Gurest Blogger- Kevin

I like art. Clay is my favorite type of art because its more fun. My favorite project was my texture pot because it had nice texture. I don't think art would be as much fun with out Mrs. Davis. Art is my favorite subject in school and I look forward to it every otherday. I also like painting my clay sculptures.

Guest Blogger- Hayden

I like to make clay things and when I make clay things I usually like to make pots. I like to make pots that you can use at home, such as pots that you can put money or pencils or other things. My favorite pot that I used was when I made it last year. I took a giant brick of clay and then I hollowed it out, and made a lid that had a little hole in the top so that I could put money in it. Other things that I like to make are sculptures, but overall my favorite things to make would be anything that you can use.

Guest Blogger-- Sam

I have always loved art. The type of art I love the most is sculpting. Making shapes and seeing that I have created them gives me the best feeling. Some day I hope to build a life size model of an action hero and keep it forever.

Guest Blogger- Nick

I just finished making my "lazy" cow. He is an abstract work of art. I think he is abstract because to paint him, I used all different shades of blue.

Happy Holiday Break Everyone!

Finally able to post some pictures....8th grade art

There is more to making Art....

http://www.ahsd25.k12.il.us/~TriciaFuglestad/VisualArt/page14/page15/page26/page26.html

According to Tricia Fuglestad's art class....

There's more to making art than just pleasing your eyes

here is the place whre we learn skills for our lives

stratagise, compromise, plan and visualize

integrate, concentrate, learn to relate

exposed to cultures and eras in history

we're trained to be thinkers with visual literacy

we fine tune our motor skills while growing in self-esteme

we follow directions and understand sequencing

in ART.

New Art Materials? Cool, but now what?

For me, holidays meant new art materials. But sometimes I'd be so excited about using the materials, I couldn't think of what to draw. Here are some ideas for when you get stuck:

Worm's eye view: get down on the ground and draw things while looking up.

Design a new bedroom. If I had a million dollars, what would I do?

How about a mural? Would your parents let you paint one on your bedroom wall? What about on a huge piece of paper instead?

Try your hand at one point perspective. http://www.olejarz.com/arted/perspective/

Draw your hand. You can imagine it holding all sorts of shapes: a glass, a pen, an invisible dollar.... What do hands look like in American Sign Language shapes? Hands can keep you busy for days...

Texturize it. Look carefully at the textures of everything around you. How is the floor texturized? Does it have a rug on it? Is it shag or tightly woven? Is it embroidered? Is the floor wood? Is it Linoleum? Look at the couch. Is it cloth or leather? Tightly wrapped around the frame or stuffed? Fluffy or smooth? Look at the chairs, the tables, the bookstand. Everything has textures. How can you show those on paper?

Mirror, mirror: put things in front of a mirror and try drawing them and their reflection. Look at the reflections in things like a toaster, a frying pan, a pool of water...

Blow up an image. Make a giant drawing of a candy bar, or a piece of jewelry, or a toothbrush. How does it feel different when you look at it large? Blow it up another way. Imagine someone pumped up a toothbrush with air, or an apple or a notebook. What would an inflated leaf look like, or a fork or a computer?

On a Snowy Weekend....make ART!

Don't let a snowed in weekend get you down. Try some fun art activities.

Check out Portrait Detectives from East Liverpool Museums: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/nof/portraits/

or

Make a sculpture and play games at Smithsonian for Kids:

http://www.si.edu/kids/

or

Make snowflakes by going to Snowflake Patterns for kids and fight back the weather with your own snowflakes:

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/dstredulinsky/kids_patterns.html

The Artful Teapot- Sculpture Class

Students are working on artful teapots. They will choose a form of clay manipulation (pinch, coil or slab) that works best with the design of their pots. They will be working with some new clay concepts: handles, spouts and lids; and will be designing a teapot that doesn't look like a traditional teapot. It may be different in shape (maybe it looks like a hershey's kiss or a kitten), in texture (it may look as if it is made of wood or leather), or in color (it may have a full portrait painting on the outside or an elaborate design painted in undercolors).

Each student will make a matching cup, and we will have a tea party with our pots and cups on the last day of class.

In past years we've had teapots shaped as presents, dragons, pigs, candy, money and houses. I look forward to seeing this year's selections.

