The REAL StudioMaury

When I teach art to Maury’s 4th and 5th graders, I feel like I am teaching at the college level. The way these students know how to navigate the art studio, manipulate challenging tools and media, discuss complex subject matter and collaborate with their peers is truly a sight to behold. I can trust these students with the most arduous tasks, complicated clean ups, and contemplative subject matter. When we are deep into art making for our mere 45 minutes a week, there are moving pieces happening all at once, yet there is a method to the madness, a beauty in the chaos, and an energy required by those who create truly amazing work.

Allow me to walk you through the step by step process of our latest accomplishment: Dia de los Muertos relief prints inspired by the work of Mexican artist, Jose Guadalupe Posada, with tools and materials funded by the generous donations of strangers, friends and community members on Donorschoose.org (I still have a smock project in need of donations if readers out there have any holiday give left in them, check us out!).

Posada was one of the first artists to popularize skull/skeleton imagery and he did so by carving his politically charged block prints from wood with sharp carving tools. In relief printmaking, the artist cuts away what they do not want to print. The print is made from what is left of the original surface. The image is transferred by rubbing the backside of the paper after it is placed face-down on the fully inked block.

We watched this video to insure that we understood each step of our process before beginning.

After reading up on the Latin American celebration of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, and the significance of the holiday and many of its iconic imagery such as skulls, marigolds, and skeletons, our artists worked hard to design a skull that used symbols to represent their own personalities.

We looked at traditional and contemporary Day of the Dead designs to inspire our own original work.

Our sketchbooks were the perfect place to store written and visual information.

Once we were satisfied with our sketches, and our contour lines were drawn heavily so that the loose graphite would adhere to our rubber block during the transfer process, we were ready to take our original sketch and create an exact replica in reverse. This is a great trick for young artists to learn so that they can reproduce work from an original sketch without frustration and painstakingly trying to redraw their previously successful drawing exactly.

All you have to do is place your graphite sketch face down on a surface, in our case, our rubber printing block, and firmly cover the entire back of the image in graphite. The pressure from the rubbing process lets the original image to transfer, or create a print, onto the desired surface. 

Issac was able to create a very successful transfer of his detailed drawing. Notice how he chose to create a skull in the shape of a baseball mitt with baseball eyes! So creative!

Another great example of the transfer process in action

The Batman mouth is brilliant, not to mention the basketball eyes, painter’s palate nose and pencil eyebrows! 

I love when students take huge risks in the creation of their artwork. A baseball diamond shaped skull is such a clever way of incorporating the prompt into his design.

Next, it was time for carving! Carving or gouging, is how you remove the pieces the artist does not intend to print. Everything that is carved away will not be touched by the ink during the inking process. Students had to think in reverse to identify which parts of their design would be seen in positive space and which would become negative or absent from their block.

Safety is the biggest concern during this step. These tools are sharp enough to carve wood and can easily slip during carving and do some serious damage to tiny fingers. Asha is demonstrating the perfect carving technique! ALL fingers should be behind the blade in case the tool slips or gets caught in the rubber.

The inking process is when we begin to see the fruits of our labor. We used brayers to ink the surface of the rubber block. It took much trial and error to figure out just how much ink was needed to pull a winning print. So much of the printmaking process is finding that balance and it was different for everyone depending on how deep one carved, how wide the gouges were, etc.

Then you must line your paper up just right. Once the paper is laid down, it cannot be readjusted. This artist used a pair of scissors to apply even pressure to his print.

Each student pulled ~30 prints. Each print that is made is called an edition. Editing is a huge part of printmaking. Students had to go back and select which prints were most successful and could be used in their final piece. The fun thing about printmaking is that you can create an unlimited number of prints from the same block and use your discarded editions to trade with friends!

This is how an art studio should look. Busy, productive, engaging!

Factory efficiency!

I love it!

These artists have narrowed down their 2 best black and white prints and their 2 best colored prints and are assembling their final composition.

These works of art by Maury’s oldest students will be on display on the first floor of the East building after break. Please enjoy them, take time to look closely, and congratulate a 4th or 5th grader if you see them on their dedicated work. The finished pieces are truly impressive.

REMINDER: Pop Art Family Day for 4th and 5th Grade!

Look Mickey, 1961, Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Art, Roy Lichtenstein

Art Around the Corner, Maury Elementary School, and Orr Elementary School invite you and your family to Pop Art Family Day!

Where: National Gallery of Art

When: Saturday, November 10, 2012

9:30 am-1:00 pm

Bus will be leaving from Maury promptly at 9:30 am! Don’t be late!

