Description of the Unit – Students will celebrate Día de los Muertos by sculpting and designing their own “sugar” skulls (with clay) and setting them onto a colorful patterned background.
4th Grade – Día de los Muertos “Sugar” Skulls!
Category: Sculpture
3rd Grade – Clay Aquarium Relief Sculpture
Description of the Unit – Students will create a kind of relief sculpture, an aquarium out of clay that will include sea creatures in a variety of organic and geometric shapes. Students will paint their aquariums, using bright, bold colors for emphasis.
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1st Grade – Found Object Sculpture
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore the history of found object sculpture and create numerous sculptures of their own in a play-based approach with a variety of objects.
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Kindergarten – Andy Goldsworthy’s Environmental Art
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral land art, then venture outside to come up with their own environmental sculptures.
Activity statement –
Andy Goldsworthy is known as an environmental or land artist. What this means is that he uses natural artifacts—branches, leaves, rocks, ice, etc.—to create his sculptures and installations. Goldsworthy’s art is also temporary. He never creates anything that won’t eventually be destroyed by waves, wind and natural processes. Goldsworthy invites the viewer to contemplate the ephemeral, transitory beauty of the natural world. His works involve the use of pattern, color and balance. Interestingly, all of the color in his work comes from the objects themselves, never from him painting any of it. So for example, if you look at the image that looks like a tree trunk ringed with glowing light or fire, he simply used fallen gold and orange leaves to give it that effect.
8th Grade – Playing with Pedro Linares’ Alebrije
Description of the Unit –
Students learned about Mexican artist Pedro Linares López and his fantastical, wild Alebrijes, imaginative and colorful papier-mâché creatures that Linares originated. Students created their own Alebrijes out of clay, paint and various objects.
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7th Grade – The Art of Assemblage with Louise Nevelson
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore the monochromatic, rhythmic and balanced found-art assemblages of Louise Nevelson, and create their own assemblages both individually and in small groups.
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5th Grade – Alexander Calder and Kinetic Sculptures
Description of the Unit –
Students will explore the whimsical, yet ordered and divinely balanced kinetic sculptures of Alexander Calder, using his work as inspiration for their own kinetic sculpture.
3rd Grade – Aliens! Found object sculptures
Description of the Unit –
This unit supports the interdisciplinary 3rd grade unit of study on space and the universe which students are working on in science, history, music and writing as well as art. In art class students will construct alien creatures out of repurposed objects, and design planets in oil pastels for the backdrop in their music show. This post will focus on the found-object aliens.
6th Grade – Emphasis and Distortion in Wire Figure Sculpture, inspired by Alberto Giacometti and Ernie Barnes
Description of the Unit –
Observing the distorted gestural figure sculptures of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), as well as the elongated, rhythmic figure paintings by Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) that both emphasize and exaggerate long limbs, students will create similarly distorted, gestural sculptures primarily out of wire.
3rd Grade – 2-D and 3-D designs à la Keith Haring
Line & Color with Keith Haring
Description of the Unit –
Students explored the work of contemporary New York artist Keith Haring. A crafty, resourceful and thoughtful artist, Haring created artwork with powerful messages using deceptively simple, cartoon-like designs in a variety of spaces, both private and public. His work was accessible to a diverse public in ways few artists had achieved.
Students observed and discussed his use of bold, primary and secondary colors, but more importantly they focused on Haring’s use of straightforward line to suggest movement, gesture and feeling. Students attempted their own designs inspired by the characteristics of Haring’s work. The first lesson had students create designs in 2-D, the second in 3-D.
