8th Grade Is Refashioning Fashion!

Handmade earrings made from embossing metal (left), one design team creating a unique repurposed dress (right).

The 8th graders are embarking on an end of the year fashion adventure via their creativity, the art studio, and community donations of clothing. Students will be working together in groups to create a "fashion forward" repurposed outfit to be worn by the group's model in an end of the unit Fashion Show on May 29th. 

Outfits and accessories will be constructed by altering/sewing unwanted clothes and using unconventional materials (metal washers, paper, wire, etc.). Students are required to created their outfit using repurposing techniqures and basing the design on their current style preferences (preppy, hip, casual, sporty, etc.), drawing from a historical era of fashion (e.g. the renaissance, the roaring 20's, disco 70's, etc.), or costume (knight, animal, nature, etc.). Design groups will receive certificates for attending to assignment parameters and achieving group goals by working together, considering each members ideas and strengths when making decisions.

7th Grade Takes a Good Long Look at Themselves

7th Grade students will be working on self-portrait drawings over the next couple of months. Students will be developing and using many skills and disciplines as they tackle the difficult possibilities of the self-portrait. Self Portraits have a long history, and many great masters have tackled the challenge of representing themselves via a 2D surface. Like these artists, 7th graders will consider not only the technical steps necessary to complete a portrait drawing, they will also consider composition and style as a means of conveying a sense of themselves to the viewer.

Beginning steps for this project include skill development in areas of line, shading, and observation when drawing, accompanied by taking photos of each other that will be used as the "subject" for their self-portrait drawing. Over the next classes, students will continue to sharpen their drawing skills in addition to creating a transparency drawing from their photo and creating a grid on another photo copy, both for use as accuracy tools during their self-portrait process.

6th Grade Looks for the Vanishing Point

6th graders applied their minds and mark making skills to the technique of one point perspective drawing. Students viewed demonstrations of the technique, learning the steps and rules necessary to transform a 2D surface into a 3D space. 
Most valuable rule, all vertical lines are drawn parallel to each other at 90 degree angles; otherwise the drawer finds that all of their objects are leaning to and fro. 

One Point Perspective Basics using a computer.

One Point Perspective Video using pencil, paper, and ruler.

8th Grade Embarks on a Fashion Journey

The 8th graders are embarking on an end of the year fashion adventure via their creativity, the art studio, and community donations of clothing. Students will be working together in groups to create a "fashion forward" repurposed outfit to be worn by the group's model in an end of the unit Fashion Show on May 29th. 

Outfits and accessories will be constructed by altering/sewing unwanted clothes and using unconventional materials (metal washers, paper, wire, etc.). Students are required to created their outfit using repurposing techniqures and basing the design on their current style preferences (preppy, hip, casual, sporty, etc.), drawing from a historical era of fashion (e.g. the renaissance, the roaring 20's, disco 70's, etc.), or costume (knight, animal, nature, etc.). Design groups will receive certificates for attending to assignment parameters and achieving group goals by working together, considering each members ideas and strengths when making decisions. 

March 26, 2013
Set Design - Middle School Performance Exploratory

Performance of Small Actors, March 22, 2013

Preparing emotions for the backdrop.

For this year's Middle School Play, Set Design was challenged to create a single backdrop that could embody a range of stage performances and convey a conceptual interpretation of the content in this year's play Small Actors. After reading the entire play as a group, set design brainstormed and discussed the complex feelings of identity, family, love and loss explored in the play. 

 Ideas for the backdrop revolved around quotes and the play excerpt below and led students and I to develop a conceptual backdrop meant to convey/represent that internal "audience" we all carry around inside our minds. 

“There are no small parts, only small actors” -Konstantin Stanislavisky  

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts," - William Shakespeare's As You Like It

Small Actors by Stephen Gregg:

MR. PHELPS. There are no small parts, Emily.

EMILY. It's not even that it's small. It's just so...It's ex-actly the kind of part you'd expect a person like me to play.

MR. PHELPS. I'm sorry?

EMIL Y . You know. You look at  her, (Referring to WENDY.) and you think, "Oh, Juliet." Of course. Of course she's the lead. She's never in her life going to have a part that consists of four one-syllable words.

WENDY. How do you know?

EMILY. I just know. And then you look at me, you look at my life, and you think, ''Oh, crappy little walk-on." And, I mean, if you were me, wouldn't it worry you that that's going to be it, your whole life? Like your whole life is going to be the equivalent of this four-word role?

MR. PHELPS. People play all sorts of roles.

EMILY. I don't think that's true. I think if you play the second servant in Romeo and Juliet, you end up playing it your whole life. (ALL stare at herfor a moment.)

Students contemplated the emotions they felt reading the play, and those they feel daily and created a color coded system that would link the color of each face on the backdrop to the emotion it is meant to represent. The ultimate design consisted of a thought bubble containing a cropped section of stadium seating in a theater, showing a multitude of faces and emotions extending off into the distance.

Students utilized drawing sheets, themselves and each other as inspiration for the eyes, mouth, etc. drawn to convey each emotion; Pink = shy, embarrassed, Yellow - Happy, funny Orange = strange, weird Green = Envy, Sickness, Purple = suspicious, guilty, Blue = Sad, Sleepy. 

Great Job Glee, Band, and Drama on your performances and thanks for giving our back-drop context.