The Ratner School Art Program

We are all looking forward to our upcoming Spring Break and were busy creating and finishing projects in art. All the glazing has been completed on the K-6th grade ceramic work and the 7th-8th grade face jugs have finally dried out completely. We have been printing and painting this week and have almost filled the drying rack to the top several times this week. I hope you all enjoy a restful and rejuvenating break.

Over 40 shelves full of art

Kindergarten Art 

We are now in week 24 in the Art and Humanities program. While the students are learning about the spring equinox and continuing the study of Ohio, we learned about the Ohio illustrator Charley Harper. We looked at several examples of his work and notices how he simplified animal and plants to shapes and forms. We studied the illustration of the Ohio state bird, the cardinal, and named the shapes Charley Harper used to create his artwork. The students drew the shapes on different colors of construction paper and cut the shapes out. The pieces were glued on a sheet of watercolor paper and details were drawn on with a marker. On Thursday the students used watercolor paint to complete their work. If you are interested in learning more about Charley Harper, visit his website at https://charleyharperartstudio.com/.

I can feel the joy of this artist in this piece of art he created.

1st and 2nd Grade Art

We had so much fun printing our plates of the monster in a box project! The art room was a flurry of ink, squeals of excitement and many trials and errors. It was the best kind of chaotic energy, full of experiments, failures and successes. The students have decided that they want to write stories about the monsters they created and we will work with Mr. K and Ms. G to write in their classroom. After the stories are written, they want to put all the prints and stories together and make a book for the Ratner School library. I thought is was a fantastic idea and will do my best to help make it happen. We will continue working on the next step of the monster project on Monday.

1st pulled prints

Many more Monsters

Many Monsters

3rd and 4th Grade Art

We began a new project this week in art. They enjoyed the more immediate results of the landscape project and I wanted the students to have a quicker project to complete after the hard work they did on the ceramic unit. We began designing and sketching creatures that had at least five different elements to their design. Fur, metal, a head of a lion and a tail of a kangaroo, any combination of animal, vegetable or mineral could be used in the design of their creature. Attention to detail, form and use of imagination were the cornerstones of this project. The sketches will be transferred onto printing plates so the students can pull several prints of their image. They have created some wonderful designs and worked through several ideas. The 4th grade class began the drawing transfer this week and the 3rd grade will transfer their drawings on Monday.

An inside view of our kiln with the first glaze firing,

5th and 6th Grade Art

The final clear glaze was applied to the bobble head ceramic pieces and the first firing of three kiln loads is working as I write this update. I am so excited to finally be at this stage of the project and I know the students are equally anxious to see the results of their hard work. We continued working on the CVNP landscape project and many of the students are more than half way done with their work. I am pleased to see the exploration of new techniques and methods with their process and the spirit of experimentation.

Visions of spring from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park

                                          

7th and 8th Grade Art

We had a full week of art and nearly every student has begun mixing their paint colors for the landscape project. They are experiencing how difficult matching values and color intensity with acrylic paint can be. They are finding that a little color change goes a long way in mixing and they are showing improvement in mixing skills. I am encouraging them to find the overall tone or base color to lay down a field of color before they start their detail work. This seems logical, but it is difficult for students this age to see the "big picture" and do the ground work before the detail work is added. It is the process, not the product that we are focused on with this project.

The Ratner School Art Program

We can all feel, hear and smell the wonderful coming of spring and the excitement is evident with the energy in the art room! The students are all moving at a quickened pace and producing a wide range of creative art. It is great to see everyone coming out of winter hibernation mode. This week brought landscapes, glazing of ceramic art, painting, printing and a field trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Kindergarten Art

Week 23 in the Kindergarten Art and Humanities class brings us another short week because of conferences. We continued our study of E.B. White and the reading of Charlotte's Web. To tie into the study of this beloved author, we talked about the development of characters in literature. How does an author show us a character and how would an artist show a character? We looked at samples of other illustrators and began to think how we would tell a story using only pictures. The students talked about activities they liked to do outside of school and how they would illustrate that story line. With inked thumbprints as the basic form of their characters, each artist added their own details and settings to create a unique book. I hope you enjoyed hearing their stories and viewing all the artwork they brought home this week. 

1st and 2nd Grade Art

With the completion of the ink and pastel landscapes, we quickly moved into our next unit. One of my favorite elements of teaching this age student is the development of their imagination. They are beginning to realize the difference between reality and fantasy, between fact and fiction. I try to balance this stage of development with the "Monster in the Closet" printing project. We talk about our imaginations, how we can make something seem real just by picturing it with great detail in our minds. The students sketched out their imaginary monsters, using various animal textures for reference. We often use the phrase "The more details, the more interesting the story" to remind everyone to add enough information to convey their ideas. After they created several sketches and ideas, the next class was used to transfer the ideas onto a foam printing plate. We learned about other printing techniques artists use and learning that some artists engrave metal for prints made the pressure needed for our prints seem easier! I was so pleased to see that most of the "monsters" created were not at all scary or frightening, but highly imaginative and creative. Next week brings inking the plates and pulling some prints.

