The ROYGBIV Project :: Put a fork in it! :: Pt. 5 of 5

Without further adieu... I present to you The ROYGBIV project in all of it's finished glory!!!!

The installation makes the gallery hallway such a happy place!

Once the students got to the point where they were able to start installing their individual sections of the total installation and they got to see it all come together they were really motivated to get the whole project DONE and it took only a matter of a few days for them to all really pitch in and get things hung up and adjusted no matter what subdivisions they originally volunteered themselves for.

One element that was a final "finishing touch" was hanging painted (with tempera) sheets of acetate sheeting on alternating window panels all the way down the hallway. The hope was that the natural light could shine through the painted sheeting and then cast colored light into the hallway. It didn't work but it did look pretty interesting from the outside and it has served as great encouragement for people to see it across the "quad" and then come walk through the gallery hallway when they otherwise didn't have a reason to venture that way in the first place.

Next  year when we do a different ROYGBIV installation I will allot money in the budget for colorful cellophane.

The sun group had some serious challenges with trying to rig up something that would support the overall structure, girth, and unexpected weight of the finished work. Fishing line did not work after trying it multiple times so the winning solution was to use 14 gauge aluminum sculpture wire that supported the sun from three different points. It doesn't look like a literal interpretation of what the sun looks like but I think it works being abstract the way it is.

The sun is suspended at one end of the hallway where it can hang the highest from the ground.

Obviously a good number of the rainbow drops didn't hold their shape perfectly but I think it's OK. The student artists who worked on them weren't totally disappointed and I was really proud with the way they pushed through to the end even when it was very VERY challenging and discouraging at times. Their perseverance is so commendable and they really pulled things together in the end.

And the clouds group? Well, they had a bit of an unexpected advantage from the get-go because they didn't have to figure things out since they followed some directions found online. *shrug* They did have one of the messiest portions of the whole installation though so they had their fair share of challenge at times. Their original plan was to shade the clouds a little to make them look "stormy" but in the end that wasn't necessary and they simply used some of the natural darkness that was cast from the inside out that derived from the newspaper that they used for the center form of the sculpturing!

For a second try at studying installation art with the 3D Design class, I would say this attempt was successful. So many people - students and faculty/staff alike - have commented really positively on the entire installation and part way through the hanging of everything I already had inspiration come upon me for what will be done for next year's endeavor! If you can believe it it will be much of what you see here PLUS a little bit of some extra that is pure fun and lightheartedness. Hard to believe it can be bigger than this? I guess you'll have to hold me to that and visit me next year to see what it will be all about.

Thanks so much for sticking with me for this week long series! Next week is Spring Break for my school but I will be queuing up some postings that have been waiting around for their chance to be shared in addition to working on graduate school assignments and also (FINALLY!!!) doing some painting at the easel at my home studio.

Have a great weekend! See you next week!

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This installation art study was student-centered and collaboratively designed and constructed (across two classes). It utilized paper sculpting and papier mache, string wrapping, spray painting and brush painting, fiber application in order to create a sun, clouds, and rainbow display suspended from the ceiling of the student art gallery hallway. It was originally presented in a week long series that showed the planning and creative processing, the beginning part of the sculpting/working stage, the point just about when everything was done being sculpted, and then some notes about when things went awry and how those things were dealt with. The final view of it can be found HERE. This project was meant to be a re-imagining of The Ombre Experience project idea.

The ROYGBIV Project :: Hiccups and Snafus :: Part 4 of 5

If you've been following me from the beginning of this series, you might notice something rather curious: It's all gone swimmingly well!!! Well, I hate to break it to you all but I'm about to show you some of the nitty-gritty that has gone on in spite of all of the stuff that has been really cool and incredible.

As I said in yesterday's posting, this project was chock full of "teachable moments." I find that most all of the project endeavors that I attempt to steer my student artists through provide more than enough fodder of that type but this one? Well! THIS one really provided!!! I'm going to discuss two of the biggies today.

 The first one was helping the student artists to deal with the challenge of figuring out the best technique and materials to be used and that this can sometimes only be figured out by way of trial and error. This meant that they did what they felt like was a lot of work only to have at least half of it fail "epically" (as they like to put it) after discovering that of the three different types of string we used, the one that was the colorful acrylic yarn (donated by me from my ridiculous "yarn stash" at home) would not hold up on the balloon forms even after it was coated in both of the different types of adhesive mixtures - one modge podge and the other watered down white glue.

