Abstract Sculptures

With wire and nylon stockings, we've made abstract sculptures that take on odd mysterious forms. Students first bent wire and coathangers into many angles. They drilled wallboard for a base, and glued the wires into the wallboard. By taking a nylon stocking and covering the wires, wrapping the stocking all the way around the base, they have created new and unusual forms.

THE ASSIGNMENT: First, find an image in this form. It can be a wave, a squirrel, a face, a tree, etc. Then make your viewers see that image clearly by painting and adding items to the scupture, until it is recognizable.

SCULPTURE IS ABOUT COMMUNICATION. How can you manipulate an abstract image, into a concrete idea? What do you want the viewer to go away with?

7th grade art history Research

For those of you who are having a hard time getting all the information for your web quests, you can finish these projects at home.

Just go to edline, to your art classroom and click on the link on the right hand side of the page.

For Hudson River groups, click the hudson river quest.

For all others, click on web quest.

All students will be given a group grade, an individual grade on research and an individual grade for their landscape drawing or painting.

Congratulations!!!!!!! Scholastic Art Winners

2009 Scholastic Art Awards Winners!!
Parker students win 5 Art Awards!
We are pleased to announce that four Parker students won five Boston Globe Scholastic Art Awards in this year's contest! They are:
Julia Dudley-Kramer: Gold Key Award and Silver Key Award
An Le: Silver Key Award
Emily O'Sullivan: Honorable Mention
Sarah Parker: Honorable Mention
This is a very prestigious contest for students and we are very proud of each student who entered this year. Congratulations!

Murals Murals Murals in 8th Grade Art Studio

The mural bug has bit our 8th grade art studio students. We have a large variety of murals in progress around our school. We have recently finished some murals in the boy's locker room, and are designing ones for the girl's locker room. We have one pointing to the library, and designs that trickle down the stairwell from the eighth grade hall.

8th grade art studio works on a contract basis, creating a portfolio of work they design and impliment throughout the year. At the end of the year, each student will go home with a portfolio of their work, as well as short essays on subjects such as what makes a good artist, what are the best art materials, and who do I admire as an artist.

7th Grade Figures Class

7th grade figure class has been looking at movement and proportion in figures. We worked with gesture drawings, looking at how legs and arms bend, how backs twist and how feet support the body, and tried to make our figures in proportion by making the bodies 6-8 heads tall. Using wire armatures, we created figures in mid-action. Characters are in the middle of a leap, catching a ball, dancing or skiing off a ski jump. Each of these characters are in the air, and so we will display them by hanging them from a string or using wire to balance them in the air, above a base or a stand.

Using paper towels for the body, we are covering them with tissue paper skin and using cloth and twisted paper for clothing.

6th grade Art Studio Weaving

Making cloth is long and hard. No wonder children in the colonial age only had one or two outfits to wear. We couldn't imagine having only one pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But students in the art studio class can. They understand how long it takes to weave, and how hard it is to put a design into that weave.

Students have been working with cardboard looms, practicing simple weaving, and then working with needles to weave designs or letters into their cloth. Their final project is to make a clay wall hanging, where their weave is an intricate part of the art. They will use found objects such as feathers and sticks as well as yarn to create this interesting woven effect.

It's all about Balance

Sculpture students are learning how balance effects what they make.

We've all had Christmas trees in our lives that weren't balanced. Sometimes we tied them up, or tacked parts to the wall to create a better balance. But sculpture artists must make a piece of art that will balance on its own.

We started this unit by looking at the king of balance, Alexander Calder, who invented the mobile. He could take any tiny thing and make a balanced and most often, moving sculpture from it. Students learned about asymmetrical, symmetrical and radial balance, then practiced these in sculpture form. By puttting their first sculpture on a wire, they not only needed to balance it successfully, but needed to consider where the center of gravity was, how to increase the strength of the wire for heavier sculptures and how to create an interesting piece that would attract a viewer's attention.

Their second sculpture is an asymmetrical mobile, hanging from the ceiling or sitting as a table-top mobile. Calder made many humorous sculptures (a seal balancing balls, leaves blowing in the wind, a juggler) in his mobiles so that they had a theme as well as colorful balance. Our students must also have a theme to connect the ides of their sculpture. Some of our student's themes are space, growing flowers, monsters and arrows.