Lesson 5 aros2

November 17th 2021

lesson page

What Worked Well / Interpretation/Content Meaning:

This was our fifth and final meeting with our Artistic Abilities students, and we had 7 individuals present for this lesson. For this lesson we had students create relief landscape fabric collages which we then colored with shaving cream paintings. That being said we did have a couple of issues with this lesson. I think the positives of this lesson was it was a great way to teach a new technique in a new way. We were also able to talk about the textures of things in nature and then connect that to the fabric we were using. This allowed us to have several meaningful conversations about texture and layering. It was also a positive because it allowed us to talk about another way to create 3D art. It was also an activity where we allowed students to work and then brought them back together for different steps which I think was very successful and we have not done that previously. I think utilizing those broken up sections before demonstrating something complex like the next steps worked really well and allowed students to ideate different sections at different times which resulted in very interesting development of ideas and final products.

What Did Not Work / Personal Significance:

As stated there were a couple of issues that arose during this lesson, they were small but were also very helpful for thinking about depth and layering. While some students were able to layer one piece of fabric on another several of them did not go beyond this. We also had to probe them about things like textures of landscapes and representations of that as well. Illustrating different ways of layering such as overlap, and ideation practice of laying things down before gluing were vital for the students learning for this assignment. Really allowed for them to think about it and achieve the end result. After discussing with Alison at the end of the lesson she again brought up differentiation and how viewing someone do something works very well for these students. When it came to coloring the fabric we got that cross connection of colors from the previous lesson which was great, and it was this different texture so it really allowed us to hammer home that concept as well, but it was very messy and several students were concerned about this aspect of it, we had to have a few conversations about how art can be messy sometimes but that it was okay to get messy, and they could ask for help if they needed it. Taking the time to slow down and discuss these concerns really helped the students feel confident in their art and the process of making it. Moral of the story is every individual and artist sometimes feels concerned with the process or steps to make it, but addressing those issues and coming up with new ways to think about them and overcome them can help students feel more confident in their art making.

Future Actions:

I learned so much from this experience, especially since I in my own personal art tend to utilize 2D medias, teaching this class really allowed me to think about ways to incorporate 3D and keep the techniques and skills different and fun for the students. I will take everything I learned from this class and in the future I will continue to address students concerns and invite them to creative problem solve solutions with me. And by doing so I hope students may feel more confident in their plan and how they want to create something. I will also utilize step break downs, and changing up the pacing of lessons to allow students to focus on different tasks at different times. I hope to continuing to implement everything I have learned to continue to build stronger connections for my students.

Documentation:

This student was struggling with how to create a tree and immediately cut it out. So we talked about what different shapes a tree could be broken into and how to create it. We also used some differentiation and instead of directly cutting the fabric we drew out the shapes and then cut them out which helped the student think about the steps to create the piece easier.

This student wanted to depict grass, so we talked about the colors and shapes that made up grass. She really wanted her grass to look realistic but to create depth so she continued to layer lots and lots of green felt on top of the brown to create sections of grass coming out of the dirt or ground brown felt she used.

This student chose to paint his with blue because that is the color of the sky, he expressed that the swirling blue shades of the shaving cream painting made it look like clouds in the sky. He also was able to create this really unique texture with his piece which we talked about how that it another way to add depth to art, using the look of texture and real texture. We also had a discussion on what texture is by feeling different surfaces to see if we could anticipate how something would feel by looking at it.

This student wanted to create snow, so she chose purples and blues because that is what snow looks like at nighttime, I took sometime to talk about why that may be with this student. Asking her questions like "what does snow look like during the day? what colors?" and why she thought that might be, we talked about how light can change the looks of colors and the feelings of those colors.