you, the things you are interested in and the things that are important to you; the person you are now and all the possible things you could be in the future.

What else do we know?

We know that we are going to be connecting a few different artistic elements – can anyone remember some of the elements? Colour, texture, line…

Also we might use different forms and techniques like sculpture, painting, drawing, collage, installation and assemblage. Have any of you heard of assemblage?

Putting things in boxes

Assemblage is really just a fancy way of saying  "putting things together". It comes from the word assemble. 

*At this point one of the children calls out "it's like school assembly!" 
Maybe you and your family have bought something from a shop and had to build it yourself at home- that is assembling.

Artists assemble in lots of different ways. Some artists draw, paint or cut out pictures for their assemblages. Some artists gather objects.

I’d like to show you three special assemblages by an artist called Tim Klein.

Image Copyright Heather Marsh, 2013 Artwork by Tim Klein 

The artworks are sitting side-by-side on a table at just below face height for the children. They form a line and on by one they approach the art and spend some time looking at it. I have asked them to be super-observant. 

"Notice as many things as you can" I tell them. 

"You get bonus points for noticing relationships between the objects - by that I mean if you can find a connection of some kind between one object and another"

We talk about the things we saw and speculated about why the artist might have chosen those objects. One of the boys, Johnny, told me he noticed a nest, two cocoons and a cow with wings. He thought there might be a connection between them. We talked about change and metamorphosis. It was a great conversation. 

More Assemblage
Over here are some other pictures of assemblage work artists have done. I like this work by Rosalie Gascoigne. She only started exhibiting her art when she was already 57 years old. Can you see what she has used to make this work? 

Metropolis, 1999  Image copyright of the Art Gallery of New South Wales

One of the most famous assemblage artists was Joseph Cornell. A lot of people liked his assemblages in boxes so much they copied them.

Untitled (The Hotel Eden), 1945 National Gallery of Canada

A Story – My Cat Likes to Hide In Boxes

Here is a story by Eve Sutton and Illustrated by Lynley Dodd. You might already know the work of Lynley Dodd who wrote and illustrated the Hairy McLary books.

Book cover copyright Puffin Books, 1978 

Putting things in boxes

We are going to have a go next time we work together at making a small assemblage in a box.Today, though we are going to play with the idea of boxes and what can be done with them. We are going to keep working on our artistic concept.

A fridge box is a world of potential.. Image copyright Heather Marsh, 2013

Playing with a box

Here’s a box. We can see what it is, but what could it be?

Let’s play by taking turns around the circle and using our artists imaginations to transform this box.

What is it for?

What does it do?

Should we change the way the box sits- change it’s orientation?

We want to see how many ideas we can generate.

Working together to launch the magic boat Image Copyright Heather Marsh, 2013

I am definitely doing this activity again with kids. It is so much fun. They turned the box into a couch, swimming pool, running track, rocket, upside down sailing ship, lost dogs home, babies' playground... 
Afterwards we recorded our ideas in visual diaries so that we can build on them when we start making our large fridge box constructions. 
An observer for one of the kids with additional needs was in the class and thanked me afterwards saying it was one of the best classroom experiences she had ever witnessed. 

New Vocabulary Assemblage, orientation, relationships

#8 Blotches, Splotches and A Treasure Map of Your Mind

Learning Areas: The Arts- creating and making, exploring and responding, Thinking- inquiry, creativity, Science- patterns, order and organisation, Communication- listening, viewing and responding
Materials: acrylic paint, paint pots, small plastic spoons, paint brushes, A4 paper, visual diaries, felt-tipped pens, coloured pencils and crayons

We are going to start a project together that I am very excited about: So far it is called Because of me  (the name might change as we go along)

The project is going to be about you: who you are, the things you like and do and the ways in which you influence the world around you.

We will be working towards using all of the ideas and things you create to design big box constructions to play and perform in. First though, we need to gather ideas... 

The place everything gets connected

We are going to go on a fascinating journey today: exploring the most important tool an artist has: our brain!

Artist’s notice things, gather things, imagine and think. When the thoughts and gathered things and ideas are very strong, an artist may choose to bring them together to create some art. When you bring everything together in art and are ready to begin making we call it a concept.

Let me show you a piece of art I finished recently. I made this after we made our colour targets (#3 Blending Colour: Transforming Spaces) You can see I chose to add more elements to my colour blend. 

The (next) Big Thing, Copyright Heather Marsh, 2013

We have a conversation about what they notice.They talk about the warm and cool colours - how they notice sea creatures and airplanes on the cool side and a heart and "seed" on the warm side. 

Before we get further into our artistic concept for the box project, lets put another element of art into our artists toolbox: shape.

Now, I know you all know what a shape is – how many shapes can you describe for me? What about shapes that aren’t regular – as in, shapes that can’t easily be measured?

Investigating: Rorschach Blots

Here is a type of shape I find very interesting. It is called a Rorschach blot. Do you think that would be tricky to say? Let's have a go..

How do you think this shape was made? Do you think the blot makes a picture of something you can recognise? 
What about this one – what can you see?

The children start to name the things they see, at first slowly and then once they get going they suddenly see many many objects, animals and people in the blots. 

Notice that because each of you is unique you see different things. Part of the specialness of being you is that you offer us a unique perspective.

Making: Colourful Rorschach Blots 

Lets make some Rorschach blots. We are going to use A4 paper and paint. Instead of using a paintbrush, though, we are going to use teaspoons to put very small blobs of paint onto the page.

There are some instructions for making this work:

Fold your page in half. Put a few small blobs of paint only on one side, close to the middle or in the middle.

Fold your paper and squish the paint around.

Unfold it to see your blot! What does it look like? Can you see a picture in your blot? 

