As Promised, Arts Festival Updates

So I had my students answer two questions today as they gave me feedback about the arts festival. 

First Question:

"What did you do or experience at the arts festival that you most appreciated?"

The students listed no less than 28 different favorite things!

 Some of the most popular items included Thunderbody, a fantastic band that continued to make music later that evening at Ribfest after already doing two one-hour sets in the 90 degree heat of the arts festival.  Henna tattoos, the dunk tank (where students could dunk their teachers), the drum circle, face painting, screen printed bandanas, watching the progress of  the Visiting Artists throughout the day, and pottery were also among the 28 favorites.

Thunderbody

Rocket Launch (Physics Students)

Skateboarding demonstrations

Pottery lessons were run mostly by our students!

FYI... Those of you who used the wheel at the festival please pick up your fired work anytime after June 4th from art room 1150 so that you bring it home.  We only had a few of your name markers

blow away in the wind, so yours should be waiting for you until June 15th. 

After that, I make no guarantees that your work will still be here. 

Ed Keegan from Rhythm Connect in Fairport led students in a drum Circle. 

I love the looks of complete concentration!

Our food services staff found a Medal Winning ice sculptor who was

willing to share his talents with us!  

The second question I asked students was:

"What would make the arts festival better next year?"

My favorite response.... Sprinklers! If it's 90 degrees again... I can certainly make that happen.  AWESOME idea!!! Students also suggested more food, more art activities to participate in, more shade and less heat. I'll talk to Mother Nature about that! There were also some practical considerations that I will put into place based on student responses to minimize time spent waiting in lines.  

Thanks again to all the students, staff, sound crew, maintenance staff, security personnel, outdoor maintenence crews, PTSA, music staff, and many others who made the event such a success.  

What a great community to work with! 

Arts Fest!

Arts Festival is an opportunity to show kids from all aspects of life that art is fun, approachable, and something for everyone.  It relates to all disciplines, and it can enrich, entertain, empower, amaze and inspire.   The weather stayed beautiful and we had an AWESOME day of art, music, sunshine, food, creativity, and community. Thanks to all of our student volunteers who made this day so successful!  You were really an amazing team!  Unfortunately, some of our students were running around getting work done even as we took this photo. 

I know more photos will be coming, but I wanted to post just a few. Thanks to the whole school community who came together to make such a great event possible! And thank you West Irondequoit PTSA for funding our visiting artists and musicians.

 

Our Henna table earned $146.00 to purchase emergency art supplies for Wilson Commencement, who had a fire that burned their art room to the point of making it unusable last week.  Wilson students and art staff lost thousands of dollars in art supplies, student work, along with years worth of treasures and lesson plans.   Our hearts go out to the students and teachers there who are mourning losses and needing to rebuild. 

Want to Exhibit Your Work?

Go to the link for the Center at High Falls if you want to find more opportunities to exhibit locally. Be sure to note the fees for entries. If nothing else, it will give you some assignments to do over the summer while you are feeling melancholy about not being in the art room! 

ArtPeace Shakedown

The ArtPeace Shakedown was a smashing success!  It was great to see so many students and families out celebrating the accomplishments of over 40 students from Irondequoit High School, as well as countless others from at least 30 other area schools! Two of my students earned special honors in the form of a $15 gift certificate from The Art Store in Henrietta.  Congratulations Tarrie (10th grade) and Lexi (9th grade)! 

Two of my students wore their artwork to the show.  Yes, the dress on the left is made up entirely of garbage bags.  The guy with the wings is wearing a duct tape vest covered with feathers and wings that actually have strings that he can pull to make the wings open up as if in flight.  If he had a few more weeks on the assignment he may have actually been able to make it fly!  It was fun to see people pointing at them with looks of awe on their faces.  Thanks for having the guts to do it. You are truly amazing!

Another highlight for me was seeing a kid  from another school pointing at the artwork done by one of our students and literally dragging others (parents and friends) to come and look closer! That, and the strange body contortions people did so that they wouldn't miss any of the little details in those awesome Tunnel Books that Ms. McCallum's students created! 

Special thanks to Sue Hollister who organizes this show/event every year, and to all the folks who helped to set it up (including Ms. McCallum and Ms. Reinert)!

Oh... and a lot of our student work was highlighted on YNN news.

We're Getting Ready!

Arts Festival will be on May 25th from 9am-2pm. 
I'll give you a few teasers so that you'll know what to look forward to!


Robert Rogalski (work pictured here) will be one of our Visiting Artists.  He'll be working with our students as they are creating "backpack puppets" that will be worn and displayed during the Festival. His illustrations are just as amazing as his sculptural work!




