Rubbings and Giant Pencils-Wall Drawings and Sounds: K.I.D.S. Fall Program Highlights!

This fall, Kentler educators worked with local k-5th grade students from P.S. 15 and Brooklyn New School (P.S. 146) to explore the collaborative sound/wall drawing installation by artists Lezli Rubin Kunda and Ellen Moffat.

 In the "big room," teaching artist Meghan Keane led students in experiments with how sound can inspire different types of lines: jagged, scribbly, curvy, broken, straight...the list was endless! Students created "line libraries" to record their experiments.

They also experimented with new ways to create lines (with tape, giant drawing implements, and by erasing)...

 

...and by drawing directly on the gallery wall (!). 

Each of our 14 classes added to the wall drawing. After the first couple of classes it looked like this:

After the last couple of classes it looked like this:

How cool is that??

In the "small room" teaching artist Lance Paladino and Mollie McQuarrie explored Lezli's installation where she rubbed graphite into the wall exposing and responding to imperfections in the wall's surface.

Similarly, students worked to "discover" shapes and textures hidden under fabric by rubbing with crayon and oil pastel.

Finally switching to graphite and compressed charcoal the empty areas ("negative spaces") were filled in or outlined.  These black materials made the colors in the positive spaces "pop out."

These awesome murals each represent the collective creativity of half of each class that came to Kentler.  Its been suggested that we use these to raise some money for K.I.D.S. Art Education.  We are currently working on that.  If you're interested, please contact me: we have 26 and they all need homes!! Place a bid!

Wow team Kentler!  Thanks to Meghan and Lance for all their input and effort!  And thanks to teachers and students for all their cooperation and creativity.

Stay tuned for news about the follow up post visit.

March School Programs : with Arezoo Moseni

K.I.D.S. Art Ed has welcomed local Red Hook students from P.S. 15, P.S. 676, and BNS to the gallery this month.
We have been looking at work by artists Beverly Ress and Arezoo Moseni. The question that we're focusing on this session is: How can a drawing grow? Using each artist's work as a starting point, students have begun exploring different ways drawings can grow (or expand) and different ways to make a drawing.


This blog post will highlight the activity we do with Arezoo Moseni's work. Our next blog post will feature the activity we are doing with Beverly Ress' work.


Led by teaching artist Meghan Keane, students first spend time looking at one of Moseni's works on paper in which indigo, the dye used to color jeans, is her medium. 

Changes #24. Moseni

Students noticed she uses lots of different colored blues and purples, that there are many triangles and diamond-like shapes that come in a variety of sizes, and many students notice that it looks like a portal or a worm hole or something caving in toward the center. It has alternately reminded students of a star, a crystal, water, and...a mountain (because of the layered curves)!

After spending some time discussing the work students worked individually with laminated triangles, of many different colors and sizes, to create a drawing on the floor.  Students were asked to imagine that the large brown floor was their "piece of paper" and the colorful triangles were their "crayons," their drawing material.

Students explored what happens when you place ONLY the sides together 

and then ONLY the points:

create a HOLE in the middle of your drawing, 

or what happens when you work with a partner to create a drawing of something they can find in the city.


These are some of the images of what we've come up with!

Our next post will feature student work from their explorations with the work of Beverly Ress. 

Stay tuned!

"Cuba: My Revolution" inspiring student explorations of characters

Here is a link to some photos from our first Art Ed classes that came to see
the show Tuesday.  In the morning we had a first grade class and in the
afternoon a 5th grade class.

http://www.kentlergallery.org/pages/_KIDS%20_ArtEd/KIDS_Cuba.html

Inventions and Re-inventions

What is an invention? What is a re-invention? Last fall children from local public schools in Red Hook explored these questions during our school programs focusing on the show "Reinventing Silverpoint."

Silverpoint was a labor intensive process, dating the pencil, involving using a stylus on a prepared ground. The contemporary artists shown at K.I.D.S. stretch and explore the medium in unexpected ways re-inventing its expressive qualities. During gallery visits students considered the ideas of invention and re-invention by inventing a place for a specific activity: running, playing, jumping, ice skating, swimming, reading, sleeping...And by re-inventing new ways of using ordinary materials.

Later, back in the classroom, our teaching artists worked with students to think about different ways to connect their places.  As a result, the student's individual places ended up becoming a part of a larger place consisting of many smaller places.  Sound familiar?  One was even given a name:  Brooklyn Big City:

Sokolov/Williams: How can making a drawing be like making a garden?

For the current 2 one-man shows at Kentler International Drawing Space (K.I.D.S.) featuring works by Joel Sokolov and Hugh Williams, K.I.D.S. Art Education teaching artists are working with the theme of gardens. In particular we thought it might be interesting to explore with students how making a drawing might be like making a garden. To focus our exploration we are considering whether both artists and gardeners use similar visual compositional tools such as creating contrasts between light and dark, using focal points, positive and negative space, value, texture, color, form, and layering?
To help students begin thinking about our question we will work with students to create "drawings" from plants in different ways that will prompt interesting compositional decisions. Students will tear and glue black and white paper and trace the shadows of local indigenous plants. Referencing the richly layered drawings of Joel Sokolov, students will later use these drawings to layer their own drawings with those of other students. By adding and taking away elements of their choice within their drawing explorations students will collectively compose a "community garden" in their school.
Look for future entries about this program with specific anecdotes and samples of student artwork.