Ab-Ex Tables

This was a project I did with my crazy awesome grade 8 class.  I wanted something big and fun and expressive and in keeping with our theme of "team-building" for the year.  We learned a lot about painting and a little about ourselves...

below are the finished pieces (still trying to think of a good way of displaying them) and photos of the process.

Our Path by Cassie Cannon

My Art pieces are a collective representation of our world today and its eventual and inevitable ending.  They start out by illuminating our current world; driven by consumerism and the need to buy more.  The peices then progress to show people trapped trapped in the cycle of consuming as if they we in an invisible jail.  Finally the art pieces show our worlds inevitable ending if we continue on the path we are on.  Throughout the process of creating these pieces, I tried to use as many different processes as possible in order to give the work diversity while connecting them with an underlying theme.  The materials include pencil, collage, watercolour, apint, a photogram, charcoal sticks, charcoal powder and black and orange conte.  Ultimately, the four pieces I created reflect our world and a possible world through diverse materials.

Our Inner Superheros

This was an assignment designed as a submission for the newly minted Greater Vancouver Art Contest.  This contest was developed and initiated by a grade 11 student in North Vancouver - amazing. The original theme of the contest was "Find Your Inner Superhero".  As an unabashed comic nerd, and excited about the opportunity for my students, I jumped at the chance to participate.  They quickly changed the theme to something a lot more inclusive - basically "do whatever you want".  AWWW MAN!  I thought the first theme was far more interesting and we had already started the project so we stuck with it.  I also wanted this to be a very "loose" project, giving the kids a lot of creative freedom.  That and the tight deadline (which I usually abhor) contributed to a pretty big swing in the success and completed-ness of the projects:)

The other thing about this project that was interesting was that it demanded that students think in metaphor for their image development.  Basically students needed to choose a superpower and superhero identity that represented something intrinsic and important about their personality.  Most grade 9's aren't great at that type of critical thinking yet!  Like herding cats with most of them!

Anyway - pretty successful overall I think.  The first image is the first page of the assignment sheet I gave them.  The second sheet (not shown) is a bunch of brainstorming exercises to help them with idea development.  A selection of student work follows.

 Jessica Chan

"Sabiya, a resident of an Arabian slum is, like me, verry affected emotionlly by the weather.  From a young age she has had the gods of the eastern winds on her side.  One day the authoities capture her pickpocket father and her rage releases her full power.  This is her story.  This is Breeze."

Beautiful Job

Celia Coe

"My superhero has the power of charm singing.  When she sings everyone becomes happy and starts dancing.  She uses her power to settle big fights or a war.  Everyone forgets their anger and does what she is singing about.  I created this superhero because I like singing and listening to music and I wish people would be happy when they hear me sing"

I love the bulldog sidekick!

Qi-Feng Lin

"My superhero can be very quiet because some people say that I am quiet"

I'm dying to know what the "noisy problem" is! 

Marcus Cheng

This superhero has a pair of eyes that can see through people' minds.  He can predict all of the moves his enemies are going to use.  He is nearly invincible because he always knows his enemies plans.  This superpower is kind of related to me because I always want to read people's minds.  Everybody, including myself, always hide our real self deep inside.  We try to pretend to be another person in order to hide our real character.  I want to have this superpower so I can see what people are really like.

Great foreshortening

Gurneet Locham

"My inner supero's name is The Thrasher.  My comic cover is the first of a series where she discovers her powers.  When she runs fast she becomes a tornado.  Anger makes her into fire.  She has special high-tech gadgets and a dog-scientist who is her friend.  The story is about what she will do with her new powers which is why the series is called " the Sudden Eclipse".  Her Powers reflect my personality because when I do things fast I mess-up (tornado) and I have really bad temper tantrums (anger=fire)"

Whats up with the dog side-kicks?

Marina Luro

"My superhero is called "Arrow" because of the obvious reason that she uses a bow and arrow.  She also has the power to travel through time.  So she travels through time killing "terrors".  I chose this for my superhero because I do archery and I tend to zone-out and "go to other places".

I love the Dali clocks.  I love the octopus mouthed "terror".  I love how dizzy this drawing makes me.

Connor Miller

" The Spark shows my creative spark and flare which I bring to everything I do"

Check out the great title design - amazing!

Andy Lan

" My Superheros name is Honest Basketball Boy because I want to be an honest man"

  Oh - and he really likes basketball.  Notice his basketball shaped space ship in the bottom right-hand corner - awesome.

Samuel Lin

"Mr. Goodguy is my inner superhero.  He is kind and honest... That is the kind of man I want to grow up to be"

Awesome drawing.

Jacki Yu

uh-oh looks like Mr.  Goodguy is in serious trouble! 

 I asked Jackie how a guy names Dr. Evil represented the "inner you".  He just grinned.

TIRED MIND By Chris Bonell

These drawings are the result of a very tired mind; someone who should be sleeping.  When you get past that point of nodding off into dreams and suddenly you are wide awake with tons of energy and a sort of dark mood full of undirected and confusing emotions. Very raw and primal.  Sort of like a caveman seeing a tiger in the wild for the first time and being shocked and confused and losing an arm or a leg in the process of trying to kill it and eat it before it tries the same.  It’s the same sort of primal urges here and I’m cycling through them while all the time confused as to whether I want to rip this paper or throw it or give it a kiss or just look at it for a while.  Sometimes I get to do to all of that.  That’s a pretty good description of how this all happened, I think.

Colour Targets

This is a project that I do with my earlier grades to test their knowledge of colour mixing.  I think colour wheels are the surest way to bore a kid (or me) and thats not a good thing.  We don't want art to be equated with boredom do we?  So I do this simple painting with them and then we hang them all together.  Can you believe I only just made the connection with Kandinsky's colour circle paintings?  So the kids have to mix all their colours before they use them and they are not allowed to "make mud" or "baby poo".

DRAWING GAME by You-Bin Lee and Frank Wang

Two Senior Art students, You-Bin Lee and Frank Wang who draw for fun!

Frank and I didn't speak for an hour as we played this game.  We each took turns choosing objects in our immediate surroundings to interpret.  The objects had to be mundane, everyday things that might otherwise go unnoticed.  We were interested in how each of us had a different skill set and a different perspective (both physically and mentally).

You-Bin (green Ink)

Frank (black ink)

 

Warped Portraits

This is a fun Grade 9 level project that I do with my classes.  Students use the mac application "photobooth" to take pictures of themselves.  The app allows students to warp their faces as if they were looking into carnival funhouse mirrors.  Its fun for the kids and it gets them over both the self-conciousness of being a teenager and also the intimidation of trying to create a perfect traditionally representational self-portrait.  Making it look exactly like themselves becomes less important and they feel more free to explore the materials and try new techniques.  Below are just a few examples.