Fun Stuff for free time.... Making interactive art

The ARTIST'S TOOLKIT:

lots of fast cool games based around art concepts, but done in fun ways such as a shooting arcade or videos of artists making their art. Worth checking out!

http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/

Inside Art- help! I got sucked into a painting....

I yawned and rubbed my eyes. I tried to focus on the wall of paintings in front of me. My feet were killing me. I'd rather be anywhere—outside, playing with my friends, even brushing my teeth—anywhere but this art museum. Then I heard a strange sound behind me...

http://www.eduweb.com/insideart/ Great Fun!

Utilitarian Objects- 6th grade clay projects

Utility means useful. You've heard of a utility knife, or a utility shed? These are useful items because of their versitility. Utilitarian means useful as well. Utilitarian art is art that has a useful purpose, such as a box, mug, pot, vase, etc. These art items can be highly decorated, but ultimately they are useful. As we look back through history, we see that even cave artists made their utilitarian items beautiful by carving or painting on them.

Non-Utilitarian art means art that is meant to be looked at aestetically, art that is pretty on the walls or nice to look at as a sculpture. Non-Utilitarian art is decorative. It can move you emotionally or spur you into action through depicting social themes, but it has no physical use other than as something to look at.

Sixth grade students have been working on clay manipulation, learning how to change clay into objects by using pinch, coil and slab for construction methods. They are presently working on a Utilitarian object that is decorated with relief and incised artwork. Some are making mugs, bowls or plates. But all the objects have both a useful purpose and a beautiful design to them.

Expressionism- 7th grade study on styles

Expressionists distort or change an image to express the emotions of the artist.

Throughout history, people have distorted images to show emotions. Medieval artists exaggerated faces to show deep religious feelings. Mesopotamian artists made kings larger and more powerful looking than the rest of the populace. Famous speakers are shown looming above the crowds. But expressing emotions did not become a international style until the early 1900's. Starting in Germany, artists began focusing on their feelings and emotions rather than what the world looked like. They exaggerated, left out, extended, colored and erased parts of their drawings in order to push the emotional response to the image.

Did it work? Do we care about these emotions the artists tried to show? How many of you recognise the emotions in "The Scream" ?

7th grade students are experimenting with showing emotions through their art. How do line, shapes, texture and colors effect emotions?

Splatter Painting

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/


Who doesn't like to splatter paint? This site allows you to experiment in a Jackson Pollock-like way. Have fun splotching, splattering, dripping and spillling your way into art.

Cool Online Drawing/Painting program

http://artpad.art.com/artpad/painter/

Use a virtual pencil, brush, spraycan, etc. to do your drawings and paintings. Watch a replay of your own drawing skills and hang your work in the gallery. Or watch other artists paint and see how they make those great pictures.

One of the better, simple drawing sites. Lots of fun.

Fun Art Detective Game

http://www.eduweb.com/pintura/

The Case of Grandpa's Painting....

Photo Mosaic: a cousin of pointallism

Robert Silvers invented a form of mosaic that could be called a cousin to pointallism. Each picture consists of hundreds of tiny photographs.

He starts with a picture, breaking it down in tiny pixals. He substitutes each pixal for a full photo which has the same value and color as the original pixal.

When viewed close up, Robert Silvers' pictures look like thousands of images. But when viewed from a distance, we see the images as colors, creating a larger overall picture. Just as Seurat relied on the viewer to blend his dots together with their mind's eye, Robert Silvers asks his viewers to blend the tiny photos together into one large image.

Guest blogger- Emily O'S.

Today in class we were working on Post-Impressionism:pointilism. Although this is not my favorite media it is still fun. My favorite media is clay. I love to make stuff totally your own and hold it, paint it and use it. When I'm not doing clay I'm usually drawing. I love drawing shadows on different flowers . A lot of people on my team have my drawing personalized.

Check out some great color fun!

This site is great. It grabs images from their data base that matches the colors you pick. So you end up with an assortment of phots and illustrations that all match one color. Lots of fun. You've got to try this.

labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour

Guest Blogger: David

When I think of art I see clay and large statues like the Thinker. Also clay is my favorite thing to use in art. Thanks to Parker, I can have one of my favorite things for a period of time and it gives me an Idea of what to make and having a criteria gives me that reason. With out the criteria I wouldnt be able to go into my artistic self. Without it I would draw randomly and not learn how to use multiple art styles and make myself a better artist. That is what art means to me.

Guest Blogger - Kevin O.

