Tissue Collaged Portfolios - Student Art

My Beginning 2-D students just completed a huge design assignment that they then made into their portfolios to house and transport all their flat art work. The piece above was one that I featured 2 years ago belonging to alum Christina Lee. Let me show you part of the process below with this year's crop of kids.

Senior Tiffany Wang began her design (above) with some images she had printed out at home that she then collaged to a piece of 18" by 24" construction paper with Matte Mod Podge. She then chose a warm color scheme in tissue paper and ripped random shapes and collaged those over top her images (below)

She made another construction collage in exactly the same way but in a cool color scheme. She was then required to use a sun motif as her subject and cut the two collages so that she could alternate those sun designs when laying out her 2 portfolio tops. So below is her finished portfolio. You are seeing it laid open so you can see both sides. Many of the kids chose to protect their work with clear packing tape, that's why all the photos are somewhat shiny.

This next one is quite a bit more complex in how she laid out her tissue paper pieces. Instead of ripping, sophomore Ashley Tang cut all of her pieces before she collaged them down over top some sheet music and other varied paper images. She made this one in a cool color scheme and then one in warm colors. Below is her finished portfolio, after she designed her subject and cut and alternated her pieces. It's a brilliant design for one so young.

Below is a close up of one of the finished halves with the clear tape over top.

Both Ashley and senior Jennifer Park (above) figured out how to alternate their names into their designs (their names being the rays of their suns), clever girls! And my favorite this year belonged to junior Crislyn Ogawa (below). I will be featuring a lot of her work this year because she is an incredible designer and craftswoman. Because of all her thin and wispy shapes within her design, she came up with a new solution to lay them out before gluing so as not to loose placement. Hard to explain but it sure worked well for her. We've got such smart children here. I'm so lucky!

For EXTRA CREDIT: on a yellow piece of paper cut into the shape of a sun with rays, write the name of the student whose portfolio you liked best. On the back side write your name and class period and hand to me when you walk in my door tomorrow. :)

Hand Knit/Hand Felted Bags - Student Work

Here are my girls, spinning their hearts out on my spinning wheels. They are my 3rd year Advanced 3-d art students, and they just made these gorgeous bags from scratch (see below).

So much work was involved in the process, they had to hand dye wool roving and then spin it into yarn on the spinning wheels, then learn to knit on circular needles and plan out their bag design, complete with handles. They were required to stripe their hand spun yarns with some wool felting yarn from Brown Sheep. Handle treatments were up to them, store bought or handmade. Plus they had to add a special handmade accent. Then throw the whole thing into the washing machine for the felting process. They were allowed to control the felting, as much or as little as they preferred. Senior Angeline Tran did the beauty above.

Senior Olivia Hill did this glorious orange bag with brownish green hand spuns above, and senior Breeana Jhong did the breathtaking bag below.

Check out her entrelac design she knit into bag with her colorful hand spuns. And below, check out the tedious seed and bugle beading she incorporated. And then how cute is the sweet little felt ball she made to attach to the zipper of her lining. as you can see, all the girls came up with beautiful pieces.

I'm so proud of you 3 for learning to spin on the wheel. I know it was hard but all of you hung in there and conquered it! For EXTRA CREDIT: On a brown piece of paper, cut into the shape of a bag, write the name of student you feel designed the coolest bag from the 3 above. On the other side of the paper put your name and period. Hand to me when you walk in door tomorrow :)

Busy Weekend

I was really looking forward to attending the annual Handweavers of Southern Ca. weaving and spinning show at the Civic Center in Torrence this last Sunday, but I was a little disappointed. No new artists or vendors with everyone still carrying their same products and craft work. But there was one bright spot when I saw my friend and mentor, Lori Lawson of Capistrano Fiber Arts, in her lovely booth with new samples, patterns, and beautiful fibers for sale. In fact, I dropped a bit of money off with her when I purchased two glorious bags full of luscious fibers that I want to spin up for a new sweater pattern I found. OH, BOY! In the courtyard many of the fiber artists were busy knitting and spinning. Don't look too closely though, I had no hair or makeup going on that day. LOL Lori, however, made the gorgeous sweater she is wearing. Hand-dyed, hand-spun, designed and knit all by her. She is something.

