Art Inspired by Asia: Japanese Collaborative Mural

Each year my students do a collaborative mural to coincide with our cultural unit. This year might be my favorite one yet. We made a giant red pagoda or shrine to go along with our Art Inspired by Asia Unit in which we studied Japan and China.  It was cut out of three 4'x8' pieces of insulation foam. My hot knife is my favorite $250 tool. I baby and take care of it and rarely share it. Anytime we use insulation foam (an old theatre teacher's trick from my theatre teaching days) we base coat it first with white acrylic paint, which forms a nice base for all further painting.  After that dries, we draw the basic outline and details and then enjoy painting.  Paint moves really nicely on this foam. I really enjoy using it.  The pagoda was made in three sections, which were assembled right on the wall. The background was a painted paper sky and grass. Then we painted large rolled Kraft paper with shades of brown to make the tree trunks.  Finally, many of my younger students colored round pink and white circles with pink, white, and red oil pastels to make the cherry blossoms.  After a lot of positioning and taping which was done by students, the Sakura orchard (cherry blossom) came to life on the wall. (By the way, 3M double sticky white foam tape is the best for attaching heavy murals to the wall.) Students gasped with delight when it was finished. Waiting and watching for the hall mural to be finished has become quite a big moment for my students. There is a huge pride factor in their collaborative effort. I think that one of the things I enjoy the most about collaborative wall murals is that many of the younger students just simply cannot "picture" what it is going to look like as the various pieces are being made on the art room tables.  As the pieces are being assembled on the hallway wall many still do not see how the final mural is going to look, but slowly they each have their "ah ha" moments when the final picture takes shape in their thought processing. Students enjoyed a bit more fun by holding up the kimonos made with the same foam for a photo-booth type of opportunity. Those are the magical moments for me! Enjoy our Cherry Blossom Mural with Pagoda! We sure have!

The photos below show the wall mural.  There is a "wishing tree" strung in front of it and extended from two large real tree branches set in plaster of paris.  Students wrote their messages on the wishing tree cards. This is also a tradition in Asian countries.

An awesome new tool!

I'm excited about the new Widgets on this Blog!  You will now see a map of the world that shows the many places that educators, students, and others are viewing the Worldwide Color Wheel Project from! It's called ClustrMaps.  We have already had educators from Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Turkey, England, The United Kingdom, Chile, Mexico, Australia, and many other states in the U.S. request project information.  Their locations won't show up on the map unless they come back to the blog, however, as time passes and the project grows it will be very interesting for all the participants and others interested in the project to see our global reach.  Additionally, another Widget called Flag Counter has also been installed. Again, it will show a flag of the countries where our viewers are from, we'll see counts of those interested in the Project, and it will be fun for students and others to have an easy location to view the flags of the many countries of the world.  When art education and all education transcends the four walls of the classroom learning is exponential! 21st century learning!

Philosophy of Art Education

     

     There was a day when elementary art was simply about making cute holiday decorations for the hallway bulletin boards.  There also was a day when most elementary art programs, if they existed in schools, were to offer grade level teachers a time slot for their conference and planning periods.  There was a day when middle school art may have been considered a “blow off” class.  There was a day when high school art was viewed as the only important art program within a school district, or there was no art program at all.  Art education has made many important strides over the years.  Most artists, art educators, and also general education teachers now realize the importance art education can have in the holistic development of the student.  When students are limited to right-side brain thinking or left-side brain thinking, the whole brain is not used or completely active. While the importance our society at large places on art education will continue to ebb and flow, as it has since classical times, art education is home to the development of logical, sequential thinking by students.

     One way students can use the whole brain, further developing their logical, sequential thinking, is by participating in engaging projects. Project based learning is becoming very important in the school setting. Art educators, however, have always experienced the very real, tangible, cognitive,  and visual results of project based learning.  Art educators see the connections, inferences, and transfer of learning acquired via art with other curricula and with life. Art education may now have a place, more than ever before, in the overall education of a child, young adult or adult due to the mainstreaming of technology not only in our schools, but in the art classroom.

      Micro-level thinking must give way to macro-level thinking in art education. Technology is changing students’ world, our world, more rapidly than ever before in . . .

Time for an Istanbul education!

John II Comnenus, Byzantine emperor, and his wife, Irene, with Madonna and child. Mosaic in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, ca. 1118.

With the trip to Istanbul only about eight weeks away, it's time to begin getting educated about this ancient city! I'll be walking its streets soon, writing curriculum based on the adventure, and so it's time for a little research! As of today, most of what I know about Istanbul is from a substantial Art History course I took at Kansas State University in the early 80's.  I still have the 5 inch thick textbook from the course and vividly remember the lectures and looking at the grand slides the professor showed us as she infused her passion for art history into us.  Learning about Constantine, and the Roman and Byzantine empire, the Roman architecture, the Greek Orthodox and the Ottoman influence, and the gorgeous Byzantine mosaics has stayed with me for a long time. Also, some geographic lessons about Turkey have come from Bible studies of the region.  But, at this point in time, that is really my very limited, basic, existing knowledge about Istanbul. So, the pre-journey begins.

I know that Istanbul is where the east and west meet, where Asia and Europe meet. Istanbul is also known for . . .

Sonia King, Marvelous Mosaic Artist

As a part of my Fund For Teachers Fellow Project, I will be attending a mosaic workshop conducted by Sonia King in Istanbul, Turkey.  It's actually very interesting how I came across Sonia's work.  My own students were doing a mosaic project for the Worldwide Color Wheel Project and I was doing some online research related to the project.  This is a global art project I have created to partner art and technology.  The project is about one year old and has been piloted three times and is now literally going global.  The research I was doing was for one of the pilots. Some of my 3rd grade classes were going to make a collaborative table with a mosaic top.  When the project was completed we would be Skyping with a school in Mexico and sharing our projects with each other. Anyway, I am an avid Pinterest pinner for my art program. I was searching . . .