Take A Journey Through Art - A reflection

Take A Journey through Art 

Utah Youth Art Month Flag for 2020
Designed by Callie Sweeten, a senior
at Timpanogos High School

"Take a Journey through Art"  was our YAM theme for 2020.  We held a flag contest and chose our winners.  This beautiful flag invites you to come to Utah... to share your journey through art.

I went to the UAEA conference and put up this beautiful flag for everyone to enjoy.

Then I taped a large piece of butcher paper up on the wall.
I got out a box of tempera color sticks donated by Sargent Art and I invited teachers to create a mural of our collective journey.

"What is your journey through art?  Can you express it on our mural?"

I did my own quick little sketch in the corner, but I didn't allow myself to engage emotionally.  That is a safe thing right?

As I watched the teachers come by and I started talking to them I started to get a glimpse of the journey of each of them.  My journey. Our journey.



As teachers drew on our mural, they shared their stories with me.  Themes started to emerge.   "Art saves lives, art is life, art allows me to have a voice, art holds me up, art brings people together,  the earth without eh is ART."  Teachers drew pictures of their first art teacher, flowers, sunshine, teaching methods, stories, glimpses of their lives.  They illustrated quotes and inspirational sayings.  I got emotionally involved.  I carefully took down the mural and moved it to the main hall of the conference.  Then again, I took it down and put it up at the high school where I teach.

I asked my students to look at the mural and share their own journey in their sketchbooks.  I thought back to my own personal journey through art.

Two weeks later our schools were closed.  Do you know what I learned over the coming months?  I learned that art really DOES save lives.  I came to school and I would see the mural.  I started taking close up photos of the different sections.  It inspired me and it helped me.  It helped my students and it helped those around me.

I have realized that art really does connect us.  It isn't about our differences and our politics.  It is about being there for each other and finding the creative process within ourselves, feeling safe, and feeling accepted.

My amazing friend and colleague Heather.  The art above the
mural was created by her elementary art students in the
Duchesne County School district.

Share your Journey.  Share your story.  It makes a difference. It makes a difference to you and to those around you.

New YAM theme for 2021

The new Utah Youth Art Month (YAM) theme for 2021 will be:    "Art Connects Us."


As a heads up for interested teachers,  we usually complete the YAM flag contest on December 15th but I am going to try to move everything up to the end of October this year.   I have been talking to a lot of teachers and it seems like it might be easier to promote the contest before it starts competing with the holidays and end of the semester grading. It should make judging easier for us.   If you get this note or check out my blog, start thinking about how you can participate in the flag contest this year.  The theme is pretty appropriate for what is going on in the world right now and we are excited to see some of the great flag entries for Utah!

Theme for Utah Youth Art Month 2019-2020

One of my adventures is promoting art education in Utah!   We have a great theme for 2019-2020.  The flag contest entries based on this theme will be due on December 15, 2019.  I will post entry forms as soon as they are available.  Please check the UAEA art education website . http://uaeaarted.org/  for more information.

Utah Yam Flag Winner 2018-2019

Youth Art Month was a great success in Utah this year. We had so many great entries for our flag contest!  The YAM flag winner was Jasmine Felt from Juab High School. Sargent Art awarded her a check for $1000 and an assortment of art supplies.

Utah YAM 2017-2018, Moving to a new school.

Garland Munn from Juab High School was the
Utah Youth Art Month Flag winner for 2017-2018.

I like blogging.  It feels like a quiet way to talk to the world and no one really notices except the people who are most important.  I am working late tonight trying to finalize the Utah YAM (Youth Art Month) report for 2017-2018.   Things have been a bit crazy for me this year.  My father was ill most of the year and he passed away in March, just when I was trying to pull things together for our Youth Art Month celebration.  We ended up postponing our art show until May.

I knew we were moving to a new high school in May, but I did an art show anyway and then I had to move out of my art room while I was still trying to teach and finish up the year.

I didn't know if I could possibly make the move and I spent many days during the last to weeks going back to the school at night and working until 1 or 2 in the morning trying to box everything up.   I had so much stuff in that tiny room!  The science teacher down the hall had pity on me and stayed after one day to help me.  We had all the materials, tools and supplies for stained glass, jewelry making, art journaling, drawing and painting.  I had been trying to organize each box as I packed.  He just started putting stuff in boxes as quick as he could.  I think it was a good thing.  I let go of my perfectionism and things really started moving more quickly.

