Matisse Windsocks

In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he started using a wheelchair.  However, Matisse’s extraordinary creativity was not be dampened for long. “Une seconde vie”, a second life, was what he called the last fourteen years of his life. Following an operation he found renewed  and unexpected energies and the beautiful Russian-born assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, to keep him company. 

Vast in scale (though not always in size), lush and rigorous in color, his cutouts are among the most admired and influential works of Matisse’s entire career.  By maneuvering scissors through prepared sheets of paper, he inaugurated a new phase of his career.

We applied the concept of cutting paper to make shapes found in Matisse’s famous cut paper compositions.  The composition was rolled and turned into a windsock to prove that art can take on many forms and functions – some as whimsical as the works Matisse drew with his scissors!

Michael Hall: Author Visit

On March 7, Michael Hall the author of My Heart is Like a Zoo and Perfect Square, visited our Treehouse and shared his book, It's an Orange Aardvark!  To welcome him to our school, we read My Heart is Like a Zoo and Perfect Square and created some artwork inspired by his illustrations.  

Kindergarten students used painted scraps of paper to cut and design environments for their animal pictures.  Their children had to include at least one heart in their animal composition, just like Michael Hall's pictures.  The created homes, forests, and other environments with additional scraps.  Finally, they shared a narrative of their composition to help the viewer appreciate the context of their image.

Jackson Pollock Birdies

 Eva Crawford is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina.  She loves to work with mixed media and teaches high school art.  Her 3 little birds, like the Bob Marley song, sit waiting on her doorstep!

Students sponged and splatter painted a large piece of paper in the style of Crawford and Jackson Pollock.  Later, we cut them into bird shapes and gave them beaks, eyes and legs with oil pastels.  They're currently hanging in the main hallway.

Clay Fortune Cookies

Second grade students created beautiful pop art inspired fortune cookies.  They were able to craft the extra large clay cookies after a few practice rounds making small fortune versions.  

Students designed their cookies with a theme which they later applied to their cookie with sharpie and watercolors.  Later, they designed take out containers to match the theme of their cookies.

Lighthouses of the Great Lakes

Lake Michigan has more lighthouses than the other Great Lakes.  It seems like every little town along the shore has a river emptying into the lake, with a lighthouse guarding the entrance.  

Lake Michigan is full of "pier lights", usually found at the mouth of a river.  Students created their own lighthouses using many different techniques.  They applied a value scale with oil pastels, bleeding and blending with watercolors, collage, and acrylic texture painting to create realistic rocks.  They were displayed proudly as a feature for our local history music presentation in April.

Check out this website to learn more about the Great Lakes Lighthouses.

Wayne Thiebaud's Clay Cupcakes

Are our cupcakes making you hungry? Please don't take a bite - you might chip a tooth! Our cupcakes are made from clay the Wayne Theibeau way. 

Theibeau is best known for his paintings of cakes, pies, and desserts. 

They make people nastalgic for home cooked meals and special events with friends and family.

After spending time learning about Theibeau, students filled individual silicone cupcake cups with clay and then added their own personal flair to the top of their cupcakes. 
With talent like this, we're sure to one day see our students on "Cupcake Wars" or opening their own bakery!

Optical Art

Fifth grade students were introduced to the construction of optical art, and the idea that line and color can be used to create illusions in the brain.

They traced their hands and were challenged to draw rounded lines with consistent spacing and thickness to create the illusion that their hands were pressing into “dough” or “foam”. They also learned that warm colors appear to make objects come forward and cool colors appear to make them recede.