Congo's Art Studio
The 7th Grade annual animation is a collaborative project that takes many months to draw and as much time to scan and create into a movie. The students start by picking a spirit animal and drawing it. The idea is that the animal should capture the spirit of themselves not necessarily a visual likeness. If they chose they can create a "random" object to draw. Then in their "core" classes they are given (randomly) another persons spirit animal/random object. They have to draw on a 6" x 9" piece of paper that persons spirit animal/random object into their object in a fluid and gradual way in at least 18 frames. Most students draw many more then that. The average amount of drawings is like 50. It is a great process seeing them come up with ideas, working with the people before them and after them about what they want to do. We watch "BIG BANG, BIG BOOM" by Blu for inspiration.
Right now, the 6th graders are putting the last bits of the detail into their ceramic face jugs. and face cups. They are smoothing adding details with under glaze color but mostly it's all subtraction at this point.
In 6th Grade we are starting the Face jug project. It is an annual tradition and it works well with the year long study of Asheville and the Appalachian culture in other subject areas. There are many stories about why face jugs are made but it seems most of them are folklore at best. But I do love sharing a few of them with the students. It seems especially important and somewhat of a coincidence that we start the project during Black History Month. Many people believe that face jugs were first started in this country by African Slaves. For more info you should check out these links:
Every year it seems the Scholastic Art Awards creates great enthusiasm in the art room. The students worked really hard to submit their work, and though we didn't have a lot of time there were some excellent projects entered. Usually it is just 8th graders who enter work, but this year we had many 7th graders who caught the SAA bug and entered their own creative efforts.