We also have Sarah Rutherford with the Drawing and Painting classes, Karrie Gurnow with our Photo students, and Maria Friske with our students at Dake.  Thunderbody will also be performing two one hour sets.  There is so much more, I can't begin to list it all!

Exhibition Opportunities

Have you checked out the Shoe Factory Gallery yet?

They just sent out a call for artists. 

If you want to submit artwork to a professional gallery space take some time to create something that fits into the themes they are requesting.  Be certain to meet the deadlines as stated on the site. Good luck! Let me know if you're submitting something!

The Rochester Public Library also had

a call for work in a show themed,

"The Art of the Book." 

Deadline is July 27, 2012.

Metamorphosis

Sculpture and Mixed Media B students created sketches of a "man made object" morphing into an "organic object."  They then had a mission to create two clay sculptures from their drawings.  One sculpture needed to be realistic, while the second was intended to be an abstraction based on the morphing of the two objects into a new form. The set was designed to be visually unified, while communicating a theme larger than the objects themselves.

A statement about the living conditions of migrant farm workers.

  This series is about the inhumane treatment of animals in

the modern food production industry.  The pig was

titled, "What was," while the pig entangled in the

 fence was titled, "What is."

  

Ryan did a series about how cell phones are meant to be

a great communication tool, but sometimes they can also

dehumanize and impersonalize our social interactions.



Studio in Fine Arts- Space

My Studio in Fine Arts Class just recently completed an assignment where they were challenged to create a scene that showed understanding of foreground, middleground and background using 3 of the following techniques:

• 1,2 or 3 point perspective
• atmospheric perspective (far away is fuzzy and light)
• size relationships (what is far is small, close is big)
• overlap
• color (close=intense contrast, far=less contrast, more darks)

These are a few of their results:

They could choose any subject matter, but I encouraged them to picture themselves as the illustrator of a story that would communicate a sense of time, place,character, mood and purpose.  They used colored pencils were encouraged to layer colors to get a strong sense of shading and value.

BIG SHOT

The 27th Annual Big Shot photography event took place at Seabreeze Amusement Park on Thursday, May 3, at 9 p.m. Volunteers armed with flashlights and camera flash units "painted" numerous rides and parts of the park with light, while RIT photographers took photographs with long exposure times.
It took over 1000 people to light up the park, and many of our students were there to be a part of this opportunity.  The  next day I had students by the handfull showing me photos of the event online and proudly telling me what parts they personally "lit up." I love it when art gets into their souls and effects what they do outside of school by choice!

Comings and Goings

A great exhibit entitled East Meets West was just taken down from the new I-Square Gallery Space on April 28th... But here's a link to photos of the event in case you missed it! It was an amazing evening with art, food, great people and music (all of my favorite things!). Over 400 people came out to support artists from Irondequoit High School and Eastridge High School.  It was a beautiful display of talent and a great unifyer for this community.  It was a complete pleasure to work with the folks from Eastridge and I-Square.  Rumor has it that the success of this recent show has earned us another slot in the running for next year.  Look for it!

Things are still moving quickly! Today I just dropped off a brand new batch of work for the ArtPeace Shakedown at Village Gate.  Look at pics on the website to see some of our student work from last year.  The 2012 opening will be on May 11, 2012 from 6-9pm.  Music, artwork from about 40 of our IHS students, and work from over 35 other high schools in our community.  Don't miss it! Work is for sale if you want to change the decor of your house for a bargain price while supporting student artists! 

Project Runway

This was a new lesson this year inspired by a great professional development opportunity at the Memorial Art Gallery where we worked with a clothing designer, a retired art teacher, and a student who had just graduated from high school who had explored a concept very similar to this. The Extreme Materials exhibit is always amazing, but this past year they actually did a runway show where students were able to "strut their stuff!" By this, I mean that they were given an opportunity to create clothing out of recycled materials. My students are amazing!  I love what they came up with!

I've run through this lesson twice now, and I love the results!  Problem is, it takes a LONG time!  Truth is, most good art does take a long time.  This is an important lesson for my advanced students to understand. This is also a reality that is hard to weigh in with the constraints of doing art within a school setting with 42 minute class periods.  Some students seem thrilled at the challenge and make my room their new home away from home.  The reality is, not everyone has that kind of luxury in their schedules!  I'm thinking of making this a "choice" project for the 2012-13 school year, where students will have options between this and a few other similar options.

So, the work itself... Clothing out of re-purposed or recycled materials.  As you view the photos you'll see anything from chickenwire, garbage bags, feathers... the possibilities are endless. Special thanks to the team of photographers, wardrobe malfunction repairers, and the many bystanders who came in for moral support during the building process!  My students knew that their peers were anxiously awaiting completion of the finished product.  It inspired action and commitment that was truly admirable!