At NAEA - a workshop with artist Michael Albert

It's Michael Albert!   I mean, look how animated and adorable this guy is!  He told us that he's 50 years old, but by his looks, I would have guessed he was closer to 30.  I guess making art agrees with him! 

Let me back up, since you might not know who I'm talking about.  I first blogged about NY artist Michael Albert and his collages made from cereal boxes and other consumer packaging, exactly 6 years ago, in 2011.  You can find that post HERE.  My students had been studying surrealism, and we used Michael Albert's "cerealism" as a way to segue into pop art.  The kids "got" the joke, loved his work, and enjoyed making their own cereal box collages.  I wrote about him again in a blog post 2 years ago, HERE.  I was very excited, last fall, when he wrote a comment on this post!  It's always cool when the blog gets an unexpected viewer.  Here's a quote from his official website:  
"Albert has been creating ART since his college days at New York University, where he studied business. His art has evolved from doodles and Pen & Ink, to serious wax oil drawings,  to the cubist mosaic Cereal box collages he has become known for. In the past several years he has been creating large scale "Epic" collage works on various themes including historical, biblical, literary, musical, lyrical, botanical, mathematical & geographical....".

Anyhow, when I read that Michael Albert was teaching a hands-on workshop at the NAEA convention, I knew I wanted to attend.  But I waited to buy a ticket because I wanted to make sure the workshops I would be teaching would not conflict.  By the time my schedule was set and I looked again, the tickets had been sold out.  So I was disappointed, but still planned to just pop my head into the workshop and thank him personally for visiting the blog.

But that's not what happened.  About an hour before the workshop, I went on the convention app to see if I could find a companion for dinner that night, but instead, discovered that someone had posted that she had a ticket to this workshop she couldn't use, because she was too sick to leave her hotel room.  All I had to do to claim the ticket was meet her sister in the lobby of the other hotel being used for the convention.  I put on my coat and headed across the street and just a few minutes later, the ticket was mine for free!  I stopped worrying about dinner plans and not much  later I was walking into the workshop to meet the artist and enjoy two hours of delightful fun.  Below, we are all making a mess working on creating cereal box collages.

I enjoyed hearing Michael's story.  He is not a trained artist; he earned a business degree in college and his path into an art career was not direct.  But he has found a niche for himself, and his work is colorful, fun, and very 'user-friendly'.  He says he is not a teacher, but he does a lot of workshops with both kids and adults.  He spent about half the workshop time talking, and then gave us time to make our own collages.  I'm afraid I didn't get many pictures, but the creations were diverse.  I wish I'd gotten a photo of the terrific 3-D relief construction made by a gentleman at my table whose personal expertise is sculpture.  Anyhow, here's a few quick pics. 

The dragonfly below was made by me.  I didn't have time to finish.

He gave us all large-size posters of his work, and I ended up with two favorites: the Preamble to the Constitution, and Pi, written out to 777 digits, which I'm giving to my middle school math teacher friend in the school where I taught before I retired.  (Does anyone else recall having to memorize the preamble, probably in 5th grade, and get up in front of the whole class and recite it?  I had to do that!)  And I did get my photo taken with him, too!  Here we are!

 He remembered posting a comment on the blog and called me 'The Dragon Lady'.  I  think I kinda like that!  Thanks, Michael Albert, for a fabulous couple of hours!

For a link to Michael Albert's official website, click HERE. 

You can also find him on Pinterest, HERE. 

Cerealism for Pi Day

Earlier today, I learned that the annual Pi Day is coming next month (on March 14th, to be precise).  And that observation reminded me about a really fun American (NY) pop artist, Michael Albert.  I first discovered Albert and his work about four years ago, and blogged about him at that time, here.  But it's been a long break, and I thought Michael Albert deserved another mention.

The 'Pi' collage above is one of Albert's iconic works, reproduced in posters and jigsaw puzzles and more.  What a terrific merging of math and art!

Back in 2011, when I wrote the original post, my 3rd grade students had learned about pop art, cubism, and surrealism.  So discovering Michael Albert was perfect.  Here was an artist who couldn't bear to throw way a Frosted Flakes box, so what did he do?  He cut it apart and collaged it, of course!   It has the shattered look of cubism, the pop cultural relevance of pop art, and the added bonus of being made from a cereal box.  And so, 'cerealism' was born!

 Albert has made many more collage pieces from cereal boxes, sometimes recreating the cereal box or a well-known quote, sometimes recreating other well-known iconic images, and much more.  Here's a selection of a few more of his pieces:

One more, below, is the Preamble to the Constitution.  I had to memorize this in elementary school.  I don't think kids today are asked to do that sort of memorization.  Social studies and art!

My students were used to saving cereal boxes for the art room, since we used them so frequently, for creating features on papier-mache armatures, for paint scrapers, and much more.  But this time, I cut up the cereal boxes into random size rectangles and spread them out on a central table.  The kids each selected a piece of colored tagboard to glue on (leftover pieces of tag of various dimensions and colors). Armed with glue bottles, scissors, and their imaginations, they went to work, selecting cereal box pieces from the central table.  It was a quick art project, and as a result I have very few photos. The photos posted here of their work can also be seen in the post from 2011 (there's a few more pics there).   

The kids really enjoyed the humor of Albert's work, and also the fun name he had coined for it.  And we all had a good laugh when the older kids saw their work in the hall, and told them they were a bunch of 'cereal killers'!

Each child had his own approach; some kids started by seeking the letters to form words and phrases, and some kids spent time searching for pieces of certain colors.  Their completed work was simple due to time constraints, but it was also unique and fun. 

I loved that Maria chose to make this, below:

 To learn more about Michael Albert, visit his website, here. 

Cerealism! (no that's not a spelling error)

Do you secretly have a favorite bunch of kids? (Shhh, don't tell anybody, but I'm just NUTS about my 3rd graders. They have personality plus!) Anyhow, these kids learned about Surrealism, they learned about Picasso and Cubism, they've learned about Pop Art, and then they learned about Michael Albert, pop artist who couldn't bear to throw away a Frosted Flakes box, so he cut and collaged it. And after making a cubist looking collage piece of pop art, he then coined the term "Cerealism"!

So my 3rd graders had a fabulous time creating with cut up cereal boxes. Some made images, some found words, and everyone had fun.

When the bulletin board went up in the hall, the older kid kids came by and made jokes about us being a bunch of "cereal killers" in the art room. Ha ha ha!!