Maury families are so lucky because this Saturday at the gallery has many treats in store for us. All Art Around the Corner participants and their families can look forward to viewing an original children’s play, taking a gallery tour of the brand new Pop Art show featuring the work of artist Roy Lichtenstein, and eating a delicious lunch with our amazing gallery teachers from the NGA! I even heard there will be an awesome art prize for those in attendance!

I know I can’t wait! See you there!

Student Art Night a la Mode!

What else can be said that hasn’t already been stated about the fabulous student art night that took place throughout the halls of Maury Elementary School a few short weeks ago? The culminating event with our fantastic partners at the National Gallery of Art only proved further why collaboration among schools and institutions such as the National Gallery are so important. The ladies of the gallery have showered our students with the most quality, rigorous and entertaining art education imaginable. As an art educator myself, I can vouch for how lucky and unique an opportunity our students get to be able to experience a world class art education with one of the most esteemed art museums in the world.

Jeff Hopkins, a visiting artist from New York, put on a wildly entertaining and interactive performance summing up our student’s knowledge of the many artists and art styles introduced throughout our tenure with the Gallery.

My favorite part of the evening, apart from the dessert buffet and model magic, was watching parents learn from their children. Students have become so fluent in the ways of the museum that their knowledge far surpasses that of the average person. Families were so eager to soak up the stories and facts our students had to share. The level of engagement from everyone involved was at an all time high.

I loved seeing the faces of our third graders, knowing that next year, the beautiful gallery of work that hung before them would be theirs to share with the rest of the school.

Until next year, keep visiting the enlightening museums that DC has to offer and check out many of the free education programs out there.

Still Life: Unfortunately, A motto I’ve Been Living By…

With the dawn of our fifth grade Still Life unit upon us, I have unfortunately interpreted the theme all too literally, and taken to living the “still life”, from bed. I thought I was invincible, but I have finally fallen victim to the germs that saturate an elementary school in winter.

This week started off on the right foot, despite the sickly turn it took. My first 3 classes of the week scored perfect 4s on Positive Paws (way to go Cooper, Mallaney, and Scott)! Behavior and productivity were at an all time high and many new and exciting art units began.

Fifth grade, for instance, has begun a hard-core still life unit with a strong focus on value and contrast. We have an all white still life set up in the middle of the studio, with an industrial strength spot light to cast highlights and shadows on our motionless objects.

Monday was our pre-assessment day. Students drew as best they could without any prompting. Over the weeks, I will teach them a few tricks of the trade and re-assess their progress post unit. As was the case with 3rd grade, I think these 5th graders will be pleased to see their drawing improve with a little coaching. This is my version of the DC CAS–I have to get these kids ready for middle school art (a little less pressure, a lot more fun).

5th Grade: Heavy Metal Heroes!

Our Nevelson Boxes are dazzling the hall between the East and West wing.

So proud of these 3D masterpieces. Truly as trash to treasure transformation!

CAUTION: HIGHLY METALLIC!!

Assembling our masterpieces out of recycled objects donated by our thoughtful Maury families. Thanks everyone!

5th Grade has been rocking out on their Louise Nevelson sculptures. Wow! From their early beginnings as donated shoe boxes, to assemblages full of plastic cups, paper towel rolls, egg cartons, Altoids tins and Styrofoam balls, these found object sculptures have really undergone an artistic transformation. True to Nevelson’s unique style of creating art, we gathered discarded objects, complied them anew to create 3D compositions of interest, and have begun spray painting– yes, you heard correct–spray painting our finished works in metallic gold! Since Nevelson only painted her primarily wooden boxes in monochromatic color schemes of white, black, or gold, we decided to follow suit. We made sure to take the fumes outside, covered our faces with masks, and donned latex gloves to protect against the stubborn paint and fumes. The kids were naturals. They handled the new material responsibly and proved that there is nothing they can’t handle. Look for the installation of our individual boxes into one collaborative wall sculpture in a hallway near you soon!

Getting creative with our everyday materials

Students found ways to really “think outside of the box” all while containing their unique ideas “inside the box”

Bring on the gold! We’ve really lucked out with the warm weather lately!

Great technique!