*The challenge for some children is following all the instructions. This is a great opportunity for learning and without shaming children who did things differently, we usually discuss what we have produced in terms of personal satisfaction, what worked and didn't work and what we would do differently next time. 

Exploring: Mind Maps 

While our Rorschach blots are drying, lets explore artistic concepts again. I find when I am thinking about making some art, it helps to gather my ideas all in the one place. Recently I started doing mind-maps – it is like a treasure map to your brain and your ideas and thoughts are the treasure. 

Here are some mind maps I found: 

By Kira, Grade 6, Ararat Primary School 

Acknowledgment: Coach Shev Gul  www.swimmtech.com

Making... Again! 

In your visual diary you are going to begin a mind map. We don’t have to finish it today – it might be something that you return to and add to over time.

I would like you to begin by putting a shape or a small picture in the middle of the page, which we will call your centre – the thinking, connecting, joining stuff up bit of you. It could be a drawing of your brain, or your heart – or a sparkly gemstone – whatever you like that represents you.

Coming out from the centre we are going to draw paths. Each path can be different – wriggly or straight, thick or thin, dotted, textures – however you like. At the end of each path is something about you- a special thing you like, something you do well, your family or favourite pet, something you are really interested in.

New Vocabulary artistic concept, Rorschach blots, mind map, unique, perspective 

#3 Blending Colour, Transforming Spaces

Learning Areas: The Arts- creating and making, exploring and responding, Thinking Processes - creativity, inquiry, reflection,  Inter-personal Learning, Science, Health and Physical Education- gross motor skills,manipulative skills, English -speaking and listening, vocabulary extension
Materials: water colour paints (high pigment), thick and medium brushes, large paint trays, at least two buckets of water, A3 sheets of paper of 130gsm or higher (otherwise they get really soggy!), scissors, bluetack, smocks 

Tuning in: Lets read!

You all know how much I love to begin with a good illustrated story book or two. 
We've been exploring colour - where it comes from, the moods and feelings it can evoke. Today we are going to play with blending and separating colours. 
I have a great book here which really illustrates separated colours: Mozzie and Midgie by Doug Macleod and illustrated by Sandy Okalyi 

We take our time to look at each page and the children share what they notice - the book has some very funny parts and a great message about being unique. 

Then we read a book that shows blending colour: Flood by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley. 
Flood was written to remember the devastating 2010-2011 Queensland floods (Australia). It has themes about loss, bravery, volunteering and community spirit. We notice how the watery, dripping use of water-colour is sympathetic with the book's themes and how the cool colours and earth tones give the book a sad, moody feeling. 

  
Creating and Making: Colour Targets

We are going to use water-colour paint and heavy paper to blend and separate colour.

Lets all turn out artist ears on to listen to the instructions.

On the floor in trays are water-colour paints in different colours. In the buckets are water to dip or wash your brush. The paint has a lot of pigment in it so you only need to use a little to get a good effect. 

We are going to start by choosing one colour of paint to make a circle on the paper. Then while that paint is still wet, we are going to paint another circle either just inside the first circle or just outside it – just like a target.  Use your artist eyes to discover new colours which are made when the colours blend.
Each page can fit about three or four targets. When you have filled a page, we are going to put them in the sun to dry.

Watercolour Targets Image Copyright Heather Marsh 2013

Primary colours: red, blue, yellow 

Secondary colours: orange, purple, green

I would like to acknowledge Heather Smith Jones' wonderful resource Water, Paper, Paint for the colour targets idea. I really recommend this book! http://heathersmithjones.com/water-paper-paint/

Technique: Working with water colour 

We are going to use some paint techniques today:

-Dipping your brush in water and wiping off

- Picking up the right amount of paint

- Washing between colours - not letting the colours mix on the brush and turn to brown

*I won't bore you with the details but basically I spend a good two minutes here talking the children through very explicit instructions: wetting their brush, wiping off just enough water so that the brush doesn't drip, picking up some pigment, washing the brush and wiping off in-between colours. I consider this important as listening to and being able to follow instructions is something preps and ones are really working on. 

Controlled Chaos...  *please note it's illegal to re-post images of children without parental permission

Exploring – Artist Feature: Yayoi Kusama 

I would like to introduce you to a special artist today. I find this artist very inspiring. Her name is Yayoi Kusama.

From a young age Yayoi saw the world in a different way – she could see dots everywhere. She uses a lot of colourful polka-dots in her work.

Yayoi mainly does paintings, sculptures and installation. Does anyone know what an installation is?

It is placing the artwork so that it takes up a space – not just on a wall. The idea is for the art to transform that space.  Installation art is 3 dimensional and can often include the audience (in that the audience can sometimes be inside the artwork if the art takes up a whole room). 

I show them images of some of Yayoi's artworks. They are very large and colourful. The children are fascinated by the 'Infinity Rooms' which use mirrors and illuminated colourful spheres to make it look as though  you are in an endless space filled with floating orbs. 

Image via ABC Radio National page - awaiting photo credit 

More Making: Our own installation 

Lets get our colour targets now and cut them out.

We are going to use them to transform a space – just like Yayoi Kusama.

Cut out the dots and put a dob of blue tack on the back of each one.

We are going to transform the alcove in the senior building. You can stick your dots anywhere you like - on the walls, the furniture, even the ceiling!

The teachers have a ladder and the children instruct us where to stick their colour targets (if they are too high for the children to reach themselves). 

Reflection

Lets talk about our work:

What did you notice about blending and separating colour?

What did you like about making an installation? How does it transform the space?

New Vocabulary Blend & Separate, pigment, installation, primary & secondary colours

Further Resources

Book: 21st century art for kids, Queensland Art Gallery 

http://www.australianartbooks.com.au/books/products/21st_century_art_for_kids