Welcome to the ICMS Art Classroom!

Welcome to the Irvington Community Middle School Art blog! This blog began in 2010 when ICMS began it's first year separate from the elementary school. I wanted to begin this year with a 'virtual tour blog' of  classroom to introduce the 'what's' and 'why's' of the ICMS art room.

One of the first things we did in art class last year was to come up with a list, in each class, of "Why Art Matters!". I combined all the lists from every class as well as used some information from educational research studies to come up with a core list of sixteen reasons for "Why Art Matters!" as you will see below.

1. It's FUN!

2. You can express yourself

3. Art makes life entertaining

4. It's a DE-stressor

5. Art designs and defines our world

6. It can help us remember the past

7. Art promotes kinesthetic learning

8. Art helps us create and construct from our imagination

9. Art aids in discovery and research

10. Schools with art programs do better on standardized tests

11. Art gives us skills like self-criticism and self-correction that readies us for the workforce

12. Art is emotionally satisfying

13. Art can help you have an open mind so that you can see things differently

14. It's humanizing in a technological society

15. Art helps us with our spatial perception

16. It uses higher level thinking skills that can help us in other subjects

One thing we like to do at ICMS is recycle. Recycled materials, such as newspapers, magazines, old books, paper towel rolls and even laundry detergent caps can be used for creating works of art!

If a student gets finished with a project earlier than the rest of the class, they have the option of coloring an Art History coloring sheet of their favorite paintings through time.

Every month, we learn about a different art style or 'ism'. September's art style was 'Art Nouveau'. We look at the images of the art on the overhead, reflecting, analyzing and critically thinking about their meanings. These images also stay up on our 'Ism Board' for the entire month.

 

Students have the opportunity to win a prize from the prize box if they can tell me the name of the Artist of the Month at the end of each month. September's Artist of the Month was Katsushika Hokusai.

Radial Designs-6th Grade

For the 6th grader's first project of the year we worked on a project called Radial Designs. Students begin with at least five dots anywhere on their page. Their job is to then 'radiate' from the center of those dots using nice smooth circular lines. No line is allowed to touch another. This usually proves more difficult than it looks. I am very interested in cross-curricular lesson planning by bringing other subjects into the art room. During this project we talk about some math vocabulary especially when it comes to radial symmetries. I connected this math concept to art history by showing works from the 1960's Op Art movement. Much of the art, but not all, produced during this period utilized radial symmetry. I've noticed that students are usually very intrigued by this type of art. Work like M.C. Escher, the Magic Eye series and even Martin Handford of  "Where's Waldo" fame come to mind.
During this project we also studied color theory in depth. The students were able to look at works of art and tell me whether the artist used complimentary, analogous or monochromatic color schemes. We even looked at some fast food chain logos and discovered that many of these logos are designed with colors that make each other pop out (complimentary) to draw your eye. For this project, the six graders chose either a complimentary, analogous or monochromatic color scheme to complete their designs.

Altered Art Books- 8th grader's year-long project

Altering books has been an art form since the Victorian period, but not until recently did it have such popularity. Regular old, worn, used or damaged books may be altered into a work of art by changing their original use (to read) and perhaps even their form through various artistic techniques.

At the beginning of the school year, each 8th grader was given an old book to alter during the course of the year. They were able to work on them on certain days set aside just for the books as well as when they got finished early with a project. Some students even chose to take them home from time to time.

Although there was a lot of freedom with this project, I did set up a timeline so that there was a specific set of goals I needed the students to meet for each quarter.

1st quarter- The students added five tabs that broke their book up into sections. The sections are: Family, Friends, School, Sports and Free Space. They had the option of trading out one of the tabs for a second Free Space if they wanted. Some turned their Free Space into a 'Me Space' or a 'Goals' section. One student used his Free Space to show 'Art Styles'.
Each student's tabs could be different. Some students used pieces of colored paper glued to the edge of the page and staggered throughout the book as you might find in an old encyclopedia. Others tried something different by braiding yarn and gluing the loops between two pages.

2nd quarter- This quarter we focused on decorating the first page of each section (Family, Friends, School, Sports, Free Space). You will see some examples of these below.

3rd quarter- Third quarter was when we got the pages in our books filled. Each section was to have at least four pages. Pages were decorated with collage, paint, glitter,  stitching, pockets, pop-outs and basically anything that they could creatively think up!

4th quarter- Last but not least, students added a cover to their book that was to represent themselves.

Below are images of the students' books and some of the pages that are within. Enjoy!