A Good Day

Cool mask-in-progress, no?  But it wasn't made by one of my students.  On Friday, I spent the day at Elizabethtown-Lewis Central School, a little Adirondack school district, attending a Professional Development Day for North Country art teachers.  The art room in these pictures belongs to K-12 art teacher Terry Crowningshield, and the work in these photos is the work of her students.  Each time I'm in her classrooms, I feel like I'm home. Terry is a kindred spirit as an art teacher!

 The papier-mache masks in the pictures above are made on an armature of a plastic bag stuffed with newspaper.  Regular readers of this blog have likely seen plastic bag armatures for papier-mache before!  Here's the back of the mask shown at the top of this post, with the plastic bag still inside.  Below it is a picture of the insides of a mask once the bag has been removed.

 Here's the mask viewed from another angle, so that you can better see the facial features.

Another grade of Terry's students have been making goofy aliens from papier-mache, using the plastic air-filled "pillows" that you find in packages you've received in the mail.  Instead of popping them to remove the air, students taped them together to form their aliens and papier-mache'ed over them. Aren't they adorable?

 Here's some close-ups!

 This cutie-pie alien is even wearing earrings and carrying a purse!

On top of the cabinets, I noticed some plaster bandage people-in-motion sculptures, totally reminiscent of ones that my 6th graders made and that I've blogged about several times before  One of those posts can be found HERE.  Here's a couple of the sculptures that really interested me.

Part of our day was the opportunity to work hands-on using the media of our choice.  Terry, like me, likes to create large still life arrangements, with something different to offer from every side and angle.  I chose to do an 18"x 24" drawing with a large graphite stick, and then paint with some gouache paints that I own but haven't used in years.  The first photo below is of the still life view from where I was working.  The second photo is of my unfinished painting.  Looking at them both I notice a lot of mistakes in my artwork - though I guess my viewpoint while drawing was slightly lower than from where I took the photo.  Anyhow, it was great to have this opportunity!

 Hanging in the hallway were these adorable seahorses.  It's hard to tell from the photos, but they seahorses were glued on the paper with a little twist so that the bodies curved out three-dimensionally.  They were so adorable!

  There's so much more I could show you... but I'll close with this - a giant light bulb and a large candy package.  These again are projects I've done before!  Giant pop sculptures, including gridded enlarged candy bars!  Like I said before, I feel like I'm home in this art room! 

Thanks, Terry, for allowing all 29 of us into your classrooms for the day, and for taking the time to put together a great agenda, prepare the materials, and even make sure we were provided with morning muffins and beverages and a lunch so fabulous and large that I took half of it home and ate it for dinner tonight!