On Saturday, Jim and I spent the day garage saleing and thrift store shopping. We were looking for 100% wool and cashmere sweaters that I will felt in my washer and then we will cut them up and needle felt scarfs out of them for Xmas presents. Wish us luck! A few of our trees are actually changing colors right now, so I just had to get a pix of this beauty above. And Saturday evening we had the most beautiful sunset right outside our window.

We are finally starting to cool down and get a bit of chilly weather. I love it, I get to dig out my winter clothes and scarfs. Hopefully, the Santa Ana winds will stay away for a while so we can enjoy the cold for a change. To see and read more about our weekend see the 2 posts below this one.

Happy 22nd Birthday Zachary

Sunday night the family went out to celebrate Zach's 22nd birthday at one of his favorite restaurants, Benihana. And oh boy, was it delicious! I thought this shot of Zach and Danielle turned out really well of the two of them together (below), my sweet babies :)

Sophia Update - Hair Cut Gone Wrong

Here she is, in all her glory, having just had an at home hair cut session with pro cutter Jim, pass me those shears, Sposa. As you can see the little princess doesn't have much of a tail anymore, it's down to the nub, and she also ended up with a bit of a flat top on her head. Oh well, hopefully it will grow back in time for our Xmas pictures. Jim, however, looks very pleased with himself. LOL

Slab Built Candle Stick Holders with Beeswax Candles- Student Work

Ceramics I, they pix are for you to see and start thinking about before Monday when we begin.
You will be embossing the clay with many different textures: laces, burlaps,cardboard cut out shapes, stamps and cylinder rolls. I'd also like you to do something geometric or organic with the lip so it becomes asymmetrical, don't be boring and just leave it flat across the top. Also, think about what colors you'd like to build your candle sticks from and what color metallic compounds you want to rub over the sawdust fired surface, and if you are going to embellish with raffia streamers and bows. These make great Holiday gifts.

7th Grade Collaged Boxes with Stamped Tissue and Wire Pendants

This will be the last post from my 1st Quarter 7th graders that I said good-bye to on Friday. This was a real mixed media assignment that had several components. First they learned to work with 22 gauge wire to wrap a pendant with, and then they collaged an old, donated jewelry box to house the pendant, and then also learned about patterns so they could stamp the tissue paper that encloses the pendant within the box. A lot of stuff, right? Yep! So these were my favorites. In the top photo we have boxes done by Jae Olano, Sarah Chan, and Eryn Burnett.

And above we have work done by Joann Chung and Moses Won. Below you can see Heather Cook's box as well as her very cool stamped tissue paper.

And lastly you can see the inside of Eryn's box and the beautiful pendant she wrapped in wire.

You young ones will be missed! You all made wonderful art pieces for me. Thank You!

Farewell 1st Quarter 7th Graders

Good-bye Charlie, Heather, Jason, Joann, Josh, Lily, all 30 of you! Man, am I gonna miss you guys. I was just getting used to you and visa-versa and it's time to switch to a whole new group of young ones already. I can only hope they are as sweet as you all have been. It was a pleasure working with you and I hope that many of you will be back for more art classes. So let's see some of your work. This is the unit on Linear Texture and Pattern with a watercolor washed background. The two pieces above were done by Eryn Burnett and Moses Won, and the 2 below where created by Clarissa Gutierrez and Hunter Wu.

And then we have the stylings of Jae Olano and Sharon Wang. What beautiful pieces these are, and highly creative. A suggestion: have your parents frame them out for you :) Love you guys! I'll miss you. Drop by and visit me at lunch.

Halloween 2010

Saturday Nite was a blast at Java Joe's with Jim's band and all the great Halloween costumes. Getting in close with Jim for this pix was a little scarry though. LOL

His costume lasted for the first set then off it came, it was just too hot under the lights with that trench coat and mask.

