These Giacometti inspired sculptures were created using pipe cleaners, aluminum foil and a little molding clay to weigh them down at their feet. Some of the kids posed them into dancers and soccer players. We painted a square of cardboard black and I glue gunned them to the base.

Alberto Giacometti Style Sculptures with Aluminum Foil and Pipe Cleaners

Eric Carle Style Butterfly Collage

1st Grade

I love to do Eric Carle style collages! The first day we paint our paper and create texture and patterns using combs, chopsticks, clipper guards (yes for hair cuts - they make neat patterns) and splatter painting. We work in 4 stations and when they complete 1 texture they move to the next station. These are put up to dry. Day 2 each child uses their 4 unique papers to cut and create a collage. If the children are young I will give them templates to trace and cut. We added green construction paper to create leaves and stems and tissue paper and starch to make a flower for our butterflies. To top it off i put out some glitter glue to really jazz them up.

Kindergarten Cubist Portraits

 Every time I look at these I smile. We worked large with pencil then in sharpie and filled in our spaces with watercolor. I explained how artists like Picasso thought it would be fun to take apart a face and put it back together in a new way. This project works well for any age group, but I particularly love the the character these have.

African Masks

Kindergarten

These masks were made with cardboard I pre-cut. I gave the children sponges for making geometric stamps and q-tips to make small dot designs. We talked about repetiton and symmetry (in simple terms.) We also did some oil pastel and paint scratch art at the tops. I created holes and tied rafia.

Louise Nevelson Inspired Mini Assemblages - 2nd Grade

These were a lot of fun for my 2nd grade group. First I found some recycled cardboard to use as our base. I told the kids a couple weeks ahead, to look around their house for bits of stuff they didn't need: hardware, old legos, bottle caps, buttons, anything about the size of a half dollar or smaller. I also had a collection of odds and ends to choose from. We looked at Nevelson's work and I explained how she used cast offpieces of wood to create her amazing large assemblages. I encouraged them to mimic her grid style of composition with chopsticks they could break or straws they could cut to create columns and rows. Some of them got really creative, building out in a very 3 dimensional way. Lastly I spray painted them black to create the look of a Nevelson piece.

David Hockney Style
Photo Collages

I'm so glad I decided to introduce the work of David Hockney to my group of 5th graders. I explained how Hockney was inspired by the Cubist movement in doing his photo collages. Each student could pick their own subject matter and divide it up in sections. They were encouraged to play with the zoom on the lens to get different distances of their subject. I think they came out great! I am particularly fond of the black cat, "Phoebe."

Eric Carle Inspired
Fish Collages
Kindergarten

Each session I like to do a collage inspired by Eric Carle. Day 1 we work in stations, making unique textures and patterns on paper. We use combs, chopsticks, q-tips, cotton balls, splatter painting and more. Each child will have 4 different colored and patterened papers. For the fish collage we used sponges double dipped in blue and green to create our ocean. Day 2 we cut out our fish and add some tissue paper sea weed.