There was a melancholy feeling in the air when I looked back at the empty room.  The projector was gone.  Everything was gone.  This room had become more and more crowded as I started with 3 preps and then added 3 more.  6 different classes with lots of supplies.  Now that it was empty it made me almost want to move back in without so much stuff.

Looking back towards the window.
The soldering stations were actually very efficient.

The projector was a bit awkward to use with a pull down screen.

Peel and stick tiles are a quick way to transform an ugly counter.

The wall behind the sink was really bad so we started
tiling it with abandoned mosaics.  I will miss this artwork.

There were so many good memories in this room.  I remember the first day I came to work it was piled with mounds of broken glass and tons of paperwork.  I was excited to teach stained glass but I wasn't quite sure how to organize everything.  I spent three days going through things. Lauren sorted the glass and Morgan tried to fix all the grinders.  The counters were green and stained. I tried to make it better by covering the counters with peel and stick tiles.  They lasted 5 years and they still look good.

Looking at the empty room made me wonder... so I went back a few years ago and tried to find some pics of the first day of school.  This was the year I painted the tables deep blue.  It was a warm and friendly room.  When we added all the students it got pretty crowded, but we had fun making art together.  I am grateful for the time I spent here.

First day of school...before the students arrived.

This is a lesson on how to fit a lot of stuff in a very tiny room.

My still life shelves.... before they got too crowded.

Closing the door on room #13.

And so the door closes on lots of memories and good times.  Even though I will miss my old room, I am excited to move on to a new adventure.  The new school will be wonderful.  The principal sent us an email and said we could start moving in tomorrow.

Youth Art Month

Wow!  I haven't been on my blog in a log time.  I came back to look for a lesson and I had a few nostalgic moments looking at some of my old students and sweet elementary art projects!  I want to start sharing again.

March is YOUTH ART MONTH!  I have been having a wonderful month with my students of all ages celebrating art and embracing the artist in all of us.  Our festivities actually started months ago as I prepared my classes for the Utah YAM flag contest.   This is sort of a big deal for me because I am in charge of YAM in Utah.  For the past several years I held this cool contest but I always made my own students help me judge it or be innocent bystanders.  I thought it might be a bit awkward for me if one of my students actually won the contest so I think avoided that scenario.

This year, however, I decided that I wanted my students fully involved in the contest.  I asked my students to prepare entries... and I got different judges!  I was so proud when one of my amazing art students won the contest! The theme for the YAM flag contest this year  was United Through Art.  This winning entry was turned into a flag representing the state of Utah and was flown at the NAEA YAM museum in NYC a few weeks ago.

Quentin Drake - 2017 Utah YAM Flag Winner

As a continuation of the fun, March 20-24 was ART WEEK at Union High School.  We had fun activities planned each day at lunch in the commons.  Monday was Zentangle Day. Tuesday we took photos with with Mona Lisa.  Wednesday was a "Quick Draw" contest.  Thursday was sticky note art day and on Friday we had a contest for a fun school art slogan.  We also put as much art on display as we could.  This was an our informal art show and we had a lot of fun creating a few meaningful displays using ideas from the new Utah Art Core Standards!

I will try to come back and add a few pictures of the show and our activities.  It has been too long since I have blogged and I have a lot of fun things to share.

Expansion of BTS/ALP!

There has been a lot of excitement in our district this year as the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts learning program was expanded to every school in our small rural county.  I have had the opportunity to coordinate this program and provide support to the new teachers.  We offer a lot of thanks to the Utah State Legislature for funding this program to benefit the children in Utah.  As I visit with the teachers I will try to share more lesson ideas for elementary as well as high school classes!

We welcome our Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program Teachers:

Tyler Spunaugle - Altamont Elementary and Tabiona School
Ginger Chamberlain - Centennial and East Elementary
Carla McGee - Neola Elementary
Sandy Wilde - Duchesne Elementary and Tabiona School
Sophia Su - Conamore School, Kings Peak and Myton Elementary.
Elizabeth Sampson -  BYU Professional Development Partner for BTS/ALP.

Thank you for your support!  Photos will follow shortly.

