I started a full year placement as a resident artist in a local elementary school last week. Thanks to a grant from the Ontario Arts Council I am able to work with 8 classes at St. Martin Jr. Catholic school here in Thunder Bay.
The grade levels participating are grades one, two, four, five and six.
I have taken on four classroom projects for the fall semester and visit twice a week.
As a kickoff to the junior primary visits I gave them a fun mixed media project that marries a bit of simple printmaking with collage. The theme was "Scary Monsters".
The technique is fairly simple. We used flattened unbleached coffee filters and washable colour markers to create a colourful template. Water is sprayed on these and prints are made by setting white paper over top and then transferring off the filter using a bit of pressure from various types of roller tools.
Once these were dry the students cut out various geometric shapes they had traced onto construction paper and glued these over top of the prints. They then cut out the face.
This activity was ideal for the time frame of one hour visits. Visit #1 saw creation of the colour filters and printing onto paper.
Visit #2 involved the cut and paste.
The grade six class I am currently visiting are going to be undertaking a drypoint on acrylic plate project. It might also include a bit of collage or relief roll. I will post a blog entry relating to the project later on once I have some photos.
Here are some photos from the Scary Monsters project.
applying colours onto flat unbleached coffee filters using washable colour markers
student with abstract design...this will become the background or "skin" for the monster face
grade two - teacher Mrs. Hindmann
transferring the print to paper using a soft rubber brayer
brilliant colour abstract on a coffee filter
this design sort of created itself purely by accident
arranging and applying the cut construction paper shapes with stick glue
student cuts out face shape after gluing down the construction paper shapes
interesting shapes were used to make a hideous face
a fun face creation
grade one - teacher Mrs. Wright
various faces created by grade one/two students from Mrs. Savioli's class
scary face created by grade two student
