Description of the Unit – When I was about eight years old, an uncle of mine returned from working abroad in Jakarta, Indonesia, and brought back a pair of Wayang Golek rod puppets. These two-foot tall dolls both frightened and fascinated me, with their elaborately painted, expressive faces and beautifully dyed, patterned clothes. Many years later I learned that these puppets were related to another Indonesian puppetry art-form: the Wayang Kulit shadow puppets. These puppets are mostly two-dimensional and are manipulated in front of a diaphanous, backlit screen. The puppets themselves have designs and patterns cut into them making them look almost lace-like, adding to the characteristics of individual puppets.
Continue reading “Kindergarten – Halloween Shadow Puppets inspired by Wayang Kulit puppets”Month: June 2020
7th Grade – Movement, Repetition and Balance with Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe
Description of the Unit – Emphasizing movement, balance and repetition with Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe
This unit revisits a second-grade unit which also focused on the Hourloupe to practice line and pattern; here we go further to practice the above-mentioned principles of design.
Continue reading “7th Grade – Movement, Repetition and Balance with Jean Dubuffet’s Hourloupe”6th Grade – Architectural Foil Repousse inspired by artist Stephen Wiltshire
Description of the Unit –
Students will learn about the life and work of artist Stephen Wiltshire. Using his incredibly detailed drawings of buildings and cityscapes, students will create a mini architectural drawing that they will then transfer onto foil.

5th Grade – The Eye of the Dragon!
Description of the Unit –
Students will use a variety of artistic techniques to create a bright, vivid and wildly textured magnified dragon eye. When you look through the students’ dragon eyes below, note how remarkably unique each one is: it speaks to the fact that by 5th grade, many students are really beginning to hone in on their personal artistic styles!

4th Grade – Suzanne Valadon and subjective approaches
Description of the Unit –
This unit will be guided by both technique and style. Students will observe the work of Impressionist painter Suzanne Valadon and discuss ways in which her paintings, particularly of animals, are impressionistic. How does Impressionism differ from realism?
Continue reading “4th Grade – Suzanne Valadon and subjective approaches”3rd Grade – Paul Klee’s Magic Square Series
Description of the Unit –
Students delve into a particular period of Paul Klee’s art, the “Magic Square” series. Students use their observations of Klee’s work to create their own cityscape in oil pastels, focusing primarily on geometric shapes and using one tone of color dotted with its complementary color.
Continue reading “3rd Grade – Paul Klee’s Magic Square Series”8th Grade – The Art of Dale Chihuly
Description of the Unit –
This unit focuses explicitly on Dale Chihuly: his life, his art. The artmaking pursued in this unit is inspired by one of Chihuly’s most well-known themes: the bowl.

7th Grade – Colored Pencil Techniques and Still Life
Description of the Unit –
Students will learn and practice essential colored pencil techniques involving mark-making and shading to create a still life.
Activity statement –
Coloring with colored pencils can be a deeply rich and satisfying experience. Something about the feel of the medium as it is spread across paper, and then combined with other colors to slowly come to life, can be both thrilling and meditative. Given some basic techniques students can achieve highly rewarding results.

6th Grade – Chiaroscuro Still Life Drawing and CJ Hendry
Description of the Unit –
We begin by diving into the fascinating art of CJ Hendry. Hendry expresses having no formal art training and considers herself “not very creative.” Yet she’s a dedicated, innovative artist whose works are primarily hyper-realistic, large scale pencil drawings of (mostly) luxury objects that sometimes take 200 hours to complete. Working with pencil on paper her pieces are achieved through layers of what she refers to as scribbles. Watching her work (you can see some fun videos of her at work here: https://youtu.be/KB8vc9M4QWs and https://youtu.be/KixMpzhMS-o) students become awe-struck by the way her tireless pencil strokes become such lifelike, more-than-photographic representations of real-life objects. They wonder aloud how she does it, exclaiming that they would love to draw like Hendry. I tell them that this unit will give them a foundation for getting there.
