edutopia quote

"Arts integration allows us to build chefs who make choices - not cooks who merely follow the recipe."

Music in the classroom

As a musician I have been thinking about how to incorporate music into the art classroom besides just having it play in the background. The candy lesson plan was a great idea to use lyrics from a song to create a piece of artwork. Every student knows the lyrics to at least one song, and almost all have a favorite that they probably have on their ipod or have at least heard on youtube or the radio.

Allowing students to use their own favorite music is a great way to incorporate something relevant and important to them in a lesson plan. Not only could students create meaning from the lyrics of the songs, but they could also look into using sound waves from a song or even someone's voice within their artwork.

Music videos are something I consider an art form (when they're appropriate.) Here are a few of my favorites. Perhaps students could create lip sync versions of stop motion or just regular music videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9U2N4i20Rs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

candy in the classroom

At first when we had the lesson plan that incorporated candy I was very excited. It was a medium which was fun and not commonly used! I had never used candy in any of my art class experiences. However, when we got further into the lesson I realized that candy may have been a fun choice but definitely not practical. It made a huge mess all over the classroom as well as on our finished pieces, and by the end of class I felt sick to my stomach from eating so much.
It is wonderful to pick a medium that is uncommon that gets students excited, but it is important for the medium to always be relevant. In the past when writing lesson plans I would sometimes decide the medium last, and not really consider a lot of the pros and cons to the medium I chose. The medium can be a wonderful tool to further the learning in an art lesson and create greater understanding.

Dad

I just had a pretty hilarious conversation with my dad that I thought I would share. A little background first, my dad is a high school math teacher who is very close to retiring, but he really loves teaching so doesn't want to leave just yet.
I was telling him how I'm writing lesson plans and he was very supportive and also picked on me a little saying I should stop complaining because he's been doing it for 30 years. He talked about how important lesson plans are and how once you've written enough you get the hang of it and how he doesn't even need to look at his lesson plans anymore because he has done them so many times he is "perfect."(he's so humble...) So then when I brought up SLO's and my frustration with them it opened a huge can of worms. Apparently my dad and "everyone" hates them. As a teacher in New York he feels that SLO's are trying to push old teachers out of the classroom. He doesn't even see the point in writing them because "New York is going to change their mind about them in a year or two anyway."
He also talked about his extreme frustration with the fact that teachers are taking at least a few minutes at the end of each class to work on their SLO's and being a math teacher he added up all the time wasted doing this and all the course material that could be covered in that wasted time.
In his words exactly "I'm paid to teach, and to facilitate learning, not to fill out bs paperwork that wont matter in a few years anyway."
My father ladies and gentlemen...

art blogs

I have never blogged outside of art education department purposes so I decided today to look into some art blogs and was pleasantly surprised! (yet another way to avoid doing homework!) I actually found some blogs with artists that I will probably be using in lesson plans either for my Unit or in my student teaching, and teaching in the future.

One blog in particular that I loved was DRAWN! It's an art and illustration blog

http://blog.drawn.ca/

One of my lesson plans focuses on bedtime stories and illustration so I found the illustrations particularly helpful on this blog. An artist I really enjoyed was a logo designer named Chris Gardner. He did the logo for a game called Letter By Letter which is a great combination of scrabble, boggle, and risk! The logo is so eye catching that before I even looked into the artist I found the game and played it (it's great). 

http://www.rowshambow.com/blog/creating-the-letter-by-letter-logo/

The game is awesome if you happen to like word games! It's fun and a mental work out.

I am really excited to have discovered so many art blogs. I will definitely keep perusing for future use in life and lesson planning.

Abe Morell

After Mikayla and Jackie's lesson on sculptural books I couldn't stop thinking about an artist who came to the art seminar class several semesters ago when I took the course. His name is Abe Morell.

He is a photographer who was born and raised in Cuba in 1962. His family was exiled to New York City, where they ended up staying. Abe bought his first camera at the age of fifteen, and went to Bowden College for photography. A lot of his early works are focused on quick portraits or action shots in the streets of New York. After getting married Abe’s photography, and life settled down. He began doing longer exposure photographs. He explored water optics, creating dramatic landscapes with household items.

            The works that I found most enticing were Abe’s work with books, especially Alice in Wonderland. These are the pieces that I couldn't stop thinking about during the lesson with books in class. He actually used the books as a landscape for his photos. He cut out the actual characters from the books to tell the story. In his lecture he said he would also be doing Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass soon, which I am looking forward to. It was spectacular how he created so much depth, emotion, and a true story line using only the books from Alice in Wonderland. It was a very interesting way of taking a common art forms – art, and photography, and created a whole new way to express a story.

http://www.edelmangallery.com/morell.htm            

I am for art...

I am for art that makes me care

I am for art that helps me see

I am for at the educates, and inspires

I am for art the appreciates the daily, and the monotonous

I am for art that makes me laugh

I am for art that makes the 6 year old and the 60 year old stand side by side

I am for art the makes me cringe

I am for art that causes confusion

I am for art that is uncomfortable

I am for art that hangs on mothers’ refrigerators

I am for art hidden under the bed

I am for art that requires two showers once it’s complete

I am for art every day

I am for art that is warm

I am for art that is cold

I am for art that everyone loves, but doesn’t know why

I am for art that everyone hates, and which goes unnoticed

I am for art