After Nevelson

Our artist for the last two weeks was Louise Nevelson. She called herself "the first recycler." She liked to walk the streets of New York City and pick up interesting things to include in her art. Last week, we built our assemblages. We grabbed a bunch of tiny objects gathered over the years on walks, tiny toys no longer wanted, lost keys, hardware, beads, anything small and interesting. We glued or hot glued the pieces into a shallow box. This week, we spray painted our assemblages. Nevelson painted each piece one color to unify all the little objects inside. The color makes the art all about shape and texture.

Thing One was very happy with his finished project.

Thing Two chose to make a robot sculpture that is not housed in a box.

One of things I love about our class is that the moms can also participate.

This is my personal attempt!

More Art Classes

These boys loved the Jackson Pollock lesson. Jack the Dripper forever!

Thing One's final product:

Thing Two's final product:

Salvador Dali-inspired collages were very fun as well.

Art Classes

Since September, we have had friends join us on Fridays for an afternoon art class. We usually talk an little about a particular artist, then do an art project using similar techniques. First week was Mondrian, when we studied line and primary colors.

We did a Picasso lesson about portraits, "Fractured Friends."

We discussed Michaelangelo and learned how to paint a fresco. We made our own egg tempera paint with ground chalk and egg yolk, and painted like Giotto. We made fruit and veggie portraits a la Arcimboldo.

We made Christmas ornaments with recycled newspaper pulp and cookie cutters.

This week we made gingerbread houses at our annual "Graham Cracker Spectacular."

I've been a snail or a slug!

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I blogged last. It has been a busy couple of months for us. I did some traveling, my dh did some traveling, my kids did some traveling. We're all back for a few weeks then dh is off to Europe for ten days. Then the holidays hit! Where does the time go?

So, I can't think about all I haven't blogged about in the past 6 weeks. What is going on in our lives now?

I just made a bluebird Halloween costume for Thing One. He wants to say "Trick or Tweet"! I took some of his falling apart onesie pajamas, cut them up to use as a pattern and turned a couple of yards of blue felt that I bought for another unfinished project into a costume. I made some simple "wings" that I attached to the back of the arms, and I attached a simple tail to the back below the zipper. I used a helmet pattern from a knight costume to make a hat. I sewed a blue feather boa onto the helmet and onto the edges of the wings.

Thing Two is either going to be a pumpkin (borrowed costume) or a ghost (hand-me-down from Thing One).

DH and I? who knows. We usually throw something silly together at the last second.

School is going fairly well, although it has been somewhat inconsistent with all our traveling lately. I have workboxes out in the classroom, and downstairs as well. They are varying complexity, so some are good for each child, and some are good cooperative activities and games for all of us to do together. I've been letting the boys pick when they're ready.

I also ordered a new curriculum that arrived yesterday. I will have to report on it later, but the one lesson we've done from it today went well and was engaging, except for the "practice writing letter B" page. It's called Moving Beyond the Page. I ordered one unit (environment) to see how we like it.

We've been doing lots of Halloween activities. We did a cool painting technique called watercolor and ink resist. It made a nice Jack-o-lantern painting.

I have tons of beautiful photos from my trip to Santa Fe, and our trip to Ocean City while the kids were with their grandparents. That will have to wait for another day!