Art Journaling at Union

I have been immersing myself in art the last few years.  During some personal stresses over the last few years.  art journaling has become  a great comfort to me and I have tried to pass this onto my students.

Last year, I was in the testing phase, but this year I was able to officially launch an Art Journaling class as an elective at Union High School.  This class has been my passion and we have so much fun energy and excitement every day.  As part of the class, I am teaching the elements and principles of art combined with creative writing and self-expression.  Every day we learn a new mixed media art technique and the students are able to combine these techniques into creating meaningful art journal spreads and entries.

We are now at the end of the 1st quarter and I am starting to see some creative elements come to fruition.   As a note, we are working in old discarded library books.  It has been fun to work in these recycled books as we see them come alive in color as the students turn the book into a work of art.

Each student created some type of name art.  These were all so fun and different depending on the  style of individual students.  

Found Poetry.  This can later be be turned into artwork by adding gesso or paint.

Creating a creative color wheel page by mixing primary colors.  The idea for this activity came from a past issue of Arts and Activities magazine.   I think that non-traditional color wheels are very fun for students and this activity gives them the practice mixing colors without the stress of conforming to the standard color wheel form.  Students can later journal in the different geometric areas. 

Chalk art page created on top of black gesso with Prismacolor colored pencils.

I love this student's creative adaptation to the title page in her book.
She has filled her book with random graffiti in addition to her artwork
and it has become a very expressive journal.

Pocket Pages.  These are a neat way to store photos, letters and ideas for future pages.

I first discovered altered books at local teacher workshops about 6 years ago.    I have truly enjoyed the process involved in this art form.  I have listed below a list of my favorite art journaling teachers.

Joanne Memmott

www.pinterest.com/joannmemmott/

You need to find her posts on altered books!  Joann is an amazing artist and she is also my friend and colleague.  She is  Co-President of the Utah Art Education Associate and has done many research projects based on arts integration.  JoAnn was my very first mentor in art education and she turned me onto the power of recycled books and art journaling. She shares many of her ideas in Memmott's Art Ideas on pinterest.  She used to have a page where you could buy lesson plans for a minimal fee.  I could not get the link to work, but I will try to find out more about it.  I have downloaded many of her lesson plans and used them in my classes.

Maria and Rick Thomas
Website:  Zentangle.com
I had the privilege to travel to Boston 4 years ago and attend a teacher training class from Maria and Rick.  As a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) I use Zentangle and patterning in all of my high school art classes.  This is such a beautiful and relaxing style of art and even a beginner can create beautiful art using this method.  I highly recommend everything they have to offer.

Online Teachers:

Jane Davenport
website: janedavenport.com
I love love love every class I have taken from Jane.  She has taught me to accept my own art and find the joy in creating art.  My first class with Jane was Draw Happy II and I would recommend everyone start with either that or Draw Happy.  I find in teaching high school students that this is my biggest challenge.  So many students are critical of their own work and have difficulty finding self acceptance that can lead to joy and healing in their artwork.  I have now completed  I heart drawing, Joynal,  Express Yourself and Supplies Me, although not necessarily in that order.

Marieke Blokland  

website: http://bloknoteacademy.nl

I am currently taking her Mixed Media and Art Journaling class.  I have taken everything she has offered and I love her fresh perspective and her cheerful teaching style. 

Tamera Laporte -  Life Book 

Website: willowing.ning.com

I discovered Tam a few years ago and this is the first mixed media class I was exposed to.  This class has been transformational for me as an artist.  I seldom do  all the lessons, but it is nice to have a smorgasbord of ideas to choose from.  Most of the other teachers I have discovered have been because of Life Book!

Effy Wild

Website: effywild.com

I am currently taking several of Effy's classes including Book of Days, Moonshine and Radiant Faces.  I have enjoyed her down to earth teaching style that is perfect for beginners.

Changes Abound...

Watercolor Ink Flowers -   Students created ink blots and then transformed the blots into flowers.  

All art requires courage.  Life requires courage.

Last May, my dear friend Allison passed away from stomach cancer. She was my substitute, my friend, the one who got me through the death of my husband.  Somehow, I couldn't see continuing without her.  About the same time, an art job opened up at the high school, and after some thought, I  made a career switch… going from elementary art to high school.  I was hoping this new job would work better with my family, and in many ways it has. There were so many changes in my life so quickly.  Making this switch has been a huge change for me.