The project that I just finished was one of my favorite ones. It was a texture scupture of a bear that is cornered. It was a large bear that has matted hair and against a stone wall. It had three textures: the matted hair, the floor were it's standing and the stone wall behind it . This project describes me the most because the only time I'll ever fight back is if it's my only option.Another project that I worked on is two arches overlaping each other and a pillar in the center. It has two diffrent textures with lines on the arches and jagged holes in the bottom .

Paste Paper Bookmaking 7th Grade

Paste papers are decorated papers with stamped, scraped, dribbled or drawn into textures. These were used by Colonial America as endpapers in books, as a way of simulating the marbled papers of old Europe.
Students in 7th grade Art Studio made paste papers today by mixing art paste with tempera paint. We wet the paper to make the fibers more accepting to the color, then painted this colored mixture onto the paper. We made desgins by scraping and dragging textures through the paint.
Students will use them for endpapers on the books we make and for designs on covers or for bookmarks.

The Festival of Trees- Arts Alive 6th grade

We have been asked to represent our school by producing a tree for the Festival of Trees this coming Saturday. Students in the 6th grade arts alive classes are working together to create a book theme. They are looking up their favorite childrens books on the internet, and copying the covers of these books onto book ornaments. Inside they are letting the reader know why they think this book is great!

They will also be making bookmarks for the tree, decorated with marbled papers and splatter paints. We are looking for donations of childrens books to add to the tree itself, or to place under it. We will be adding a gift certificate to a local bookstore as the centerpoint of the tree.

See you at the festival on Saturday!

Post--Impressionism: Seurat-- 7th grade

Impressionists focused on light and color. But what are Post-Impressionists? They came after the Impressionists anso must be different. But so many of these artists are listed as both. How do they differ?

It's true. The connection between them is strong. Most of the Post-Impressionists were friends with the Impressionists, and like them, loved to play with light and color. The difference is that they thought the Impressionists didn't go far enough. Impressionists were concerned with capturing the moment, looking at reality and interpreting it in terms of the lights and darks. Post-Impressionists went one step farther.

Each of the Post-Impressionists had a different take on where they wanted to go with their art. George Seurat took light and color in a scientific direction. He looked at the latest research that examined how light was reflected or absorbed by a particular color. He combined that information with how the eye sees. He layed dots of different colors next to another, so that the human eye combines them to create a mixture of the colors. Thus, to make a green, he would place a yellow dot next to a blue dot. He still adhered to the Impressionist style of painting with complimentary colors and emphasising lights and shadows, but he did so in a controlled way. He planned his paintings carefully, working out a theme rather than drawing just what he saw. As a result, Seurat's paintings tend to look stiff and calculated, rather than as a glance or an impression.

Students are working on creating a Seurat style scientific drawing by painting with points of color.

just for fun: http://www.ahsd25.k12.il.us/~TriciaFuglestad/VisualArt/flashmovies/whatsthepoint.swf

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Have a great day!

What is an armature?

An armature is a structure that holds up a sculpture. Some materials will not hold up by themselves. Paper mache is too wet and shapeless to stand alone. It needs to be wrapped around a form (balloon, wire, face or junk sculpture) in order to take on that shape. The 6th Grade Arts Alive class used armatures of bent wire when making their people sculptures. They shaped wire to reproduce gesture drawings of classmates who posed for them. After contructing the armature, they thickened it by wrapping the wire with newspaper, and then paper macheing over the newspaper for a strong finishing layer. Students gave their characters clothing, props and scenery to further the story and to create strong personalities in their art.

Guest Blogger: Tyler S.

6th grade arts alive is really fun!!!!! We are currently working on paper mache people. I think this is the best project we have done so far. It's fun dressing up the people that we have created. I can't wait to start our next project this year!!!!!!!!

Guest blogger -Micaela K.

Eighth grade art has been wonderful. I look forward going to clay and sculpture every other day. the projects that we're doing help me understand art, and how I interpret art. But clay is not the only type of art the interests me. I love photography. I don't know much about photography other than the many photos I have taken. I enjoy scenes that aren't caught from the naked eye. anything to do with nature, or the sky interest me, which helps me in science. I feel that abstract art is a lot easier to explain. But often times it is the hardest form of art to understand. That's why photography interests me so much. No matter what I'm taking a picture of it is real. No matter how abstract it looks. That way people can understand it, while I can explain it. The time spent in clay and sculpture is probably the best time used during my day. I am more productive in this class then any other class I study. This is also a problem, but I can fix it. Mrs. Davis is an extraordinary teacher, and I look forward to the rest of the year and the rest of my art life. YAY.

