Week one students created a coil pot to demonstrate prior knowledge of clay building. We made coil pots as a way to build our skills we learned last year in art class and welcome our new to Willow Dale this year students into a new process. We had small pots, large pots, pots with lids, pots with decorations, and even cat pots! Our boys and girls got really creative with putting personal touches into their work. Our pots dried out and we were able to glaze them as one activity on week two!
Week two we works in three large groups that rotated between stations every twenty minutes. There was a lot of collaboration and team work that occurred to make sure that everyone got all three art activities finished for the day. Art club is only from 3:45-5pm which might seem like a lot of time, but time really does fly by when we are having fun making art!
I introduced the students to my art making style of ceramic inlay where they made tiles coated with wax, carved anything into them using a needle tool, and then inlaid black slip to have the design show up. At station two students glazed their ceramic coil pots with a variety of colors making sure to not paint the bottom of their pots with glaze. The boys and girls know that glaze turns to glass when it is heated in a kiln, which is a ceramic over that goes up to 2000 degrees for our schools clay body! The last station was to create the armature for our organic sculptures. Mr. Anderson (my dad) worked all week to cut and sand wooden blocks, drill four holes, and cut/straighten coat hangers for our art club students. The students took the wire hangers and used their muscles to make different organic forms that were then covered with a stocking. They needed to paint the entire surface with glue so that it create a canvas like surface that we will begin painting in week three! Stay turned for all the updates on all the amazing things we are learning in art club!
Although we have 40 students and nearly 10 parents every week in a very packed art room, everyone is really enjoying themselves!