The Highlites from Vegas were dressed as Sonny and Cher, and little Rita was Cleopatra. Bobby chose not to dress up. But Jim's best friend and the band's sax player, Dan with his fiance', came as a pair of gypsies. They just got engaged last weekend, and are so happy together.

Then on Sunday my kids carved their pumpkins in the driveway. There is always a bit of rivalry between those two when it comes to pumpkin carving. Zach used to always be the super star, but I think Dan is beginning to surpass him. Good thing Zach doesn't pay any attention to my blog. LOL Jim was supervizing :) In this shot you can see where his injury is. He spent part of his day today at the Wound Clinic getting help, the surgeon on Monday told him that if he doesn't take good care of it and the infection spreads, that he might loose part of his leg. Really frightening stuff! I'll keep you posted (to see the wound go back to my post from 2 days ago)

Here is Zach's finished carving of our new baby girl, Sophie. Do you see the likeness?

And this is Danie's beauty, a big gorgeous flower. Couldn't wait to light them that evening, but unfortunately, we had no trick-o-treaters to see them. What we did have were a lot of fruit flies that immediately started attaching the pumpkin flesh. YUCK!

By Monday morning they were half way caved in, sooooooooooo sad!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween weekend.

7th Graders Soap Scrubs - Student Art

The new crop of 7th graders really enjoyed making the felted soap scrubs, and got some really good results. And they make such great gifts for the kids to give. In the top photo we have Clarissa Gutierrez, Moses Won, and Nicholas Aoki, and in the bottom photo we have Ratanak Rithy, Eryn Burnett, and Sharon Wang. Great job you guys, and thanks for keeping the soapy water on the table and not all over you!

Playing Hookey

Took the day off from teaching on Friday to attend the Annual Artistic License Art Fair in Costa Mesa. And what a beautiful day it was down there, the weather was perfect. In the first booth I found my dear friend Lori Lawson of Capistrano Fiber Arts. I have known Lori for years and she has been a mentor to me. She is a self taught fiber artist, who weaves, spins, dyes, knits and so much more. In fact she just recently taught me Nuno felting so I could teach the technique to my students.

There were several new artists at the show, so I was able to get lots of new ideas as well as some great new examples to teach with. A show favorite is Barbara Kincaid (below) a fiber artist. Within the first hour most everything in her booth was scooped up. She has been doing this show for at least 35 years now. I try to buy one of her pieces every year. But sometimes I'm too late and she has sold out. Not this year though, got there bright and early LOL!

Then early in the afternoon, I took my man to the doctor. His motorcycle wound where his bike had fallen on him wasn't healing right, so the doctor had to cut out that huge chunk he's holding with the tweezers. Jim was so brave, he was able to handle the pain with only a local. At first I wasn't going to peek, but the nurse looked so fascinated that I just had to take a look see. As you can see, it was pretty bad. I've never seen anything like this before, so of course I asked Jim if I could blog it. He thought I was nuts, but here it is.

Late that same afternoon, took the pup for a walk so I could take pix of our view from the road leading into our complex cuz it wwas really looking like fall. The sky was amazing, a storm was coming in and we got rain overnight.

We don't get much in terms of season changes, but if you look closely below you can see one lone tree changing it's colors. Was so pretty.

And then the sunset that night was a beauty as the storm was rolling in below.

Artistic License Art Fair

Come join me at one of the best So.Cal. craft fairs of the year at Estancia Park in Costa Mesa (Oct. 29 & 30). I'm actually taking the day off work so I can be the first person in line when they open tomorrow. I'm bringing lots of money so that I can get new art pieces to teach with. I find that when the kids see a professional piece of art that's really well made and has great design, that they will rise within their own work to the piece they see. Plus then I'll have more great art to hang in my home. A win win if you ask me! Hope to see you there. EXTRA CREDIT: for 5 points of extra credit visit the show on Sat. between 10 and 4 and bring me back one of the artists business cards, or show me something that you bought there, or get one of the artist's signatures on a piece of paper, something that proves you were there. Hope you enjoy the show!