The sad stringy mess of modge podge that had they attempted to salvage but in the end was just thrown away in the end.

They used watered down glue mixture but the  yarn just would not soak up the mixture in order to hold the balloon shape.

I predicted that this would happen and that they needed all cotton yarn/string to do the balloon wrapping but I withheld this information because their reasoning to do different types of yarn was for them to try and stay within the supplies budget and I wanted them to try out their alternative idea to save money. In the end, when they discovered that they had to have all cotton string, they were still able to stay in budget because the 100 or so balloons were cheap as they were sold in packs of 30 and were only a buck a piece. It was a good learning experience that taught them that even the best laid plans can't be totally sound and sure-proof. I was really proud of how they all handled the setbacks they experienced which required them to lost almost entire class periods of work just because of the type/quality of materials.

The second very important lesson of this project was a real biggie. It did not focus on supplies or really anything art related and was completely about interpersonal skills and the importance of effective and diplomatic communication. 

A little background that I haven't mentioned until now: 

The student artists worked in two different class periods - that sometimes didn't even meet on the same days - that I affectionately called East Coast division and West Coast division. I likened this arrangement to a large company that worked in different time zones but were expected to work on the same project because it was such a large endeavor that one division alone couldn't manage the whole thing. There were subdivisions within each division (sun, rainbow, clouds) and each of those worked in tandem with the subdivision from the division/class period. They coordinated the workflow by communicating with one another through handwritten notes that they wrote to each other. No names and personalization were allowed and they could only recognize the other group by simply addressing in a collective and general way. This was so no one student artist could demand that they were the one in charge and then call whatever was going on THEIR work that others were simply making happen for them. It wasn't about individual glory. It was totally about working together as a team and being unified.

So, the communication system mostly worked until individual egos started getting inflated and some student artists took it upon themselves to take up a real passive aggressive tone toward the other group (in written note form, of course) that started inciting some serious animosity between one subdivision across the two classes. (I won't tell you which one though. That's not important.)

A sampling of some of the note exchanges from all of the subdivisions.

I was monitoring the communication exchanges pretty carefully - both the written ones as well as the verbal and non-verbal ones that precipitated the written ones - and I addressed all of the issues almost immediately with redirections and reminders about what should really be focused on instead of what was being stirred up. The students had difficulty with accepting my pacification of all of the incidents but they did it with as much grace as you can expect they would seeing as how they are high school young men and women.

Then I ended up getting the stomach flu that has been going around everywhere and I was out of school for three days plus one more when school was out for inclement weather and when I came back? Well... I discovered that things had gotten UGLY and one subdivision found out what class and what individuals were in their partner subdivision and they started accosting each other outside of the art classroom in order to criticize about work being done/not done according to certain individual standards. My return from being so sick I lost seven lbs in less than a week that almost landed me in the hospital because of dehydration was me walking into what had become a pretty hostile warzone between two classes of one subdivision. I wasted no time addressing what needed to be addressed and in the midst of it all I discovered that one of the students actually tried to write an apology letter to the other group/class and their fellow group members tried to rip it up and throw it away to keep the reconciliation and apologies from happening! It was a MESS!!!

I devoted one day that could have been working time to each of the class periods and we had a discussion where I re-established what was most important and I offered them some wisdom to help establish PEACE and ensure that it be kept and maintained. I told them that for the rest of their lives it would never be important who started what in whatever situation but that it was only the reaction that you might have that could ever stop what was allegedly started. I told them that I was not concerned with who was pointing fingers or where those fingers were being pointed and that if ever people wanted to reconcile? That had to be permitted to happen because peace and reconciliation is way more important than "being right."

The students all took "the talk" very well and I think this was, in large part, due to the fact that I focused on the big picture of the problem instead of micromanaging the issues. This is actually how I approached most all of the issues that cropped up throughout the project and though the students were frustrated at times in the beginning, the quickly got used to me presenting things back to them with questions like, "Well... what do YOU think we should do?" or when I responded to some of their multi-layered questions that were loaded more with their lack of confidence than anything, "YES. *smile*" From the get-go I wanted them to feel like they could handle things and that I trusted them to handle things in whatever way they needed to be handled and by and large they did this with everything except the communication issue. I kind of expected something like this would happen though and I was prepared to deal with it.

