J-V Art Lady and You

The art studio at our school is downstairs in an out of the way location which feels as though we go far away to our art class. Sometimes we go to a foreign country or a diverse habitat or look into our own eyes. Sometimes it is in our mind as we travel to a beautiful fantasy land with paint and paper.

It is bright and full of very cool things like giant toy bugs and crayons, real animal skulls, live plants, giant colorful posters and our favorite, the smart board.

Twenty three classes a week use this room. Each class comes one time a week for at least forty five minutes. (Sometimes we are so focused that we are late to our next class, oops!)

Six big tables are there to make art on. We can all draw from life, copy millions of shapes and lines, print and make rubbings, build with all kinds of found objects, sculpt with clay and design cool pictures to make into mosaics and even paint the ceiling. But our classroom can also be outside if we have to draw a landscape, find leaves to rub or print or draw or to just sit and see the gigantic-ness of the sky.

We compare art from ancient cultures, find patterns in African masks, colors in Egyptian artifact, make our own Mexican bark, turn a map into a Dreamtime dot painting.

We learn that all cultures make art, all cultures are different and all cultures are also the same. We study animals in their habitats and understand why they are endangered and think hard about how to care for them and others.

We show we care for the environment by not wasting, by taking care of what we have so we have it a long time and re-using nearly everything. Some examples, most our sketches are on paper that has something on the other side, we use a recycling bin to collect and make collage, all our paint dishes were our breakfast cereal bowls.

We strive to make our school and our world more beautiful and to work to our best ability.

We study our environment around our school