MUD: Pottery Wheel Throwing Class for Kids!

 MUD Workshop! In this 8 week class students learned the fundamentals of wheel throwing and made their own mugs, bowls, lidded vessels, even teapots! Session 2 of Mud starts Tuesday, March 5th from 4-5:30pm at the Corvallis Arts Center, there is still room! Register here! 

Here are some photos from the winter session of MUD class!

 The basics: How to make a pot on the pottery wheel with photo demonstrations by young potter Zeke! 

 Step 1: lightly dampen the surface of the bat (board attached to wheel by metal pins). You don't want a puddle of water, just some moisture to get the clay to stick!

Lincoln Elementary Residency

 This winter and spring of 2013 I am a resident art teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in South Corvallis. I am visiting 4th and 5th graders in 3 classrooms every other week for a total of 12 classes. Each class I will do different art projects with the students ranging from drawing and painting to clay! The idea is to expose students to different art media, teach them basic fundamentals and techniques, and encourage their artistic self-expression! I wanted to share some of the projects here!

 OPPOSITES ATTRACT! In this lesson, the students learned about primary and secondary colors, Mixing colors on a palette and complimentary colors. Students created landscapes that utilized complimentary colors in order to make their paintings "pop".

Shadow Art!

 This winter I taught shadow drawing in my creative studio class as part of an interactive group project in experimental art! The project was very well received and students learned about contour lines!

Spring 2012 Classes at The Arts Center! An Overview...

 ...And what great classes they were! I wanted to share some of the fun projects my classes created this Spring!

Liberty Elementary Residency

In April, 2012 I was artist in residence at Liberty Elementary school in Albany, OR. During this residency I led the Kindergarten through second graders in a bug themed clay project and the third through fifth graders in an famous artist inspired painting project. Below are some brief descriptions of each grade's project as well as some pictures. What fantastic art these kids created!!

(My car filled with tiles ready to be fired)

Kindergarten: The kindergarteners made clay caterpillar and butterfly tiles!

Wilson Elementary Residency March 2012

During the month of March I was an artist in residence at Wilson Elementary. I led students from kindergarten through 5th grade in a series of drawing classes that represented some of the basic fundamentals of art. Projects were chosen based on concepts I find important as an artist as well as accessibility to a wide range of ages and art backgrounds of students.

The first class was based on learning about different values and creating a series of still life sketches. We started with creating a value chart which gave students an understanding of shading and practice pressing lightly and firmly with their pencils.

Students then broke up into groups and studied a variety of fruits placed on each table. They were given different goals for each fruit and different mediums to sketch with ( charcoal, colored pencil, chalk pastels). Some wonderful sketches were created and students were encouraged to really examine the fruit as if they were scientists rather than drawing from memory.

Make your own comic strip!!

I led a private group of students at the Boys and Girls Club in creating their own comic strips. We worked on learning to draw the figure by breaking the body down into basic shapes. Students then experimented with creating their own characters to use in their comic strips. The next step was developing a story line and deciding on backgrounds. When everything came together they created unique and individual comics! Check them out!

 T-Rex goes on an epic journey and is attacked in his sleep by Vilaso. T-Rex eats Vilaso!

 The story of a mean cat who doesn't like anything that meets a dog that likes everything and how the cat learned to like everything too!

 How Pipi Longstocking meets Mr. Big Ear and they become friends and they play.

 The Royal Wedding, a story of true love and how the bride and groom get married and walk back to their castle and go to sleep.

A story about Force Plate and Double 23 and how they are training to protect the city when, BOOM, an explosion! To be continued...