Showing us the way

Let me tell you about the picture up above. It’s a picture my parents took of me with Anthony Vindel as they visited me at Maury for the first time a few weeks ago. The reason my parents were able to meet Anthony and capture such a  great shot of us together was because Anthony was the kind of student who devoured knowledge. Some of you may recall the bulletin board of PreK work I had outside the studio for a while. On that board, were a series of questions with flaps asking viewers to interact with the display. One of these questions asked viewers to come up with a name for a funky line I had drawn. As you lifted the flap, the message below read, “Come inside and ask Ms. Bomba what she would name this line.” Of the 300+ students at Maury, the parents and the faculty, Anthony Vindel was the ONLY person who came into my room and inquired. “Ms. Bomba,” he asked, right in front of my parents. “What would you name that line out there on your board?” I told him. He shrugged his shoulders, had me follow him into the hall, and proceeded to tell me what he would have named it. We then discussed the information on the board. I told him about Frank Lloyd Wright and he expressed his opinions about Van Gogh. As a first year teacher, I cannot tell you how meaningful it was for me to have a student take learning so seriously. Anthony was always the one asking to bring home supplies to practice with or questioning how things worked. I will take his spirit, his thirst for knowledge, and his curiosity with me forever. I will encourage other students to learn from Anthony’s approach to education and never will I forget the gift of knowing him, however short, and how much he helped me confirm that teaching is the job for me.

A unique tribute to Anthony by his good friend, Montana

One of the most dynamic student’s I’ve ever taught–Anthony was an artist, a scholar, an athlete, and a friend. Montana does such a nice job of illustrating the dynamic layers of his friend’s unique mind. Montana said to me, “This is Anthony’s brain. These are all the layers and colors inside his head. This is what he was all about.”

The art studio was a favorite place of Anthony’s. The 5th graders and I used our studio time on Monday to write down and illustrate our memories of him. Some students created books full of anecdotes for Anthony’s family while others folded his favorite origami figures and paper footballs to express his playful side.

During After School, the 3rd and 4th graders came to the studio to create a handful of cheerful bookmarks for Anthony’s funeral service. Because Anthony was such an avid reader and lover of books, the page holders seemed like the perfect way for his family to nestle his memory into their personal thoughts and prayers. Mrs. Albert-Garvey delivered our small gifts to his mother the night before his service and I was told that she was very moved by the gesture. In the midst of all her pain, never once has she stopped thinking about Anthony’s friends and teachers. She has told us how important it is to her that we all focus all our love and prayers on our students so that they may remain strong, united, focused and curious students. We can most certainly do that for her, and for Anthony. Let’s hope that the Maury family will never have to experience such a tragic loss again. Anthony will surely be missed but not forgotten.

Even art teachers get the urge to make art

This is a snowy picture of my family’s house back in Chapel Hill, NC during Christmas time

The concept of home is very important to me. I like to make the spaces I inhabit feel comfortable and inspiring. I’ll be honest, I spend a lot of time in Studiomaury and sometimes it feels like my second home. Although most of the time I’m busy prepping student projects, researching, creating demos, or lesson planning, I do occasionally slip into my own world and create art for me.

A thoughtful parent dropped off an old desk calendar full of 365 stunning works of art throughout history. She thought I may be able to do something with them. She probably intended that I apply them to student work, but I was so fond of the glossy images that I spent most of parent-teacher conference day listening to music, cutting, taping, and assembling my wall collage for me. I am glad to know the students are equally as intrigued by the diversity, color, and complexity of art throughout the ages. Most of our rectangle discussions this week have revolved around the pieces that jump out to us and why they are our favorites. A fair number of discussions have also been about naked vs. nude and the frequency of nudity in art. Luckily, the National Gallery was there to back me up as our fourth and fifth graders navigated through numerous nude sculptures during Art Around the Corner. Topics such as nudity in art, race, diversity, and religion can often be radical, controversial, and polarizing, especially when discussed at school–most of the time such discussions are fascinating, eye-opening, and  a learning experience for all.

Those eyes! I wonder what Mona Lisa would have to say about it all?

Speaking of Art Around the Corner. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that a great day was had by all. Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think of how lucky I am to spend Wednesday afternoons learning things even an art teacher doesn’t already know about art. I find new sculptures to love, something that speaks to me in a George Bellows painting, a hundredth glance at a Monet and the chance to clue a curious fourth grader into the world of masters like good old Claude.

“That Moe-net charachter you’re asking about is actually pronounced Moe-nay, and that painting you like so much is actually adored by many for the same reasons you just stated. His blurry brush strokes, his hazy colors, the way parliament looks like a medieval castle in the distance, the boat detail in the foreground, that is why we love art, why we love to look at it, make keen observations about it, and state our tastes and opinions.”

Claude Monet. The Houses of Parliament, Sunset. 1903. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

There was almost something poetic about tracing contours of Graft by sculptor, Roxy Paine,  in the rain. Especially for me, who had devoted an entire unit to contour line drawing with 5th grade!

This may not be my very best photographic composition and I apologize to Kianna who is a truly stunning girl, but this shot really summed up the joy and excitement of crossing over from seeing the older art in the West Building to the newer art in the East Building. Interactive art rules! It’s going to be a great year of museum education, can’t you tell?