6th Grade Coils Clay; Building a Strong Lamp Base

6th Grade students have explored multimedia construction (art cards), paper and light creations (shadow plays), and are now building with clay coils to create sturdy forms for their lamp bases. 6th grade students explored color and pattern with light during their shadow play experiments and productions; now they will be designing table lamps that contain an illuminated surprise. During and prior to the shadow plays, students worked with tyvek and paper silhouettes to explore the element of surprise when an image is placed inside a lamp shade versus being a decoration on the outside of the shade.

For now, students concentrate on scoring and slipping each coil to the one before it while keeping an artist's eye on their construction and their design goals

8th Grade Collages, Copies, and Transfers Images Into Lamp Shades

8th Grade students have been developing their image transfer skills over the past few months. Working through a variety of techniques and materials, students are now creating final collages for a gel medium photo emulsion transfer onto a tyvek hanging lamp shade. Utilizing, magazine images, photo copy prints, and hand drawn designs, 8th graders have made an original 11"X34" design for their own hanging lamp. Students will be adding color using transferred color, and added color (sharpie, paint marker, watercolor, etc). The lamps will be alight and on display at this year's TBS Student Art Show.

7th Grade Makes Glass Fusing Slump Molds

7th grade students have been exploring the world of glass design over the past month, contemplating arrangements of shapes and colors to create pleasing patterns and images.
Today students learned the fundamentals of glass fusing, and began creating their own ceramic slump molds for their own glass bowls. Students will work to finalize and perfect these molds and will revisit their fusing skills as 8th graders when student materials are renewed and their glass bowls can be made.
Students will create 2D imagery using fused glass for this years TBS Student Art Show.

This video demonstrates crushing glass bottles to create recycled fused glass bowls.

This video is a great demonstration of recycling glass into new shapes and colors, and also shows the necessity for a mold if you want your melted glass to retain a width of more than a 1/4".

This tutorial shows a unique way of creating new fused glass to create a new colorful design.