A few more 6th grade altered books

I had a few more altered book photos I wanted to share, but for the 2nd night in a row blogger is giving me error messages every time I try to upload these photos. I can't for the life of me figure out why, so I'm giving up for now. Maybe I'll try again some other time, or maybe not, since I have other projects getting finished to share with you too!

Ra-cha-cha!!

That's my son Ben at Sticky Lips, a yummy barbeque restaurant in Rochester, packing up his leftovers to take home. Lucky me, I got to take my boy out for dinner! There was even a gypsy band from Bulgaria playing a few lively songs while we ate - what fun, and it was great visiting with him for a bit.

I'm in Rochester for the NY State Art Teachers Association annual conference, which starts tomorrow morning. I left school at lunchtime today so I could do the 4-1/2 hour drive before dark (a long but lovely drive through places filled with curvy roads, rapids flowing over rocky stream beds, gorgeous lakes, cows, and isolation). I drove through villages and hamlets with names like Pleasant Lake, Oxbow Lake, and Speculator, and also Rome, Russia, Geneva, and Ohio! The second 1/2 of the drive was a more boring highway drive, but it went fast. I arrived in time to have dinner with Ben, who goes to the University of Rochester. Now I should be working on updating my PowerPoint presentation for the workshop I'm teaching Saturday morning, but I thought I'd explore blog-world a little while first while I relax in my hotel room.

My workshop is about altered books, and I'll post a bunch about them soon, but I'll show you a few photos for now:

Those first two pics are folded books, and the ones below are glimpses of "cut, collage, and paint" books.

Art teacher on overload

I never stay home from school. As a matter of fact I usually stay in school for hours after almost everyone else has left, sharing a bag of popcorn with the 4th grade teacher down the hall when, if we had better time management skills, we should both be home eating dinner.
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Anyhow. Yesterday I felt crummy all day. By the time I left for home (hours after school was over) I had set out complete sub plans for today. And today I took a rare sick day and now, sitting on the couch watching election returns, I feel a lot better and ready to go back tomorrow. And lucky for me, my former student teacher, who now teaches part-time in another district, was able to sub so I am confident that things went well.
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But back to yesterday. I got an email about the fundraiser project. My worries about the kindergarten ladybug project had become real. The company was rejecting the artwork because it was too "rough" (our tissue collage backgrounds got a little out of hand). These kids had been in school for just a week when they did this project - WHAT WAS I THINKING?!!! Anyhow, I got another email later in the day, and it's only 14 kids that have to re-do their artwork. So now I have to find a way, BY THE END OF THE WEEK, to have these each create a fundraiser-worthy piece of art.
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So here's something else that seems to have gotten away from me in my overloaded state: my 5th grade Artistic Licenses. The images above show both sides. I usually copy these on tagboard, and the kids jazz them up with color and sign them, and then I get them laminated. I have some lanyard hooks and key rings and the kids love to attach them to their backpacks, etc. We talk quite a bit about what it means to have "artistic license" or "creative license". Often I use the license when introducing a still life, to make them understand that sometims they will want to make artistic decisions that are not accurate representations of the still life but may be better compositionally, or show better usage of art elements. The kids are so funny. They'll come to art and most will have licenses in their pockets or hung around their necks, and someone will worry "I forgot to bring my license - will I still be able to change things today?" It's sweet to see them take it so seriously. But at the rate I'm going it will be months before I actually get the license copied, and then there's still the laminating part...
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And then there's the saga of the 6th grade altered books - but that's better left for another night.
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And of course, there's my lastest favorite addiction, the art teacher blogs. Every blog I read links me to someone new, with something interesting to read and learn, and great ideas, and I'm now following so many blogs it's hard to keep up with you all. But I'll try. But sometimes I get frustrated. Re: altered books - yesterday I was reading a blog and I saw a link on the blog sidebar that had an altered book post, but I wasn't feeling well so I didn't read it. Today I cannot find it, don't remember where I saw it. So if you've seen something interesting on altered books in the past couple of days, please let me know where to look! Thanks!

A pie and a book - 2 creative endeavors!

In anticipation of my son coming home from Africa, I went blueberry picking last week, and this Sunday my son and his friends put together this delicious blueberry pie. Pretty nice!

:-)

After reading Erica's blog http://artprojectgirl.blogspot.com/ yesterday about an inspiring painting professor, I decided it was time to get creative. So, I finally started painting and collaging my altered book, that I talked about in the blog back when school was ending. This project is in preparation for making these again with 6th graders this fall. Earlier this summer I began by cutting into the book to create my river, and then gesso-ing all surfaces to be painted.

