Congo's Art Studio
It seems that the problems with teaching and being a student in this age are similar and possibly more challenging then when I first started teaching art in 1990. Devices are more seductive, shows are more flashy, and students are spending most of their time with their faces in front of a screen. I'll admit that it's easier sometimes letting them just watch mindless TV. But it can't be good for them, or us. GO OUTSIDE!!!! 100 years ago a man named Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick a pioneer in Physical Education thought kids were not getting enough exercise and becoming soft. I wonder what he would think of kids today.
Scholastic Art Awards 2015
Congratulations to all the 8th grade students who submitted work to the Scholastic Art Awards! Big giant thanks to Toni Oreck, Brooks Sullivan, Missy Sullivan and Kylie Olp for helping prepare all the work for submission!! We submitted 30 works of art this year. There were over 800 entries this year at the Asheville Art Museum.
1000 drawings, 40 students, and 4 months. The 7th grade spent a good 4 months of art classes finding their spirit animals and then turning other animals into an animation project. We start by finding our spirit animal — telling stories and thinking about what animal appears to us during random times, or at the end of the story that I tell them.
They are given another student’s animal randomly and then the drawings begin. They slowly try to change the animal into the shape of their animal in 18 to 30 drawings. They collaborate with each other, they help color and pen other students.
We watched BLU street animations to inspire us....
I often think about the Presidents. The question is how would their presidential years look like in a cartoon. History is measured and remembered by the various movements and events that happened during certain time periods in the past. When you think of President Nixon you might think of "Watergate" maybe with Nixon doing a cannonball off a diving board with some cocktail waitresses holding trays of martinis and Vietcong hiding in the bushes nearby the Watergate Hotel. This is the process that happens when I begin to think about a president and their triumphs, short comings, or eventual downfall. Jimmy Carter sitting on his Georgia plantation porch with Bob Dylan, or Bill Clinton on an inter-tube with the bridge to the 21st century being shot at by a pirate ship the SS GOP. Ronald Reagan standing in the desert with dinosaurs and Nancy with her patent red dress smiling and oblivious to the world problems and environment behind them. I love the history, the old cartoons especially from the late 1800's and early twentieth century. I love the challenge and freedom of painting a "cartoon" of what the president might be remembered for many years from now.