Guest Blogger-Julianna W.

Art is something that has always been important to me. I try to incorporate it in my daily life but, with sports, homework, and other out of school activities, it's hard to find time. Thats why I was thrilled to enter the 8 th grade and find clay sculpture as a choice. Over the summer I crossed my fingers to get in and when I did I was thrilled! I knew little to nothing about clay sculpture but I entered with an open mind and love for art and it took off from there. We started with basic pinch and coil pots,with a lot of direction and little free thought. Now, however, I am on my sixth project and each one has a special meaning to me, all unique and straight from my brain. I always look forward to clay sculpture after a long and grueling test or class period, its like entering a world outside of school were it's okay to be yourself and express that in any way you wish. All in all clay sculpture is a very important part in my life.

Guest Blogger- Julie G.

Art is really fun. My favorite thing to do is clay. My favorite project yet was a bowl that I did made of clay leaves. I had to cut out leaves and then slip and score them together. When it dryed and got fired I painted it with all fall colors. I used brown,yellow,and orange. Now after it got fired for a second time it looks like real leaves becuase there is some black color in the brown and it spread to other leaves so it looks really realistic.

Gesture Drawings

A gesture drawing is similar to a gesture itself. It is made up of short, fast lines that show movement. Often students focus on details in a drawing, losing the spontaneity and excitement of their original sketch. A gesture drawing captures the movement and excitement to use as either an underdrawing, or as a reference point for their final drawing.

We practice gesture drawings to focus students on movement rather than details. We encourage them to draw quickly, with feeling rather than accuracy. They must capture the action of the model within one minute, thirty seconds and fifteen second drawings. The kids enjoy being a model as they stand on the tables and try to hold a pose for a specific length of time. They love switching poses from a basketball star to a disco dancer to a person in a tug of war game.

7th Grade Art Studio--Bookmaking

The Seventh Grade art studio classes are designed as mini courses. This semester we are teaching Bookmaking and Idenities. In Bookmaking, we are starting with Accordion books. We began with a tiny version, 1 inch by 1 inch, made from an accordion shade and two covers made of tag board on the ends. We also began work on larger triangular or rectangular acordian books. The wonderful thing about these books, is that they can be read in two directions. Like a flip book, you read all the pages on one side, flip the book around and read in the other direction. There is no sewing involved, and so they are quick and easy to make. Add some specialty paper and you've got some stunning artwork, just in the books alone.

ART-ICULATION

Check out this awesome 40 second video on why art is important in our schools.

http://www.ahsd25.k12.il.us/~TriciaFuglestad/VisualArt/page14/page15/page26/page26.html

CLAY! CLAY! CLAY!

Our sixth grade students are finally working with clay. After watching all the wonderful things coming out of the 8th grade clay classes and the abc art classes, they are dying to get their hands in the stuff.

We are starting our Mesopotamian unit with a quick history of the area. Why is clay so important? What do they use it for? How is the beginning of writing connected to clay?

And they are focusing on the question, does where you live effect how you make your art? Clay was readily available in Mesopotamia, and it made a profound effect on all aspects of their lives.

We are looking at the beginning of writing. How do you keep track of trading animals without a formal writing system? You keep a record of it by drawing in clay. We are looking at how Mesopotamians kept records and how that led to writing. We are looking at how they made signatures with clay cylinders and stamps and are making stamps of our own to sign our pottery and sculpture.

Guest Blogger- Tristian B. (Arts Alive)

Hello my name is Tristan. In arts alive we are working on making people with metal wire, paper mache , then painting them, and putting clothes on them. At the end it will turn out to look like a real person. I picked arts alive because I like to make things , color, andwork with clay. I like it because we get to do all the things I like to do.

Guest Blogger- Isabella G. (Arts Alive)

I love art but I think my favorite thing is to work with clay. I have never worked with it before, but it is what I want to do most. The project I'm working on now has been my favorite ever. I love art because I like to work with my hands. That is why art is my favorite period of the day.

7th grade Impressionism

7th grade students are learning about a radical art style from the 1860's called Impressionism. Artists had the gall to go outside and paint, focusing on light and how it effects color rather than what things actually looked like. No wonder the museums in Paris refused to display their art. Such radical ideas should be ignored, and surely they will disappear...

