A Litter of Bugs Born in Room 18

While visiting super gardener, good friend and co-worker Mary, I spotted the coolest stick with an interesting pod shape on it and asked her what it was.  She told me she and her husband Gary collect these Praying Mantis hatched pods from their garden and lay them around as decoration.  I asked if I could take one home.  So Mary gave me two.  I wanted to share them with my art students, but I forgot to take them home.  Guess what?   The pod hadn't been hatched yet, and after a few days laying on my back table, I had a good 50 baby praying mantis crawling around my table and art supplies.  You can imagine the delight when my students learned they were there, especially for my bio kids.  So I very carefully scooped them up and put them outside in my dye garden.

And boy oh boy, did they love all the bugs in those leaves.  In a couple of weeks they grew quite a bit, and were very happy campers.

And so were my plants  :)

Monoprinting - Student Work

One of my favorite things about Monoprinting is that the students get a chance to work spontaneously which oftentimes leads to Non-Objective subject matter.  Senior Laura Kadi took advantage of this and did a terrific job with the assignment.  Laura had to try out 11 different techniques in monoprint, and the pieces above represent each one.

These two were my favorites of hers.  Correct me if I'm wrong Laura, but the one above is a reductive technique, and the one below is a ghost of a ghost of a traced with added color (oil pastel).  Complicated, I know  :)

Felt Shoes - A New Assignment

This was a lot of work for my Intermediate 3-D kids, but the results were so worth it.  I got the idea for this project from my good friend and fiber artist Lori Lawson.  You can see her shoe results on her blog.

   

The shoe above was created by senior Sheila San Agustin and actually fits her foot!  As do all the shoes and boots you will see.  

That's because I had the kids use packaging tape to wrap their feet, so that each child would end up with a pattern and shoe to fit.  Here are 2 of the kids doing just that.  This part was so much fun  LOL  The kids made one cut down the back side to slip off the tape shoe.  Here is what they came up with below.  

Then each student took a sharpie and decided where their seams would be placed and drew a black line to represent each seam line, and cut their pattern apart along these lines; making notch lines along the edge so they would know where the edges lined up at when sewing together. 

We placed the plastic patterns on white poster type board and traced around them and added 1/2" seam allowances, and any notes we thought necessary.

Then we started felting.  Here is junior Josh Berger and senior Ashley Chowdhury wet felting their pieces.

As you can see we had to do it outside cuz it makes a pretty big mess.  :)

Above is Sheila's felt after she was done fulling it, and below you can see how we use our dye garden as a clotheslines.

A closer look at seniors Angela Wan and Lauren De Belen's fulled pieces.

Another look at Sheila's finished shoe.

Here is Angela's low boot/shoe.  Notice on all the shoes the lovely touches of embellishment with stitch, beads, charms and other goodies.  Was this required, you bet!

Senior Amy Hsu's tennis shoe, so clever Amy!

And here is Ashley's finished shoe.  Love, love, love the stripping she incorporated into her felt.

And Josh's boot.  How much fun is this?  

Another boot was done by senior Julia Faith Chanco.  I really like how she couched the white trim around her edges.  Also notice all Julia's seam lines to get her boot to have good structure.  Making the boots was so much more challenging, but I'm so impressed with these kids critical thinking on figuring it out and making it work.

And lastly we end with senior Tiffany Lee's Rhino shoe/boot.  How creative is this??  And look closely at all the bead work, the horns, ears.  Absolutely wonderful!  What an incredible talent.  

Thanks all of you for hanging in with this new and fairly difficult assignment.  I'm so proud of all of you1

Mr. Z's Annual Car Race - Student Work

Rod Z., our beloved Physics teacher, and one of my favorite people on this earth, was showcased last year for his love of the Arts.  He, and his wife, very generously spend several hundred dollars each year on buying our students artwork, framing the pieces up during the summer, and then displaying them in their science rooms.

Several of his students are my students and they were coming in during 4th quarter scrambling around looking for recycled materials to build their Physics race car out of.  Needless to say, I was fascinated with their designs.  Senior Brendon Lim was even using my wood, saws and drills to build his beauty with.I found out this is an assignment that Rod does every year with the kids, he has even built a fabulous race track, and whoever has the fastest car wins a prize.  

