Art News and Special Projects
I have dedicated this page for art news and special projects. You will find announcements for art exhibitions and student awards as well as examples of special projects I have done over the years with my students. The special projects include murals, collaborations, fundraisers and more!
Mural in progress!
Late last year art club primed the wall outside my art room, getting it ready for a mural. We are back at it! Here are some photos of art club working on it.
Art club just started priming the wall outside my art room. Check back here soon to see our progress! This project will be continued next year...
Painted Ceiling Tiles
Ceiling tiles are finished and up in the Library!
8th Graders are scrambling to get these ceiling tiles painted for the library before the end of the year!
Art show success! On May 14th I walked ALL of my classes over to see the high school art work that was on display for the exhibit. Albany Middle Schooler's work was exhibited in the library. It was a nice opportunity for students who would not be able to come after school to see the show during class time. Below are some photos from the main event.
I moved to California. This is my new home, Albany Middle School.
I have been here since the beginning of the 2014/15 school year and boy have I been busy! My partner got into a PHD program at UC Berkeley, so here we are! This school is AWESOME. I teach 7th and 8th grade only. I will be updating projects periodically,so keep checking in!
This is my new art room. It is the most beautiful art room I have ever had, and it is all mine! I have so much space to move around and utilize. I have some extra large projects I have been doing with my students and it is wonderful to have the space to do them in. Huge change form my last art room!
Annie Set is done!
Art club has been working really hard on the Annie Jr. set. Several students from my 7th and 8th grade classes helped too. Here is the finished product!
Art Exhibit at the Teen Center in Albany! Opening March 12th 2015
Albany Middle School and High School collaborated on a wonderful art opening on March 12th. There was live jazz music performed by High school students and lots of refreshments and beautiful art. Here a few photos from the event.
Hanson Park Skokie School collaboration
Each year Hanson Park School and Skokie School get together and do a wonderful art project together. It is a way to bring together students from very different backgrounds to connect, write letters and create art. We end the collaboration with a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. Every year I do this collaboration it gets better. Check out the photos of the totem poles the students made this year.
The final step for this project is to glue all the totem heads together. Updated photos coming soon!
Here is a video of last year's collaboration
Last year we worked on canvasses to create our circle themed artwork. Skokie school and Hanson Park partnered up to create these wonderful pieces. The YouTube video is quite long, but it shows how the students went from mod-podging tissue-paper circles to creating a circular zentangle design on top with sharpies.
Here is an example of the finished product.
We watched this video of the wonderful book "The Dot" as inspiration.
Mondrian mural is finished!
Oh Mondrian! I love teaching Mondrian to my students. It is a great way to introduce the primary colors and vertical/horizontal lines to little ones. It can also inspire you to do a mural on a (rather filthy) wall in your art room! This will be the second Mondrian inspired piece I have done. Check out the column I painted with students on my "about" page.
Keith Haring Mural
Keith Haring Mural is finished! I removed the ugly counter tops in my classroom and revealed years of dirt and dust behind them! I had to do something! The obvious choice was a Keith Haring mural. I made the mural with 8th graders after school. It was so much fun!
Chicago Teachers Union Art Achievement Award
One of my student's pieces was chosen to be displayed downtown in the Chicago Teachers Union office. She was one of 20 students chosen in all of Chicago Public Schools. We were invited downtown to a special award ceremony and even got our picture taken with Karen Lewis!
Houses for Haiti
After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, I wanted to do some sort of fundraiser with the students to raise awareness with them and to help the victims. While researching ideas I came across this ongoing project called Haiti Houses. It was started by two art teachers in Florida before the earthquake occurred. It was a perfect way to raise money, make a difference and get the students involved. We sold our little house magnets at the annual Fairview South Art Exhibition that I organized each year. We raised over $2,000 for a medical center located in the hardest hit area of Haiti. All the students became involved in this philanthropic effort and it was a huge success.
Painted Ceiling tiles
Before I left Fairview South I did a series of painted ceiling tiles. It started out as an after-school art club. We decided to go with famous artworks as our theme. They came out awesome. Each student choose a famous artwork to reproduce on a tile, and they were installed in the hallway outside of my art room. These are a couple examples. I was very lucky to have an administration that supported so many of my ideas for beautifying the school!
Later in the year I offered an elective for the 8th graders called "eight grade gifts" in which they would do some permanent art for the school before they graduated. Since the ceiling tiles project was such a hit, the school librarian asked me to make some for the library. We went with a story-book theme. Here are some pictures of the unfinished tiles. I let the students choose what book they wanted to depict. They could either do a book cover, or an image from the book. They were installed the following year.
Anti-Violence Mural
The anti-violence mural is one of the first murals that I worked on with students. This mural is located at Armstrong School of International Studies in the Rodgers Park Neighborhood of Chicago. I did my student teaching there back in 2004, and this was my final project. This mural is particularly exceptional because the students came up with all the images and text themselves. I did this with a self-contained middle-school class that was never main-streamed into art classes at the school. I wanted to reach out to them in particular and their teacher and administration were very supportive in my efforts. They allowed me to take time out of the students' day to work on the mural, which was located directly outside of their classroom. It was such a wonderful experience to see the changes in attitude and self-esteem many of these students made. They received overwhelming compliments from peers and staff members during this time-and felt, maybe for the first time, like an important part of the school community.