ASU Field Trip!

Friday was finally the big day! The ArtSpace class field trip arrived! At 9:00, all the students got out of class and met Ms. Kim and Mr. Justin at the bus. We were so happy that 28 students got to go with us. We arrived at Gammage Auditorium at 9:30 and split into two groups; Mr. Justin took one group to the Architecture building, where they got to see the studios where all the creativity takes place! Ms. Kim took the other group through the music building; they walked through the practice room hallway and got to listen to several ASU musicians practice for their final performances. Then we all went to the ASU art museum, where we took a tour and saw all kinds of awesome art, including bicycles from Vietnam with flags and plants on them, and marble statues. Our tour guides were really nice and taught us a lot, and then they let us make buttons! For lunch we had pizza from Oreganos, and some of the boys at 11 slices each! It was delicious. Later Ms. Kim took the groups to a place called the Digital Arts Ranch, which is a building for the School of Arts, Media and Engineering where Ms. Kim works. There we met Ms. Lisa and Ms. Tatyana, who led a demonstration of SMALlab, had an interactive space with motion capture that we got to play with. Using special wands, we got to be chemists for the hour and put different molecules in the center and watch what happened as they reacted. It was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the end of the field trip came all too soon, and we had to head back to the buses and go back to Longview. On the bus, we got Frank Lloyd Wright books to go with our matching T-shirts. Everything went really smoothly, and everyone had such a great time. Thanks so much to everyone who worked to make this field trip a possibility. Pictures to come soon!!

Stop motion comes to life!

We continued last week building our sets for our films. Ms Kim had a sore throat and couldn't speak much, but the students did really well listening and communicating non-verbally. Most of the class worked diligently to finish their props or to start building new sets, but one team (the city team) finished with theirs and began filming. Using clay figures and ingenuity, the girls wrote a storyline with a wedding and a reception that gets crashed by aliens! The groom got abducted... this week we hope to find out what happened to him, and also see what's happening over at our park, tent, church, and stage sets!

More Filmmaking!

Our class continued to build sets for our films this week. One team worked on a city backdrop, including hotels made of brownie boxes and houses made from cut cardboard. Another team worked on a park for the same movie. Using play dough and clay, some students put together characters and items for the sets. The park has a fountain, benches and trash cans. Other students used tempura paint to make the backdrops colorful. The classroom at the end of the day showed the remnants of lots of creativity from the day; lots of pipe cleaners, foam pieces, cardboard, and paint splatters were strewn across the room! The students did a good job helping to clean-up, and we ended up getting to film one of the sets. Next week, we are looking forward to putting the finishing touches on the project and filming our movies!

Introduction to Stop Motion

On Friday Mr. Justin and Ms. Kim introduced the students to the concept of a stop motion film. We talked about how movies are made of lots and lots of still pictures, kind of like a flip book. Then we broke into two teams and started a competition to see who could come up with the best stop motion film. Mr. Justin's team went outside and started making a stop motion film with their bodies. They had to stay still and just move a little bit at a time to make the movie come out right. It is a work in progress, but the work looks promising! Ms. Kim's group took a different approach. They decided to build the props for their movie first and film on a smaller scale. They decided the setting of their movie would be a city and a park, and the event would be a block party for some holiday. Ms. Kim voted for Earth Day, since we get to celebrate it together next week, but the kids were more in favor of Easter or Halloween. Since they didn't have any supplies, Ms. Kim led them on a field trip around the school stopping at all the recycling bins and looking for treasures. We found great stuff! There were enough smaller boxes to start making a car and a hotel and other buildings, and one large box to start a park. We built trees and a swing set out of pipe cleaners. It looks awesome and we can't wait to keep working on the project next week.

This week in artSpace we announced our field trip! Our class will be going to visit ASU on May 7th and explore the campus and various arts activities. We are so excited! To prepare for the trip to a university, we discussed where we would all be in 10 years. Some students want to be singers or performers, others visual artists, and others sports players. Then we painted with tempura paints on poster board who, what, and/or where we want to be in 10 years. The posters came out looking great!

Easter Art

On Thursday before Easter, the students used foam sheets to make stamps in different Easter themed shapes and colors! Foam printing is a process where you take a dull pencil or other similar object and create a drawing or pattern in on Styrofoam. You can use printing foam or just regular picnic plates and bowls! When the drawing is finished, you color ink on the pattern and then stamp it on to paper. We all learned a lesson in innovation and problem solving, because it turns out that Crayola washable markers don't work so well as ink for foam stamps. The students suggested watercolor paints and then tempura paints. Both sort of worked, but watercolor produced a blurry, abstract form and tempura paints had a tendency to smear. However, we all worked hard at trying to make something work in the spirit of Easter. We worked so hard that Mr. Justin and Ms. Kim forgot to take pictures of our finished projects!

DANCE DANCE DANCE

We had a guest teacher come to Longview and teach a couple of Modern dance classes to the students. The students engaged in the dance and participated following different body movements and gestures. They learned about the space around them and how there bodies could be moved to manipulate that space.

Before the dance class the students participated in a clay modeling activity to express dance in a solid form. The students were asked to express 'dance' through clay with the only rule being that it had to relate to their own interpretation of dance. They were also given a sheet of construction paper to create a dance floor for whatever they created. The students ended up with some very interesting takes on what dance meant to them. Some examples were a couple of ballerinas, a dancing bear, Michael Jackson, some disco dancers, an i-pod, and even a singing turtle.