Thank you to everyone who joined us for Light the Night 2013 and many thanks to Jessie, Cassie and Jenna for help with the photography for this event. Slideshow of images below. Enjoy!!
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Thursday, October 31, 2013
More Optical Illusion Portraits!
Here are more examples of kid created optical illusion portraits including a few from Halloween with their costumed creators!
Look for werewolf, cheshire cat, and other creepy characters.
For step-by-step instructions for getting started with making the eye illusion, read on to the blog post below.
Look for werewolf, cheshire cat, and other creepy characters.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Optical Illusion Portraits
Ever wondered how those portraits in scary movies seem to follow you with their eyes? Here are simple instructions to create your own portrait with eyes that follow wherever you go...
Have an adult help you cut two oval holes in a paper plate.
Cut off the handle of a white plastic spoon and draw an eye with permanent marker in the spoon.
Tape the spoons to the back of the plate so the eyes show through the holes.
Turn over to see the eyes peering through your plate.
Decorate your plate with a unique character drawing.
Notice how the eyes seem to follow you as you look at your portrait from different sides.
Have fun - we'd love to see your faces! Email pictures to kathryn@artatthecenter.org
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Remixing Ideas on Making, Project Based Learning
This is a remix we began in the studio the first week of the course. I posted the ideas from Mitch Resnick's article in the studio and invited young artists as well as adult visitors to put a dot next to ideas they like and add additional ideas on a blank piece of paper. Below is an image of our wall so far...
Here are the original ideas...
Start simple
Work on things that you like
If you have no clue what to do, fiddle around
Don't be afraid to experiment
Find a friend to work with, share ideas!
It’s OK to copy stuff (to give you an idea)
Keep your ideas in a sketch book
Build, take apart, rebuild
Lots of things can go wrong, stick with it
(Resnick, M, 2007)
And here are our new suggestions...
(You may notice some redundant themes but with different wording - another good example of remixing!)
Just change their idea if you copy
Tops!
Put things together and see what they make
Turn a mistake into a piece of art
Keep working
Don't give up
Let go
Remember that if you sew it will shrink if you turn it inside out
Always do your best, no matter what happens
Use your creativity and your brain
If you mess up make it better
A mess up can become a masterpiece
Experiment like me!
Use as many different ideas as you can
Don't complain if there is a mistake
Be confident
Don't do the same thing all the time (written in two colors for emphasis)
Start small
Be art smart
One of my favorite things that happened with this list was one day when a child asked if she could put a dot next to one of the hand-written ideas. Of course! But no one had done this - the question and then this new opportunity brought a flurry of activity back to the wall and others in other classes noticed and added more dots too over the course of the week.
Learning Creative Learning - Week 6 - Social Creativity
The Learning Creative Learning community has been a great example of social learning. This week the discussion began by looking at the goal of free on-line courses. Often the goal is just to deliver information to a larger number of people. However, with LCL the goal is more importantly to bring together a community of people around ideas.
A key way artists, designers and creative thinkers learn in community is through remixing. Artists are continually inspired by and referencing and combining the work of other artists, both contemporaries and figure from art history. Remixing is a way to get to know a work or style, to play with it and make it part of one's own work.
Remixing is also a great form of scaffolding for those getting started. It also leads to building relationships with other makers, to greater connections and collaborations.
Gerhard Fischer and Andres Monroy-Hernandez discussed ways that learning environments can be designed to promote remixing. In the scratch on-line programming community specific features of the site encourage remixing and make sure credit is given to projects that are used as sources for remixes. In the studio at Art at the Center we frequently hear the phrase, "I was inspired by..." during our sharing time. Parents smile at me knowingly; they understand that this is a culture we work to build and celebrate. Children are encouraged to get ideas from other artists, to give credit, to work together and to remix, to take something and make it their own.
Gerhard Fisher also spoke about how to bridge differences in communities; spacial, temporal and conceptual differences. On-line technologies help bridge spacial differences as do artistic reproductions. We have beautiful art books and prints so we can be inspired by other artists without being limited by the availability of the original work. In the art studio, the space is a unifying force and often helps bridge differences in time. In one case, a four year old artist and a ten year old artist carried on a visual conversation through paintings although they attended classes on different days each week and never actually met in the studio. The conversation began when the older artist noticed her younger friends' mixed colors on display and liked their names. She set about creating beach-themed colors of her own and a series of beach images left each week for the other to see began. Conceptually, communities bridge differences in backgrounds, age and skill levels when artists have the opportunity to share process and point of view while creating and in sharing their work over time. Sharing process, challenges, and successes as fellow artists is a great way to build empathy and interest in others.
