A Trip to the Museum...

This week was fun and definitely a learning experience. We discussed value and its relation to art and form. I am not sure that all students grasped the concept, but nevertheless, we engaged with them both individually and as a group.

After completing a "color-by-number" parody using different shades, we discussed the ideas of realistic (or representational) and abstract (non-representational) art. Specifically, artist Chuck Close's work was looked at to gain an understanding that an artwork may look either realistic or abstract from a distance, but that understanding may be reversed when looking at the same work close up.

In order to reiterate the students' comprehension with different shades and values, we participated in an erased drawing. This was fun, because when doing the "color-by-number" activity, students enforced the notion of using more pressure to obtain a darker value and using a lighter touch to get a shade closer to white. In the erased drawing, however, the opposite occurred -- students were given pre-shaded sheets of paper, then had to apply pressure onto an eraser to get a lighter mark. It was an entertaining concept, primarily because students never get the chance to do an artwork backwards.

In the museum, we looked at the "Leaded" exhibition, which has a few artworks specifically made by erasure. Students made the connection right away and were absolutely excited to be looking and engaging with "real" art. We broke up into groups of 6-8 to fill out worksheets finding four different values. This was an enjoyable activity because of the tools we employed. Each student had a keychain with the four different values of paint swatches hooked onto it. Students were able to hold up each value to find a matching one in an artwork. Together, students filled out worksheets. But, we discovered that integrating spelling and writing into art at this age and in this way was a little too advanced for some and tedious for others. I felt that simply discussing the values and artworks with them was just as fruitful. Regardless, students had fun and got to take home their "color-by-number" papers and value keychains as a reminder to employ this knowledge outside of the classroom.