And that's about it for the hiccups and snafus for the most part. Come back tomorrow for the last day of this series when you get to finally see everything all put together in the gallery!

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This installation art study was student-centered and collaboratively designed and constructed (across two classes). It utilized paper sculpting and papier mache, string wrapping, spray painting and brush painting, fiber application in order to create a sun, clouds, and rainbow display suspended from the ceiling of the student art gallery hallway. It was originally presented in a week long series that showed the planning and creative processing, the beginning part of the sculpting/working stage, the point just about when everything was done being sculpted, and then some notes about when things went awry and how those things were dealt with. The final view of it can be found HERE. This project was meant to be a re-imagining of The Ombre Experience project idea.

The ROYGBIV Project :: Pulling it All Together :: Pt. 3 of 5

A view of the sun and some clouds without embellishments

The sculpting/fabrication process for this project went surprisingly quick despite how much work needed to be done. Before we got started I predicted that the clouds and the sun group would progress faster than the rainbow group and I was indeed right.

Every day I would have a brief discussion at the start of the class and give them feedback and also insight about how and why things were going as they were during the sculpting process both from my own observations as well as from the perspective of me being the "expert consultant" or the mentor to all of them. I would also remind them of the timeline that we were attempting to keep to and I would offer them suggestions about what could be done in order to either speed things up of the whole process OR attend to issues that might be arising. They also had the opportunity to ask me questions or present concerns about the overall scope of things and I was able to address things in some reasonably timely ways.

The second most exciting thing for them to do was to take each of their different elements to the next stage beyond just the foundational sculpting phase. The sun group needed to do some careful cutting work and then paint their object before embellishing it...

And the clouds group had to use a glue mixture to adhere the cotton batting and fiberfill to the cloud forms in order for them to look more realistic and have real texture...

The rainbow group? They plugged away wrapping more and more balloons in glue covered string while they also took breaks to spray paint what they had already made and dried completely...

One of the greatest challenges for me apart from managing some expected challenges betwixt and between them (and I will be address this in tomorrow's installment) was the fact that all of the fumes from the glue mixtures and spray paints being used were not fun to contend with in the studio classroom that I have which was never intended to be the studio art classroom that it is today. After about a week of me doing the best I could to air out the classroom just by propping open the door and then having all of the fumes waft out into the hallway, the building maintenance finally gave me my own window key!!!

The coveted GOLDEN key to the windows!!!

I am on pretty decent terms with the building maintenance team/management AND custodial staff because my path crosses with them in so many endeavors I might have but they like me enough because while I can present challenges to them, I am also one of the folks who can take care of their own messes and I frequently do so in such a way that I don't create a huge amount of extra work for them to do. For this endeavor? They finally just slipped me a window key and told me to be responsible with it - meaning, don't go opening everyone else's windows who might be asking for such a thing and also only use it in the art room when absolutely necessary!

Tomorrow I will share with you some hiccups and snafus of this whole endeavor chock full of some serious teachable moments before Friday when I will share with you all the final view/unveiling of everything as it is all installed in the art gallery.

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This installation art study was student-centered and collaboratively designed and constructed (across two classes). It utilized paper sculpting and papier mache, string wrapping, spray painting and brush painting, fiber application in order to create a sun, clouds, and rainbow display suspended from the ceiling of the student art gallery hallway. It was originally presented in a week long series that showed the planning and creative processing, the beginning part of the sculpting/working stage, the point just about when everything was done being sculpted, and then some notes about when things went awry and how those things were dealt with. The final view of it can be found HERE. This project was meant to be a re-imagining of The Ombre Experience project idea.

The ROYGBIV Project :: Sneak Peek of a series!!!

I am so delighted to bring a whole week/full series starting next Monday of a look at the start-to-finish of an installation art study and project I just completed last week with the 3D Design students. Two classes did the project together and it took about a solid month to do it and while collaborative learning can sometimes be a bit of a nightmare for both the teacher and the students involved, this project was a HUGE winner overall. Not one student felt excluded and wasn't whole-heartedly invested and I also didn't feel like I was ever trying to push or shove the efforts of the over 45 students that did the project together.