But Impressionism is one of the most favorite art styles around the world today. By capturing a moment in time, Impressionist artists don't focus on minute details. Instead they capture a broad idea and let your mind's eye fill in the rest of the picture. They ask the viewer to look at the picture with wonder, to notice how reflections dance across a surface or how color changes depending on the time of day.

A way to remember Impressionism and what they cared about, is to remember the word ELBOW.

E- Everyday subjects. This was new as people tended to paint heroic ideals, religious paintings, paintings of rich patrons...not kids on a beach or people at a picnic.

L- Light was the most important element they looked at. How does light change colors? How does your eye mix colors so that we see the combination of them. How do complimentary colors work in shadows as as highlights of light?

B- Brushstrokes. Impressionists used short undefined brushstrokes to give an impression of color, shadow or highlights. Brushstrokes and blending of colors all one into another are two aspects of Impressionism that make it so unique.

O- Outdoor painting was unheard of. But with the invention of paint in tubes, artists were able to paint for long periods without their paint drying up.

W- Water was wonderful. It cast reflections, it was see-through, it floated things on it's surface. And with the newly invented inexpensive blue colors and orange in a tube, painting water was much easier than ever before.

Our seventh grade is working with oil pastels to capture the lights and darks in a fall still-life. By shining a bright light on the still-life, it gives the leaves and pumpkins a very dramatic effect.

Clarification of 8th grade sculpture/clay elective

I teach clay in the fall and sculpture in the Spring. Those students presently in my clay class will continue working with clay through the second term until January. Those coming into my art elective in the Spring will be taking two semesters of sculpture, working in a variety of materials.

The first project of the second term is to create a self-portrait in metaphor. Students will brainstorm, listing a variety of traits that represent them, such as strength, honesty and loyalty. They will seek out metaphors that use these traits and create a self-portrait by building a sculpture that visualizes the metaphor. 

For example: They might want to talk about how strong they are. Perhaps they are as strong as a mountain, standing strong against a storm. How would they show this in clay? These sculptures usually come out amazingly well and show great insight into their personalities. 

8th grade Art Studio

Eighth grade art studio is a time to find out about yourself as an artist. Students are working on a year long slideshow that includes their work and their thoughts about what they like in other artwork. By examining their own work in a critical way and by looking at what they admire in works of others, in specific materials and in what artists have to say, they discover more about themselves as an artist.

Most of the students have chosen to work in clay this term, although we also have life size drawings of sports figures, popcycle stick cities, murals, collages and drawing studies in progress as well.

Before beginning their art, each student must think carefully about why they want to make their work, answering questions such as:
What is the theme of your work?
How is it different than any other work you have done?
Why is this valuable for you to do?

Upon completion, students must do a self critique, considering the following questions:
Describe: Wht did you create? Did the project stay close to the original plan or did it eveolve into something else. What elements did you use in it and where?

Analyze: Is the composition good? What art elements and principles ae working the hardest in your piece to express your idea?

Interpret: What meaning does your project have for you? What do you want the viewer to see in it?

Judge: What parts of the project are most successful and why? Are there any parts that you wish you did differently? Explain.

6th Grade Talking Walls Projects

Do walls talk? If they did, what would they tell us? Who built them? Why? Can you imagine a world without walls? Talking walls, based on the book of the same name by Margy Burns Knight , is a project that introduces children to cave art and a variety of cultures through looking important walls from around the world.

Sixth grade students looked at cave art through a variety of books and videos and discussed the 4 main theories of why people think they exist. They experimented with making drawing materials and paints, and created their own walls by covering ceiling board with plaster. They looked to their own lives to find meaning, and painted something that was very important to them on their walls. Some students choose to paint their pets, others a great family vacation. Some children focused on their love of sports and others painted themselves reading their favorite books.

We looked at compositions of cave artists and talked about elements of art that these ancient artists used. They carefully designed the compositions of their own walls, taking care to use principles of art to draw your eye to the art and make you linger over it by using emphasis, contrast, movement or color. Students then put a varnish over their art so that the work wouldn't crack and fall off the plaster, as did much of the ancient work in the Lascoux caves.
The students finished with assessments such as: How did the plaster effect the way you drew?
What kind of brushes work well for what type of painting? How did your wall compositions differ from those of other artists?