On that level, I have found that dealing with high school students is challenging and rewarding.  Art is such an emotionally charged field, because of this whole courage issue.  It is scary putting your work up there for everyone to see.  It is easy to say "I can't draw" because of the fear of failure.  Sometimes it is so much easier to not try.

That said, the first semester is almost over.  I have taken a group of students who couldn't draw and they have transformed themselves in to amazing competent artists.  I couldn't be more pleased.  I will try to post some of their work over the next few months.  I hope you will stay tuned and share your own ideas as well.

Sorenson Legacy Awards

Sorenson Legacy Award Winners - Duchesne County School District

Congratulations to two of my friends for being selected as Sorenson Legacy Award recipients for 2013.  This is a great honor!   Chris Dye is our Junior High Art Teacher and  Michele Catten is our wonderful art volunteer!

My Essential Art Supplies

These are the supplies I order over and over again and are essential for teaching elementary art.  I am sure other supplies are great, but these are my favorites.

Crayola Tempera Paint in a variety of colors.  The white and yellow paint in other brands is very translucent but I like the texture and opacity of this brand for nice coverage.  I use this for  my cherry blossom painting and for sponge painting.

Sax #10 round paint brushes.  These have a nice spring to them and they are a good size for young children.  I have been very happy with the quality at the price.  I purchase these brushes from Saxart.com

Super large round brushes with a nice tip for watercolor washes and large scale painting.  Sometimes these are called stubby brushes.  I tend to spend more money on this item to get quality rather than buying these in bulk as the cheaper brushes have flyaway bristles.  A nice set of these will last a long time.  

Cray-Pas Oil Pastels.  These come in a variety of sizes, but I usually order the 25 color sets.  This gives a nice variety to the color and allows for shading.  If you get the larger color packs, the primary colors will be used up before all the rest of the colors.  In teaching 200 children with a project, 25 boxes will b used up by the end of the project, so you will need to order enough boxes for multiple projects depending on what you will doing.

Sharpies -- both fine point and regular point.  I love love love these for outlining.  If you are teaching 200 plus children, you will need multiple boxes as the points will start to break down.  I usually buy 6-8 dozen of each size per year depending on the projects I am working on.

Basic Watercolor Sets -  Get a good brand for the best color.  More expensive paints have less filler and more color.  My basic advice is that you get what you pay for.   30 sets will last a long time especially if you refill the colors you use up.

Crayola Construction Paper Crayons - Bulk Pack.  We don't do many art projects with crayons, but when we do, this is the crayon I use.  I try to buy a bulk pack box of these each year and they are my favorite for anything we do on construction paper.

Watercolor Paper -  I have struggled finding a good student grade watercolor paper in past years.  Right now, I don't have anything to recommend to you. I have found that the quality of paper is going down and that sometimes the paper won't work with a certain process.   I would recommend that you buy the best paper you can afford and test the paper before you begin the project.  For student work,  I am leaning toward the Canson Student Grade Watercolor pads that I purchased from Art Supply Warehouse.  Heavy weight 80# drawing paper can also work well for painting with young children.    For my own work, I use Arches 100% cotton 140 pound paper.  I prefer the cold press because of the texture, but the hot press has a very flat texture and is also very nice.

Keith Haring Revisited - 2nd Grade Art

I have been very behind on the blog!   Now that school is out, I will try to go back and post some of the best projects and also share some of our fabulous displays at from our spring art show.  We hope you are able to get some great ideas for your own art projects.

As one our our last projects of the year, Mr. Christensen's class decided to revisit our Keith Haring Jumping Kids art lesson, this time creating art for our recycled art journals.  For the art journal ideas... see the post from earlier in the year.   This Keith Haring art was such a fun little project an the 2nd graders really had a wonderful time in a very relaxed art lesson.  I use this lesson to teach self-awareness.  The children really had fun thinking about how their bodies move... and then drawing little people to represent the movement.

To begin this lesson we watched a power point about Keith Haring and practiced drawing little "tornado" people to get the children used to drawing the basic shape of the human form.

Once the children had practiced drawing people in their sketchbook, they created a "texture" floor on a two page spread in their recycled art book using crayons.  We did this a bit differently than we did in the past.  You could also do this art project on regular paper instead of in a book.