So the day of the big race I paid his classroom a visit to see all the cars, and the creative designs.  This project requires great critical thinking for the kids.  Several of my sweet students are in the pix above, and are so proud to show off their cars.

Here is a closer look at all the creativity going on.

I believe my Em came in 5th place.  She was a proud girl!  Just wanted you all to know that I was super impressed with the energy and effort you put into your race cars! 

Jim - The Dog Whisperer

Sophie Jean's cousins, Miesha and Puck, came by for a sleep over recently, and Sophie had to give up her seat in Jim's lap for Miesha, the queen  LOL.  This was the scene when I pulled into the garage so I quickly grabbed my camera.

Too cute!

Before and After Portraits - Student Work

In this top piece we have junior Alex Lee's remarkable likeness of senior David Kim.

These are always so exciting to show off, the progress that my Beginning 2-D kids made in their drawing skills.  I partnered them up with each other at the beginning of year and asked them to draw each other as best they could in profile.  Then I kept those first drawings safe, and onward we went as I taught them the first part of Dr. Betty Edwards book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".  Then about 3 months later I had them draw each other again to see the progress they'd made, and sure enough, each of the students had grown so much in their realistic skill level.  And what's so interesting, each of these kids came in at different levels.  This year I had kids coming in between 4th grade level thru high school.  But several of them ended at a college level.  You can imagine how proud of am of these hard working young ones! 

Below is the exact likeness of senior Louis Manuel by senior Sheila San Agustin.

This next one is a bit hard to see, but it was done in the very sensitive style that junior Hannah Hwang developed in the class of 8th grader Nathan Lam.

Senior Ashley Chowdhury drew a beautiful portrait of junior Judy Shih below.

And junior Deena Younan really managed to capture sophomore Jovani Garcia,

while junior Cathy Luo impressed us all with her exact likeness of junior Alex Rendon.

And what a lovely portrait senior Alice Zhang drew of  senior Sally Choi above.

And then there is the extraordinary work of junior Anne Allan who has drawn sophomore Matthew Chou.

Well, what do you think?

Send me your comments, would love to hear from you.

Thanks  :)  

Native American Coil Pots - Student Work

This beauty at the top was created by senior Nikki Shah.

One of my personal favorite assignments with my Ceramics I students are showing them how to construct a pueblo pot using a tool called a poki in place of a potter's wheel.  It's a very shallow clay pinch bowl that I pre-made for the kids (I have a set of 40 so they have a few choices in size).  After I made them I sawdust fired them for a very nice finish.  Each kid starts with this as their wheel head, puts a swallow pinch bowl inside and attaches coils and spins it as they build upward.  Next year I will try to remember to post the process.  I also have the students smooth out the coil lines on both the inside and outside of their pots.  Then they burnish them like crazy with smooth river rocks.  They also pre-plan their embellishment design so they know where to pierce their holes for later beading and such.  After bisque firing I sawdust their pieces, then the kids have a choice as to how they finish them with either a glue/water mixture to seal them or with metallic rubbing pigments.  Then they embellish for their final grade.  The results are quite lovely as you will see.

Below we have this gorgeous piece by junior Justyn Li. 

Love how senior Sandra Osuji turned her top lip over, and those feathers are the perfect adornment.  And clever junior Aditi Ramesh used leather and raffia for a super combination. 

Senior Lilith Huang went for a more subtle look with the metallic, leather and beads.  Stunning Lilith!  As always  :)  And then senior Kevin Luong got the most wonderful markings from the sawdust firing on the outside of his piece from the pine needles we put in for fuel.  I love the simple drawn line in the clay at the bottom, a brilliant design ploy, then using the metallic to emphasize it, and balancing the top with the beads. Notice those larger red/white beads?  I earned those when I was in Camp Fire Girls in the 7th grade.  They are red/white/blue and symbolized good citizenship.  I donated them so the kids would have more bead choices.  I love that Kevin used them in his pot. He has a part of me in his work :)

And lastly we have senior Kristen Palmer.  She also thought to make a simpler statement with her blue metallic rub, leather and beads.  Perfect!

I hope you all enjoyed seeing the results from this year as I have enjoyed sharing them with you.  To see more, search my blog and the last 2 years worth will come up.