Examples of the monsters drawn on the foam printing plate

3rd and 4th Grade Art

Everyone completed the landscape project and they seemed to be very pleased with the end result. I was glad to see the India ink worked well on top of the chalk pastel. The experiment with materials worked and the students gained valuable skills with this project. We were all surprised at the quality and mood of the landscapes and appreciated the diverse approach everyone took. Along with finishing the landscape project, the ceramic boxes were glazed this week. Please be patient with seeing the glazed results, the kiln is small and I have to be able to monitor the firings for 8 hours. I am excited to see the final stage of their hard work completed.

Applying the ink trees

5th and 6th Grade Art

We had another busy week creating and the students were able to change gears this week to apply the glaze to their bobble heads. I have a tight  schedule with the kiln and hope to begin the glaze firing next week. We had the great opportunity to visit MOCA Cleveland this week to have a real field trip! The students were incredibly engaged and offered fantastic insights and comments. We viewed three diverse shows with different mediums and materials used and the students came away energized and inspired. We are fortunate to have so many world class museums to explore and I encourage you again to try and take advantage of them.

Enthralled by Jessica Eaton's optical photographs

Enjoying the Museum of Contemporary Art

                                 

7th and 8th Grade Art

We continued to work on sketching out the landscapes to get the accurate map of information before the color mixing part begins. We are focusing on images from impressionist painters to see how colors are layered and mixed. The focus of this study is to learn how to mix paint colors and how the application of the paint changes the mood of the piece. Small squares were cut from their chosen color copy landscape to give a window of reference on the sketches.  Some students have begun laying down their first layer of color.  The face jugs are still drying and we are all anxious to get the dried pieces fired in the kiln. 

Examples of some of the landscape references

The Ratner School Art Program

Another full week of school brought the constant flurry of art being created. We are wrapping up the construction of our last clay projects and are looking forward to the coming of spring with our minds on landscapes. 

Kindergarten Art

We are now in week 22 of Art and Humanities. We made our paper on Monday and had a fantastic and messy time in the process. The students were amazed at the smooth texture of the wet pulp and how fragile the paper was in the wet stage. While small groups of students were screening the paper, the class began working on the printing plates for the Maya Angelou unit. I read them 3 quotes from Maya Angelou and asked them to close their eyes and imagine an image in their head. We talked about the meaning of the quotes and how they could illustrate the quote.  Each image drawn was inscribed into the printing plate with a pencil using strong pressure. The plates were then inked and printed. Each student pulled a print and I was so impressed with the control of materials and how wonderful the prints looked. On Thursday, one print was colored with pencil and the other print will remain black and white. Look for more work to come home this week as I begin to display the prints.

1st and 2nd Grade Art

The students worked on the application of pastels for their landscapes and learned how to blend the colors and keep a clear horizon line. On Wednesday they added the silhouettes of their trees to complete their piece. They showed the influence of our earlier observational drawings of trees in their work and I was glad to see the lesson stayed with them. Just a quick housekeeping note: When you are in for conferences on Thursday and Friday, can you please take home your child's quilt piece from the gallery? The figures attached to the pieces are fragile and I think they will be safer in your hands! 

3rd and 4th Grade Art

The students in 4th grade finished the landscape project today and added the India ink trees to the pastel backgrounds. I was very impressed with the style, scale and details the students achieved. The 3rd grade class will add the India ink trees Monday. The students were so pleased with their work and are excited to share them. Be sure to look for them during conferences. We will begin glazing the animal boxes next week. 

5th and 6th Grade Art

The students had an extremely productive week in art. They were all well focused and on task. We were able to play music (classical, pop and Motown) and everyone showed great progress on their landscape sections. If your child mentions a field trip, we did go down to the basement to see the kiln where the bobble heads were firing! It is a whole other world downstairs and they enjoyed the "field trip." We will glaze their bobble heads next week in art.

Painting cattails with a comb

7th and 8th Grade Art

We have had a productive week in art and I am pleased to say that the last face jug was completed today! It is not a secret to the middle school students that clay is not my medium of choice for creating art, but I am beginning to appreciate the diverse projects that can be achieved with clay. Although everything in the art room has a fine coating of clay dust on it and my hands are dry and cracked beyond repair, I think the end result may just be worth it. We began on our landscape projects today and I will tell you more about that next week.

Just a few of the many face jugs beginning to dry for the kiln