The book is based on the lyrics of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I chose it because the lyrics have such magnificent visual imagery. These are the first two pages:

Picture yourself on a boat in a river,
with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly -
the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

a couple of close-ups:

Darn, the best photos keep entering sideways so these will have to do. It's hard to see that the pages have depth cut into the river. I think I'm going to add some silly collage fish in the river.

In book pages still to complete, images include: towering cellophane flowers of yellow and green, newspaper taxis, plasticene porters with looking-glass ties, a girl with the sun in her eyes, and of course, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Hope I can get it done!

No rest homes for elderly library books

Another year done. Our school has a fabulous ritual: as the buses pull away for their final trip of the year, everyone heads outside to wave, the kids wave out the bus windows, and the drivers honk like crazy (kind of like the sound of the vuvuzelas at World Cup Soccer we've heard so much about!).

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about books. After the waving and honking, I made a shortcut back to my classroom by cutting through the school library. I noted piles of books on top of the stacks, and, of course, I wondered if any were possible candidates for my "altered books" project. Some looked old, but others not so much. I noted in particular a gorgeous copy of The Ocean World by Jacques Cousteau that I wanted to keep myself.

Turns out, these books were all being DISCARDED. Some were published before a certain date and therefore possibly contained lead. I understand that these need to be trashed. Other books contained outdated or obsolete information. But many were just books that had been republished with an updated look or format, or books that had too many duplicates in the library, or books that were rarely signed out and therefore were being removed for space reasons. There was nothing WRONG with these books.

So I asked - if these are being removed from the library, can't they be either :
*given away to students who have little resources,
*donated to a rummage sale or used book sale, or
*sent to a part of the world that can use any books (Haiti, parts of Africa, Afghanistan, etc)
But I was told no. The auditor was watching them and these books had to be DESTROYED. NO CHOICE. (New York State Laws and Regulations and all that jazz.) As an avid reader, it broke my heart.

My question to you: what happens to old books in your school/library/state? Do they get handed down to folks in need? Or trashed as miserably as these? Why is there no sweet place to send old books out to pasture? I'm so sad...
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An aside: A really sweet quirky old book about a very unusual library : The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. And a much newer but also sweet, charming book I just finished last week: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. What's on your summer reading list?

More 6th grade Altered Book pics

This book was taken home for the summer as a work-in-progress. I hear there will be a monkey in there somewhere...
And below are more views of the Alice in Wonderland book I've shown before.

(Look at older posts to see the Cheshire Cat and Alice falling down the rabbit hole.) I don't know why blogger rotated my 2nd image sideways. sigh... I guess you have to turn your head sideways? Anyhow, that's the back of the book with the Red Queen in the center. This book has also become a summer project to continue. Maybe when I see it in the fall it will have TweedleDum & TweedleDee or the White Rabbit.

HodgePodge, ModPodge, whatever....

It's been a crazy few days in the art room. While Alice is now falling down her rabbit hole, there's still the Queen of Hearts and Tweedledee and Tweedledum to add, and some kids are barely done cutting and gluing their books, as with the music-themed book center above.

Meanwhile the 4th graders tried out an awesome lesson courtesy of "Art With Mr. E", and first graders did adorable collages (more of both of these further below).

In their rush to finish their altered books, the 6th graders keep mistaking the name of ModPodge for the word hodgepodge (as in "Mrs. Brown, can you re-fill my hodgepodge?") which is so funny, because so many of their books ARE a hodgepodge at this point.

So the rest of this post is also a hodgepodge.

First, another altered book-in-progress... Yesterday, Hannah brought in a bag of roots and leaves to add to her altered book (above). Today, I think I had over 30 of my 6th graders in my room during their "study hall" trying to scramble to finish their books. The folded ones got done more quickly, but the painted and collaged books need time to dry in between pages, and we're rapidly running out of school year. (This is definitely a fall project next time, not spring.)

And now, first grade collages. Kiddos cut up folded-paper prints that they made in a prior art class, and also added various scraps found in "mystery bags" to make these adorable collages of bugs and critters. Lots of fun and enthusiasm!

Meanwhile, a few days ago I promised to post these paintings, done by my 5th graders while being taught by my super student teacher. It was a challenging project, mixing pointilism and an introduction to the concept of linear perspective to create these city and country scenes. The kids were VERY proud of their completed paintings.

And finally, this project (above) that was posted a couple of weeks ago Mr. E, and subsequently posted on a few other blogs, has been a real hit with my 4th graders. So easy, but teaching lots of concepts:

The kids used line to create a rhythmic design. I then had the kids use a different analagous color combination (or family) for each "tunnel" or "tornado". The kids loved looking at the color wheel and their colored pencils to find families that were related. Finally, they had to use value to create a sense of volume or space. So many concepts all at once!