Environmental and program design can do a great deal to encourage and support program learning. An idea that really struck me was that of courses as seeds. How can we design experiences that become starting points for others? Environments that encourage and even require participant contribution to grow the seed and even to then create seeds of their own for others?
Simple beginning remixes can lead to bigger and deeper connections and relationships, from simple participation to more complex meta-design thinking about how to remix and redesign for new beginnings. Educators work to support layers of participation within learning communities. I liked the idea of thinking of it as a social infrastructure around remixing and collaboration.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Learning Creative Learning - Week 5 - OPEN LEARNING
Open Source typically refers to software development and programming language that is open, free and available for multiple users to work with, store, copy and improve. Wikipedia is a popular example of an open source software.
How can open source apply in other areas of learning? Blogging was offered as one example - the ability to create a blog allows learners autonomy and agency as well as the ability to connect with a network of practitioners in different settings. Blogs by students at Art at the Center have been a great tool for reflection on learning stories, sharing experiences in the studio and developing habits of observation and personal voice. It is a way to celebrate the creativity we see and set an example for others of the sort of relationships and experiences possible in the studio.
Below are links to Art at the Center student blogs:
Art at the Center
Making Art with Children
Art at the Center Internship
Dara's View
Internship
Many of the values of open source learning are particularly relevant in the art studio as well.
One is the idea that sharing is good and that technology should be under the control of the users. This is very relevant to a studio practice of teaching skills as they serve student ideas rather than as prescribed assignments. Learning to make a pinch pot is that much more relevant when it serves a student's idea to use the form to create the shell of a turtle sculpture. Clay hand-building techniques are a very basic technology; different ones resonate with different sculptors. Having menus and guides available to support user ideas is key to development of skills on the way to creating personally meaningful work. So often the sharing of technical skill comes from peers rather than from the instructor. Again, this is a great example of how the skills and process are owned by the children using them.
Agency is a key word in open source because learners choose how to participate in the setting.
Finally, I think the way that open source resonates most for me is the idea that things should be transparent - we should be able to crack them open and see how they work. This is key to what I value in the studio. It should be a place to de-mystify the artistic process and materials. As much as possible we choose everyday materials over fancy art supplies. We find ice cube trays work better than artist palettes for young painters mixing color. At the same time we are modeling for the young artist and his/her parent that what is important is the place to explore color - it is not about fancy tools.
Art is open-source. Artists love to share techniques and ideas with other artists. The studio should be a space to help introduce newcomers and beginners to this language of sharing so they have that many more places to look for inspiration and ideas.
Open Source typically refers to software development and programming language that is open, free and available for multiple users to work with, store, copy and improve. Wikipedia is a popular example of an open source software.
How can open source apply in other areas of learning? Blogging was offered as one example - the ability to create a blog allows learners autonomy and agency as well as the ability to connect with a network of practitioners in different settings. Blogs by students at Art at the Center have been a great tool for reflection on learning stories, sharing experiences in the studio and developing habits of observation and personal voice. It is a way to celebrate the creativity we see and set an example for others of the sort of relationships and experiences possible in the studio.
Below are links to Art at the Center student blogs:
Art at the Center
Making Art with Children
Art at the Center Internship
Dara's View
Internship
Many of the values of open source learning are particularly relevant in the art studio as well.
One is the idea that sharing is good and that technology should be under the control of the users. This is very relevant to a studio practice of teaching skills as they serve student ideas rather than as prescribed assignments. Learning to make a pinch pot is that much more relevant when it serves a student's idea to use the form to create the shell of a turtle sculpture. Clay hand-building techniques are a very basic technology; different ones resonate with different sculptors. Having menus and guides available to support user ideas is key to development of skills on the way to creating personally meaningful work. So often the sharing of technical skill comes from peers rather than from the instructor. Again, this is a great example of how the skills and process are owned by the children using them.
Agency is a key word in open source because learners choose how to participate in the setting.
Finally, I think the way that open source resonates most for me is the idea that things should be transparent - we should be able to crack them open and see how they work. This is key to what I value in the studio. It should be a place to de-mystify the artistic process and materials. As much as possible we choose everyday materials over fancy art supplies. We find ice cube trays work better than artist palettes for young painters mixing color. At the same time we are modeling for the young artist and his/her parent that what is important is the place to explore color - it is not about fancy tools.