This project is one not totally different from what I did last year with The Ombre Experience endeavor but it twisted and expanded it some with the intention for it to be totally student-centered in how it established and unfolded itself. It was quite intense and consuming and for that reason I don't feel like I could come close to sharing it and discussing it with you all in just one or even two blog postings so that's why I am stretching it out. Anyway, come back and check in on Monday! That's when I will be kicking everything off. 

Special delivery from Jerusalem - Pt. 2 of 2

Want to see what was specially delivered from Jerusalem? 

Here it is...

Four hand-stretched canvases with belgian linen over heavy stretcher bars sans priming/gesso.

A little underwhelming? Expected something different? I assure you. There is much more than meets the eye here.

In the midst of my asking and seeking for what the Lord wants of me, creativity, and creation right now, something stirred inside of myself that led me in a few overlapping directions...

• Focus on His creation as it is so beautifully discussed in scripture
• Use materials for supports like what the old master painter used to
• Root my technique from what has previously been done so masterfully by painters from hundreds of years before me
• Use my own efforts and endeavors to support and uphold other currently working artists as much as possible

All of the above led me in the way of finding hand-stretched, unprimed belgian linen canvases from a wonderful fellow artist who lives and works in Jerusalem. Yes, yes. THAT Jerusalem in Israel. Friends, I cannot tell you how much of a "God-moment" it was for me to have been able to be led in such a way as this. If this isn't a signpost from the Lord that this is precisely what He wants me to be doing with my life then I don't know what is.

I am still asking and seeking out what the Lord wants me to paint on these canvases. In the midst of Sunday sermon of just this past weekend while I was running the projector for service, something the pastor said sparked something in me and offered me a bit of a pearl of what comes next. It's still all brewing so I can't quite share it with you yet but I will tell you it is requiring me to really study and meditate the words He gives us in scripture. It was almost like He gave me inspiration this past weekend and then just said to me, "Now sit with this. Be still and wait. I will tell you when and what comes next."

And so I am doing just that! Kind of a good thing for me to do because I continue to feel really overwhelmed with all of this. God-moments are like that, you know? And when I get bombarded with them like how it has been happening recently (it also has happened like this one other time in my life about 6-7 years ago), I truly feel like my heart and soul can barely take it. Why? Because how gracious and forgiving and provident is He that after all I have done in my life apart from Him - even at some points outright refusing Him to be in my life - He is here with me now and giving to me so abundantly and freely. It's truly humbling and I can't help but be totally overwhelmed where it makes me feel like it couldn't possibly be happening like this.

"In dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own."

 ***If you don't care for "crafting" and/or things related to Harry Potter, you might not like this posting and just wanted to forewarn you about it.***

In keeping with my goal to live "a life more creative," I present to you my next creative endeavor/crafted project in my efforts for gifting of the handmade sort.

My new favorite thing is to dream up packaged gift sets that stretch a cohesive theme to its absolute limits. I will come up with one element of the gift and then just spin that and stretch it in as many different directions as I possibly can. For this gift idea, I took inspiration from the amazing collective that is the Harry Potter series.

This gift is for another individual very close to me (and I am hoping they don't stumble upon this before I am finally able to deliver it to them) and this person is one seriously diehard Harry Potter fan. I started with the idea to crochet them a baby hat - amigurumi-style - in the likeness of Hedwig (Harry's owl).  I free-form crocheted it complete with ear flaps and long ties for under the chin. I stylized it a little by making ears that were adorned with cute black bows (do owls even have ears? Whatever. Like I said - I stylized it.) I could probably make it again if I wanted to but since I don't have a pattern, the hat is probably very much an original in and of itself for the most part. I added another crocheted piece - a scarf in the colors of Gryffindor house - and sized it for specifically for a baby in their first year. I readily expect that it won't probably be used/worn and I don't care since this whole set is mostly for novelty and gifty-ness anyway. The third item of the set is a child-sized wand made to resemble Hermione's wand. It was sculpted out of Sculpey clay with an aluminum knitting needle core and it's a little bit longer than a pencil. The fourth (and final) part of the set is something I didn't make and "outsourced" by way of Etsy only because I calculated out the cost of making it and figured it was cheaper to just buy it - a teeny-tiny Hogwarts acceptance letter!! The design is that for an American Girl-type doll but I also felt like it would be just the right size for a (novelty version) Hogwarts acceptance letter.

