So how to create a painting project inspired by textile artwork? Well when the curator toured me through the exhibition, we discussed doing an acrylic painting where the kids would fracture the image using shapes they found in Michelle Sirois-Silver's work.
Every time the shape lines intersected with a drawing line, the kids would change colors. It does make for some beautiful artwork when you apply this challenge.
artwork by Michelle Sirois-Silver
Seemed like a good idea however after Michelle Sirois-Silver toured the teens through the exhibition and discussed her work with them on the first day, the project went from a good idea to great! She spoke about how this artwork was about journeys and vessels. The artwork above even has her old street address in it!
And so I decided to add another prompt to the acrylic painting that the curator and I had already discussed, "What journey would you like to take?"
The elementary camp came up with the most marvelous ideas, however they had very little interest in fracturing their artwork prior to painting and so we nixed that part of the idea.
These are very large paintings. Kids don't get a lot of opportunity to paint large and so when I have the chance to introduce paper almost the size of them, I do. When presented with a very large piece of paper I find not only do they think it is very special, the paper size also encourages them to paint loosely.
The other part of the challenge that I offered was to create a painting in monochromatic colors. I am always trying to introduce some principles of art in each and every project. I love giving kids the opportunity to discover just how many shades of one color they can create.
Even when they began to add color other than the one shade, they did so sparingly and thoughtfully.
I find this one particularly interesting as the child is color blind and does not see the color red. So imagine the picture as he sees it, with the reds as grey. Amazing, yes?
Every elementary class I teach has at least one child who just wants to paint cats and this one was no different. My philosophy is always to allow the child to create what it is they are interested in as who wants to spend a lot of time painting something they don't really care about? She nailed monochromatic colors.
OK. I wish I had thought of this, breakfast. Who in their right mind would start a journey without a good breakfast? Brilliant interpretation of the prompt in my humble opinion.
I changed the prompt a bit for the afternoon teen camp. Instead of taking a literal journey, I brought in a bunch of knick knacks that over the years have caught my eye in the thrift stores. I always wonder what journey they have taken through this world as they pass through different hands over the decades. At some point they were cherished possessions of someone and yet over time found themselves on a shelf for 99 cents at the neighborhood thrift.
I let each teen go through the variety of things I brought to pick something that interested them. This parrot was actually part of my grandmother's things that I found packed in a box in the garage one summer. In the 40's she collected china figurines made in occupied Japan and I have several of them on display around my home.
We kept to monochromatic colors and several of the teens took me up on the challenge of fracturing their drawings by adding large shapes from Michelle Sirois-Silvers' artwork.
I think you can begin to get a sense of the scale of these paintings in relation to the kids, just imagine how big they were to the younger kids if they are this big in relation to the teens.
In the end I was quite pleased with how these artworks were inspired by artist Michelle Sirois-Silver even though we were not working in the same medium. It just goes to show that there are many ways to create projects out of a gallery exhibition, one of them being using just the idea that sparked the artwork.
No comments:
Post a Comment