Art: September 2018

The Ratner Montessori School Art Program - 2018-2019

Welcome back to all the families and to our new families, I am so excited to get to know your children. This is my 15th year at The Ratner School and I love the role I have at this remarkable community. Each student comes into art twice a week, every week with the exception of the Kindergarten class. They have one class each week, but it is a longer class of a one hour block to help ease the transitions.

I use this blog post to keep you all informed every week what we are working on in our art program. I will post in progress pictures and a quick description of the projects so you can be better informed about your child's art education. Each week I send out an email stating that the new blog has been posted. If for any reason you do NOT want the email reminder, please let me know

(pfields@theratnerschool.org) and I will remove you from the list.

We are continuing our ongoing collaboration with MOCA Cleveland and I have been working with them throughout the summer developing programing for our partnership. I look forward to several field trips and visits from their education department this year.

For our new families, I display every piece of art the students make in the school. I love hearing the comments and conversations they have about the work and know that the discussions are extremely important to their creative education. All the work will come home, I promise, it just takes time to return it!

The obligatory Kusama shot!

Kindergarten Art

While we have only had art for 3 classes, we have managed to create several pieces. We began the year with a discussion about art, talking about the different kinds of art and why we think art is important. I presented a lesson on how to use tempera paint cakes and introduced the term "concentrics" to the students showing several examples. Each student drew a large concentric pattern of circles on their paper and began by painting each section a different color. This project is a great start to this age group as each student can learn the use of a new material and feel successful with their final piece. The next project was a study of Kandinsky involving the "taking a line for a walk" process. The students began with a large sheet of paper and drew a meandering line carefully over the surface. Zig-zags, loops, straight and curved lines were used to form the compositions. Patterns were added in several areas and then the students added color using the tempera paints. I love this project and always marvel at the results. Our last project was a presentation of self portraits. We again looked at several examples and talked about the proportions of faces. The students all had mirrors to look at themselves while they drew their portraits. Freckles, curly hair or straight hair, big eyes, smiles or frowns were just a few of the features the students noticed about themselves as they drew their portraits. All the work of our Kindergarten artists is hanging in the first floor of the school, including the gallery space by the gym. I hope you will get a chance to look at the work and begin a conversation with your child about their work.

1st, 2nd and 3rd Grade Art

While we have not yet had a full week of art yet, we have created several piece of art and explored many different materials! We began the year with a free form painting and mixed media composition using cut vinyl shapes, marker and watercolor paint. The students began to recall the art vocabulary previously learned and used line, shape, color and pattern to create their abstract piece that are now displayed outside their main classrooms. This project allows me to access their control of materials, ability to follow verbal and visual cues and their willingness to continue working on a piece longer term. Following the first project, we took a couple of classes to work on observational drawings. The students choose their subjects from my bank of objects and tried to only draw what they saw. This is a difficult but important skill to learn and the students all show marked improvement after several drawings are completed. Our last and current project is a type font based project that is a collaboration with the study of writing tools the students are learning about in their main classrooms. We looked at several different tools and methods of creating type including a manual typewriter, fountain pens, quills and vinyl letters. The students are creating a work of art using several methods to create letters to form a visual construction of type fonts. This is a new project and they seem to be enjoying the exploration and heightened awareness of different styles of type fonts. We should complete the work this week.

4th, 5th and 6th Grade Art

We had a slow roll start to our year in art. After the first week of orientation, the students began their work in art with our traditional observational drawings. The students worked on slowing down their work, adding details and trying to draw what they saw as opposed to what they thought the object looked like. This is a gradual building of visual literacy, strengthening the skills of the student. After several observational drawings were completed, the student could choose one object to draw for a full 40 minute class. Several details and color were added to complete the work. Our next and current project is a formal lesson on one point perspective. While this method is not based is creative expression, it is a valuable tool to have in creating art. I showed a video on the method in the Maker Space and then walked the classes through the process step by step. The students began adding details and color to their work this week and will complete the process next week. As we have yet to have a full week of classes, this project is taking some time to complete!

7th and 8th Grade

We began the school year a bit differently this year starting our art education with a two class free choice project. The students could choose any material, subject matter or direction they wished to work on. The pieces offered me a quick overview of skills, interests and independent work strengths to build on throughout the trimester. We took a class to settle into our observational drawings of objects to build up to the Scholastic Art still life project. For my new families, every year our 7th and 8th grade students work for several weeks creating a work of art to enter into the annual Scholastic Art competition. While I am not an advocate for art competitions, this opportunity to enter Scholastics has proven to be a strong tool in building confidence and long term skills in the students. Each student creates their own still life to work from using personal objects or building their composition from my collection of objects. We have completed the transfer of information and several students are already adding color to their work. This is a long term project that will last through October.