Carmen Lomas Garza: Watercolor cactus

Carmen Lomas Garza is a Latina narrative artist who created images about the everyday events in the lives of Mexican Americans based on her memories and experiences in South Texas. Although she wouldn't be considered a "modern artist" because of the time period in which she was working, I thought it was important to share with the students that Garza validated styles classified as "folk art", and that her imagery was powerful, even in it's simplicity.

I was inspired by one of her pieces, Prickly Pear/ A little piece of my heart because of it's illustrative quality. For this project, I kept the materials to a minimum, so that the students could really explore the creative and technical skills they've acquired while working with paint and color pencils.

• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of Bristol board or Canson watercolor paper. When you are using a wet medium and applying a dry one, you need a paper that can hold up. A floppy piece of construction paper/poster board/drawing paper will simply not do.
• I had several pictures of different varieties of cactus and I showed them to the students, so they would be inspired by all the shapes and colors. They picked their favorite and completed a light sketch.
• Remind students that whenever they are going to use watercolor, any/all of their pencil lines will show through. So they should practice with a light hand.
• After students completed their sketch, they painted their cacti using watercolor paint.
• Once that was dry, they painted a watercolor wash over the background, using several different colors, to give it a rich look.
  
• I handed out prismacolor pencils to the students so that they could enhance the shape of their cactus. Forget using cheap student grade color pencils. All they will do is break down your paper and possible create holes. You will never get any sort of vibrant color from them so toss them out and invest in a good quality student grade and/or artist grade set from Dick Blick. Personally, I am a loyal fan of Prismacolor pencils, but I understand that they are a little too pricey for the classroom. I've had a set for the past fifteen years that are still in great condition.
• Last step is to give the watercolor a tactile edge by cutting out pieces of scrapbooking paper to create the spines/thorns of the cactus. Encourage students to be very sparing of the glue, or else they will make a mess! I prefer stick glue to liquid.

The artwork above was created by a fifth grader.

Louise Nevelson: Found Object Sculpture

I am a big fan of American sculptor Louise Nevelson. She appeals to my love of symmetry and found object sculpture. She is well known for assembling "crates" grouped together to form a new creation, then painted in a uniform color to unite the objects.

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."--Nevelson

As is my custom, I've been mulling over a Nevelson project for quite sometime now. I found an interesting take on the project here, but I had my own ideas to take the project to another level, to appeal to my older students.

I have six children, so broken toys, mismatched legos, naked dolls and bits of junk abound. So what I did was, with my kids, go through all of their toy bins. We pulled out stuff they no longer played with, multiples, etc. etc. This was a good way to clean up their stuff, so I totally killed two birds with one stone.

And now I had a collection of things for our sculpture. I wish I had a pic of the sculpture that was created with a doll head that I sawed in two, but it came out completely blurry and the student took it home. Boo hoo. It turned out fab, though. And the doll heads cut in half were big ticket items the day we spent assembling sculptures, to be sure.

Heads up: This was a project that I had to extend into two class sessions. There is too much to do in one class period, even with classroom helpers.

• Acquire some sturdy cardboard as the base for your sculpture. I used the backing from all of my Canson Value Artist pads because I had so many laying around. They worked out perfectly. Of course you can used regular old cardboard and cut it down to the size you wanted to work with. We worked with a 9 X 12 piece.
• Arrange your classroom so you have three working stations: one to assemble, one to glue with hot glue gun and the third for painting. This will make life easier for you because there are always students who rush through their work, and others who are very meticulous.
  
• The fun part: after showing students examples of Nevelson's work, they got to dig into my found object/toy graveyard piles and pick out objects they wanted to work with. Break up the squabbles over the coveted doll heads and airplane parts.
• Encourage students to explore different arrangements just as Nevelson did.
• Then its off to the hot glue gun table. Yes, it might be a little time consuming and I usually melt off half of my fingertips, the end result is much neater and more sturdy compared to basic white glue.
• This is the point where I end the first part of the project. Now I get to lug home all of these sculptures. Yay!
• To prepare for day #2, you will need some white primer. Any primer will do. Students will need to paint a coat of primer over their sculptures so that the paint will adhere to the toys/buttons/dominos/matchbox cars, etc. I also mixed up my own shade of charcoal gray. I believe matte looks best.
  
• On day #2, let students go to town priming their sculptures. The challenge is to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the toys. Primer dries fairly quickly, but if you want to speed along the process, break out with the hair dryer.
• After the primer coat is dry, they need to paint using the charcoal grey color. I choose this color so it would look similar to Nevelson's pieces. Several of the students asked why they couldn't use blue or red...so feel free to use whatever color you want. Use the hair dryer again.
  
• IMHO, the charcoal grey made the sculptures look very dynamic.
  
• At our open house at the end of the semester, these sculptures were one of the most eye-catching displays.
  

The sculpture above was created by a third grader. As you can see, he couldn't quite get the paint into the thread spools and lego nooks. Still looks cool, though!