After the children had finished making their floor, they started drawing little people on construction paper, cutting out them out and gluing them down to show creative movement.

The motion lines gave the feeling of movement and rhythm to the artwork.

This was so much fun!  The children really loved doing this art in their recycled art journal.  For a copy of my lesson plan for this project  please visit the Keith Haring foundation at this address:  http://www.haringkids.com/lesson_plans/learn/jumping-kids-art

I teach this a little differently every time, but the basic components of the lesson are there!

First Grade - Sentence Structure Action Research

In Mrs. Percival's first grade, we have been working on an action research project.  The goal for this art lesson was to help the children with their writing skills with an art correlation.  To do this, Mrs. Percival reviewed the basic parts of a sentence before they came to a special art class.   When the class came to art, we did a brief review and each child selected a postcard of an animal they wanted to draw.  We used Crayola Color sticks and I gave them a basic lesson in observational drawing.   This is a difficult skill, but the children did a great job!  First they drew the basic shape of the animal, added the details and colored in a background.  We started running out of time, so towards the end of class, Mrs. Percival and I helped each child as they wrote a sentence about their animal. The goal was for each child to write a complete sentence using a noun, a verb, at least one adjective and proper punctuation. Some of the sentences are more complex than others.

 The little bobcat is climbing a log.

 The fuzzy wolf is howling.

 The little raccoon is studying the meadow.

 The huge eagle is soaring in the sky.

 The little baby fox is licking.

The huge brown elk is bugling.

This was a fun project and we hope it gave them a BOOST in their understanding of sentence structure.  The children will be taking a standardized test soon, and we are interested to see if this activity might have helped.  We will let you know what the results are!

Poetry Out Loud 2013 at East

East Elementary held it's annual Poetry Out Loud contest today!   This is a friendly poetry contest where children recite poetry and earn points for using good verbal skills. We are grateful to PTA this year for sponsoring our contest and providing the awards for our students. Mrs. Arko also provided each student that participated with a small gift certificate for developing their literacy. We love poetry at East Elementary! 

The winners for Kindergarten are (L to R) :  First place: Sienna Scholes, 2nd Place: Corbin Hall and 3rd place: Sadie Staker.

The winners for first grade are (L-R):  3rd Place: Brecklan Weaver, First Place: Sydney Negus, and 2nd Place: Grace Staker.

The winners for 2nd grade are (L to R): 3rd Place: Brooklyn Bell,  First Place: Sandra Baadsgaard, 2nd Place Brooklyn Scholes.

Peanuts - 2nd Grade at Neola

With a short week and the beginning of a new year, I had the chance to visit Neola Elementary School and create a collaborative lesson with Mrs. Parry.  Her class had been studying about George Washington Carver, so we decided to spend some time exploring the peanut plant.   When I arrived, her students told me everything they knew about George Washington Carver.  Did you know that he invented over 300 products using peanuts?  Mrs. Parry's students knew more about George Washington Carver than I did!   We decided that it would be fun to explore peanuts and how they grow.  This lesson ties in nicely with the 2nd grade science core.  We made sure that none of the children had  peanut allergies before we started the next part of the lesson.

To start our scientific evaluation,  we opened a bag of peanuts that were still in the shells.  We looked at the peanuts, broke them open, felt the texture and then we drew them.  We learned that peanuts are a LEGUME, not a nut.

After we had spent time observing peanuts, we decided to start drawing them.  We practiced drawing a peanut with pencil on manila drawing paper.  We drew curly roots and lots of peanuts underground. We drew the plant and flower above ground with a cutaway view.  Once we had all practiced, we did our final piece of art using oil pastels on 80 lb. white art paper.

Finally we painted our picture with watercolors, brown for the earth and blue for the sky.  The results were very lovely and the children were thrilled.

The inspiration for this painting came from this website:  http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/pages/peanutplant.shtml

Beautiful 2nd Grade Pottery

 

We painted our pottery with earth tone colors, including gold and silver to give it a bit of holiday sparkle.  The children working so carefully on their painting this year and the overall results were simply beautiful.

 

It was fun to see the beautiful color and symbolic designs on each pot. 

Once the paint was dry we added a coat of clear varnish to give each pot a nice shine.  Needless to say, the children were thrilled with their beautiful pottery.