The final part of the gift set was something I really mulled over for a while. I wanted to package it up in a way that continued to play upon the Harry Potter theme but I just wasn't sure how/what I could do exactly that wouldn't make it too big to ship via regular postal snail mail. I liked the idea of putting it in a mini suitcase (of sorts) or trunk - like the idea that it could be carried right onto the Hogwarts Express or something and ultimately act as a conversation and functional storage element that could be kept around. When I did research on that option though I discovered it would be quite costly - both to purchase it (because I didn't want to deal with making it) and to ship it.

I must have walked around art and craft stores for upwards of 8-10 hours (that's what I do when I am brainstorming hardcore and trying to get a part of a creative venture right). Literally, I walked the aisles and brainstormed. Eventually I stumbled upon the idea of a book safe/hollow book and thought, "Hmm... I could do a faux spell book or textbook that otherwise could be a Hogwarts required text..." I sort of liked the idea but kind of hated it because of a myriad of reasons but was mostly centered around my own discomfort (even if it was just for novelty) of giving someone a spell book and not a Bible - I strongly adhere myself to a life inspired of and by scripture as much as possible.

Eventually, I was able to brainstorm my way to doing the fake book idea but using the inspiration of the fictional story within the Harry Potter books themselves of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard." It seemed exactly the perfect way to take things and I loved that it was not something of divination or magic and also something that specifically connected with Hermione. I looked up pictures of what the book looked like in the movie, etc. etc. etc. and then set to work trying to make it. Long story even longer? I totally had a craft fail moment that I don't even want to gratify with a picture. Just trust me. It was BAD.

I ended up having to buy a second hollow book and walked the aisles of Michaels and AC Moore (yet again!) until I found myself in the scrapbooking aisles (a department of art stores I generally hate to deal with because they never cease to overwhelm me with options). I brainstormed materials that seemed like they would make sense for creating the different elements of the book and then looked very specifically for them and also aimed to keep them within a strict color palette that I originally didn't even consider so that this time around it would match the child's nursery where everything might end up being displayed. After finding individual decorative scrapbook pages and some pre-fab stickers, I was finally able to get it all together enough to create the Harry Potter-inspired book safe you see below. I'm pretty content with how it came out and can only complain about how hasty I ended up being toward the end which will require me to fix it a little bit before I can actually send it up because I got a little sloppy toward the end of the assembly of all of the elements.

Was able to find corrugated paper that really imitated/suggest that their were real pages! Cool, eh?

The lettering is from a letter decal set and the tree is actually a low-profile three dimensional tree sticker/embellishment intended for scrapbooking in some way. I think it works well despite the fact that the movie version of the book is actually supposed to be a stump rather than a full tree.

So, that's that!!! I really like this gift set and though I don't know that I would ever recreate it for someone else, I did enjoy (for the most part) the challenge of both culling together the ideas that made it all come together as well as making them. Yay for being two for two in my endeavor to live and GIVE more creatively.

Just for fun: Amigurumi (-ing) aka Soft sculpturing

For the past few weeks I have been doing some informal art instruction after school...

In my spare time... well... in the spare time that I used to have a lot more of, I taught myself how to crochet to be able to do soft sculpturing in the style of Amigurumi for both my own amusement AND to make toys and funny hats for my kid. Some of my students have seen some of my crochet stylings and they have been asking all year long that I teach them how to soft sculpture. Well, I finally bit the proverbial crochet hook (pardon the horrible joke, I am certainly not a master of either words or wit. I teach art. Cut me some slack.) and agreed to do an informal crochet club (drop-in style) to teach people how to make turtles like that pictured above.

It's going OK and I actually have a reasonable representation of the male students in the group but they are certainly not doing a great job at practicing outside of our Tuesday and Thursday afterschool crocheting time so none of them are making great strides as far as actually making the turtle. I have a reasonable amount of experience and I can make a turtle in a flat two hours but that's if I sit down and just crochet nonstop. I estimated it would take the students about two weeks considering their school work and extra-curricular activity commitments and spring sports and etc. etc. etc.

There are maybe six more meetings (MAYBE) of crocheting with the students and I don't know if they will make it? But I guess they could just keep working on this with the help of youtube videos at home or we could continue next year.