Art show and Visiting Artist

This first week of May has been a busy one! We had our Art show and Spring concert (Festival of the Arts) on Wednesday while also celebrating our visiting artist, Jenna Price! Jenna is a woodworking artist that creates awesome creations out of wood, both large and small. Her work can be found at www.honeybadgerwoodworks.com/

Jenna made a class wooden birdhouse with the students, from concept to completion. The project took two weeks to complete, in which the students made imaginative sketches of what they envisioned a birdhouse would look like, to which Jenna took their ideas and meshed them together into a completed
birdhouse design.

The second week, the students measured, sanded, and painted various parts and pieces of the birdhouse, while practicing hammering, sawing (yes!!!) and drilling (more yes!!!!). This was a tall task to the K/1 set, and they really loved the hands-on process of building something from concept to completion! 

Below is a gallery of the final birdhouses on the day of the Art show...

Onward to the Art show! This year's theme was "Elements.. earth/air/fire/water", a broad theme that encompassed a variety of different artworks, mediums, and materials. I was really inspired this year by a lot of work that I saw this year at the NAEA conference as well as some ideas from fellow art ed bloggers.
Take a look at the artwork below!

I love to inspire the students with contemporary artists, as well as old masters, so that they remember the new and the old! As I reflect on this year's show, I tried to let go of some traditional notions of what art show artwork should look like, as some of the artworks favor abstraction over representation, which more closely followed the artist's style, process, and technique. My favorites are the big, scribbly paintings that were inspired by kinesthetic artist, Heather Hansen. They also remind me of one of my favorite artists, Cy Twombly. I also enjoyed introducing some of my students to Yayoi Kusama, which inspired the large dot paintings.

Even though art show season is crazy busy time of year, it is the time of year I most look forward to. I get so excited to see what other art teachers are doing.. we are able to connect to each other and share these experiences. I think we all find way to push each other harder and push the boundaries of what the students can do. I am looking forward to seeing what next year brings :)