RECYCLING AS ART

JUNK MAIL/MIXED MEDIA PAINTINGS

ADVANCED 2-D ART

junk mail, fabric & lace odds & ends, Modge Podge, gesso, acrylic paint, watercolor, sharpie 

and anything else you want to throw in

Senior Samantha Tun bravely jumped in as she undertook this challenging assignment.  

It's a wonderful mixed media Still Life.

She was required to paper collage down junk mail onto the surface of a stretched canvas.

We both decided this piece would look really cool on this elongated one she found.

Why junk mail,

well,

in the original assignment it was supposed to show thru a bit;

some text, some images, and a bit of color.

like the Junk Mail books made in her previous art class the year before.

But Sam was enjoying painting in acrylic from a previous assignment 

and asked if she could change up the assignment a bit by using acrylic instead of watercolor.

I love when the kids ask to try something new so I told her she could if she watered down the acrylic so that the mail images might still show thru along with all the other fabrics & laces she collaged down first.

But we both discovered that that didn't happen.

But what did show up really well were the fabrics and laces.

They created amazing texture thru the acrylic.

After collating down all the mail and textiles she loosely gessoed with a brayer.

again allowing mail and textiles to show thur

 but also giving her a nice ground to paint over.

I had her set up her own still life and off she went painting over all the textures.

Also since our school diesn't have the funds to frame out the kids paintings on stretched canvas,

I have them bring the paint over the side edges

to make piece look finished off.

Congrats Sam on an outstanding job!

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

JUNK MAIL PAINTING

ADVANCED 2-D ART

junk mail, magazines, modge podge, gesso,

sharpies & acrylic paint

For the past 3 years I've been teaching Carla Sonheim's Junk Mail Book,

and the kids enjoyed the process so much

 that they suggested I put it in the curriculum for 3rd year as a gigantic painting project.

So here we go.

I have two kids in this class,

both seniors,

Jonathan Hsu and Elias Rodriquez.

Let's see what they came up with.

Getting started Jonathan decided to use mostly magazine imagines and advertisement text.

Sadly,

I didn't get there in time to take a pix of Elias' beginning,

but I believe he did the same thing as Jonathan.

In Carla's original class she had use use only recycled pieces of mail.

But it all works.

Next we see that the boys have covered the magazine collages with gesso,

but not so thick that we can't see thru it to the pix,

and then Elias has gone one step further and given his a light acrylic wash below.

Above we see Jonathan has already started to draw his imagery in Sharpie right onto the gesso..

Here are the two finished pieces side by side.

Elias has gone on to build up his acrylic layers

 while Jonathan has used the lightest acrylic wash above and below his imagines.

Elias Rodriquez

Jonathan Hsu