Art is open-source. Artists love to share techniques and ideas with other artists. The studio should be a space to help introduce newcomers and beginners to this language of sharing so they have that many more places to look for inspiration and ideas.
Learning Creative Learning - Week 4 - BIG IDEAS
This week felt more conceptual and less hands-on than the focus on Maker culture last week. What I most enjoyed was the ways of thinking about how to design environments and tasks that lead to engagement with powerful ideas.
One idea that really resonated with my work was that of building micro-worlds. In the course of building things powerful ideas emerge. I felt like we saw this with our work with electronic environments. Creating circuits in the context of environments and stories led to thinking about things more systemically and seeing connections between technology, design, tinkering, inventing and de-bugging our creations. I noticed some students were more confident with building environments while others were more focused initially on getting the lights and motors to work. Either way they came to a place where a balance had to be reached between a reasonable circuit that could work reliably on a small scale and a representative environment. Story became a strong component in many creations as well.
See videos of some or our electronic micro-worlds below:
The other BIG IDEA that really resonated for me was the one of having learners participate in both the form and the content of learning. The example given was from that a child hunting a squirrel is copying both the form and content of his father hunting an antelope. A girl in a nurses uniform holding a stethescope is mimicing the form of nursing but not the content. She looks the part but is not participating in caring, the content.
This really resonated for me with art education and highlights why student choice is key. A student in a classroom painting with a style and topic prescribed by the teacher may have the tools and look the part of an artist but it is not authentic participation in the content of the role. A student needs to engage in idea formation, choice of subject, material and expression in order to participate in both the form and content of art-making in a studio. This is why TAB Choice classrooms are so rich - they offer children the opportunity to practice both the form and content of the role of an artist in a studio.
Read more about TAB Choice here:
http://teachingforartisticbehavior.org
Teaching for Artistic Behavior - Choice-based Art Education focuses on helping children develop the habits of artists in their authentic engagement with materials, techniques and ideas. Part of this is the challenge of sometimes getting stuck. Through making things students explore ways to get unstuck in different situations. Powerful ideas emerge from deeper thinking about one's artistic process.
This also led to rich discussion of learning communities and the interchangable roles of teacher and learner. One can learn a great deal through teaching and you develop a relationship by learning from another so that in rich learning communities the learning experience is much deeper than just the topic taught. The amount I learn from students is one of my favorite things about my work in the studio.
This week felt more conceptual and less hands-on than the focus on Maker culture last week. What I most enjoyed was the ways of thinking about how to design environments and tasks that lead to engagement with powerful ideas.
One idea that really resonated with my work was that of building micro-worlds. In the course of building things powerful ideas emerge. I felt like we saw this with our work with electronic environments. Creating circuits in the context of environments and stories led to thinking about things more systemically and seeing connections between technology, design, tinkering, inventing and de-bugging our creations. I noticed some students were more confident with building environments while others were more focused initially on getting the lights and motors to work. Either way they came to a place where a balance had to be reached between a reasonable circuit that could work reliably on a small scale and a representative environment. Story became a strong component in many creations as well.
See videos of some or our electronic micro-worlds below:
The other BIG IDEA that really resonated for me was the one of having learners participate in both the form and the content of learning. The example given was from that a child hunting a squirrel is copying both the form and content of his father hunting an antelope. A girl in a nurses uniform holding a stethescope is mimicing the form of nursing but not the content. She looks the part but is not participating in caring, the content.
This really resonated for me with art education and highlights why student choice is key. A student in a classroom painting with a style and topic prescribed by the teacher may have the tools and look the part of an artist but it is not authentic participation in the content of the role. A student needs to engage in idea formation, choice of subject, material and expression in order to participate in both the form and content of art-making in a studio. This is why TAB Choice classrooms are so rich - they offer children the opportunity to practice both the form and content of the role of an artist in a studio.
Read more about TAB Choice here:
http://teachingforartisticbehavior.org
Teaching for Artistic Behavior - Choice-based Art Education focuses on helping children develop the habits of artists in their authentic engagement with materials, techniques and ideas. Part of this is the challenge of sometimes getting stuck. Through making things students explore ways to get unstuck in different situations. Powerful ideas emerge from deeper thinking about one's artistic process.
This also led to rich discussion of learning communities and the interchangable roles of teacher and learner. One can learn a great deal through teaching and you develop a relationship by learning from another so that in rich learning communities the learning experience is much deeper than just the topic taught. The amount I learn from students is one of my favorite things about my work in the studio.
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