Georgia O'Keefe and 6th grade Arts Alive

The sixth grade Arts Alive group have just explored oil pastels and the flower paintings of Georgia O'Keefe. Georgia O'Keefe takes realistic items and abstracts them by making them very large and simplifing their shapes. Students looked at how oil pastels can be manipulated by coloring one pastel over another to make rich dark colors, as well as blending them so that subtle colors saturate a white area, giving it a richness far greater than white alone would do. They experimented with using oil to melt the pastels, giving their work a painterly effect and drawing over the oil to bring color back to an area that became too transparent. They did an excellent job of looking closely at values, and using three values in each flower petal. Each petal consists of the color of the flower, the color of light shining on the flower and the color of the shadowy areas.

Students then choose a new subject and used their new skills to draw that object.

Working from a real object requires concentration and obserservation. Abstracting from life, requires even more focus on the lines and shapes of what they are drawing. These students took the time to look, and their work really shows their results.

7th grade perspective

Seventh grade students have been working with one point perspective, creating rooms, cities, shadowy names, hallways and imaginary lands. Perspective is an illusion to show depth or distance on a 2D surface. There are many ways to do this. We all know that things look smaller as they are farther away. Things also fade in color, and tend to look blueish as they go further back. This is called atmospheric perspective, and was used extensively by Leonardo DeVinci. How many times have you looked at mountains and seen the blue haze color in the distance? You can also show distance with overlapping items, one of the simplest ways of showing one thing in front of another.

One point perspective is a specific technique to make things look as if they are receeding into the distance in a specific direction.

Two point perspective allows you to look in two directions on the same page. Often these images show the corner of buildings or tables, allowing you to see both sides at once.

Students are taking their assessment tests now. Can you answer these questions?

What is a horizon line?

What is a vanishing point?

What does point of view mean in terms of perspective?

How do you show perspective with size?

How do you show perspective with color?

How do you show perspective with overlapping?

How do you make something in one point perspective? Two point?

Why do we write artist statements?

Artists make art for a reason. It may be that the flower they are looking at is exceedingly beautiful. It may be that the colors reflected in the cliffs at sunset are so subtle that they take your breath away. It may be that they want to voice a regret, or stand up for a cause. There are as many reasons for making art as there are artists. But when you ask a student why they made something, the answer is ususally, "I don't know".

Why don't they know? Maybe it was the first thought that came to their mind. Maybe they just grabbed a picture and copied it. Maybe they started scribbling, and it turned into a picture. Kids don't often delve into why they like things or why they choose to create a specific image. An artist statement requires them to think about those reasons. To look at what brought about these choices, and later changes in their art. Art is a reflection on them, and whether or not they made an actual choice, the viewer will assume that they did. Kids need to realise that their art makes a statement about them, as well as their subject matter. An artist statement helps them to think about those choices.

Predicting vrs. Observing

By the time they get to middle school, kids know a lot. Their minds are constantly filling with information. In order to move to the next thing quickly, they learn to predict. What is the teacher really looking for? What is going to happen next? What is the story trying to tell us? Their minds are dealing with facts and figures and calculating what the next question will be.
But this makes learning to draw difficult. The mind, in its hurry to move on to the next lesson, tries to anticipate what you are seeing. If you look at a vase, your mind registers that it is a vase and drops in a symbol of a vase in your mind's eye. But in art, we can't work with just symbols. Sometimes we need to draw a specific vase, this one right before you. We need to rely on observational skills to get that right.

One of the lessons we try to teach students is to observe. In order to do that, they need to look carefully at details, slow down their thinking (so the symbols don't replace what they are looking at) and draw slowly. We teach them to move their hand in sync with their eye, following the outline of an image as a contour line drawing. By learning to observe, students not only become better drawers, but they learn to notice more, to see what others are doing and feeling and to be better witnesses when the need arises.

That Ah Hah moment!

It happens in many fields, that ah hah moment when suddenly everything comes together in one clear thought. But it happens in art a lot. So much of art is trying things out, trial and error, until you find something that works. I love that moment when a student adds one more thing to a sculpture and says ah hah! The underlying words being "that is just what I needed" or "now I know the story I want to tell" or "that works, now it's balanced....". If you listen carefully, you can hear little gasps around the room as discoveries are made and thoughts come together. It's a joyous sound, one of my favorites, because I know how happy I feel when it all comes together for me. It is one of the greatest joys of being a teacher, to be present when these discoveries are made.