Community Arts Project!

Our "Big Idea"

CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST 

Calling are Graphic Design and Film Students.....

We are asking YOU to make a digital Commercial for the Alma Children's Education Foundation!

The Alma Foundation works to improve the lives of economically impoverished families in Latin America by investing in their children's education. They enable local social entrepreneurs to deploy effective initiatives aimed at improving the quality of early childhood education in their communities.

To learn more about the projects that Alma is involved in and the great work they do please see..

http://www.almafoundation.ca/General/Home.html    ALMA is the Spanish word for SOUL

  So we decided to ask " Can you be the soul that makes the change?" and promote awareness for an inspiring cause.

The prize winning video will be featured on Breakfast Television, as a way of promoting awareness for the foundation, and it would look great on your resume. 

We feel that this organization does a great job at working to assist community programs and give impoverished communities a chance to give children the education they deserve!

Art Word of the Week: Design/ Composition.

The overall mark of success, the standard of achievement (Schirrmacher&Fox,2009).    

For our "Big Idea" we designed a way to create awareness for the Alma Children's Education Foundation. We had to design a  poster to create awareness for our Contest. We had to design the rules and regulations that contestants had to abide by. Our preliminary work has set us out for a chance to succeed in our Idea.

So were asking CAN YOU BE THE SOUL THAT MAKES THE CHANGE?? 

Guerilla ART!

 THIS IS FRED. 

For the Guerrilla Art's Project. I created a Balloon story. I got a bunch of balloons, and wrote a story on them, ans stuck them in the ground. This is what the story said. 

Once upon a time...

In a far away land.

There lived a little balloon.

His dream was of one day travelling the world.

But he had one problem.

He was stuck to the ground.

If you believe in achieving your dreams.

Please set Fred free.  

This is what happened. 

Once i had these balloons, i went out onto my street and placed them in the ground. I felt a little silly about it, but it ended up being kind of fun. All of my neighbours came out to see what it was. they looked at each balloon curious as to what they said. Then they followed through with what i had hoped would happen. One girl picked up the balloon who was FRED and set him free! I guess she believes in following your dreams. Overall it was a fun way to do something out of the ordinary and make some people smile at doing something silly and fun. 

This is something that anyone could do to test their creativity, and come up with something that will make people stop and think rather than rushing about their day. It is a way to bring a fun, creative spin to our thinking, and it could very possibly brighten someone's day. 

Art Word of the Week: LINE

"A line is a visible mark made by an artistic tool. It usually suggests direction or movement, rhythm or form" (Shirrmacher &Fox,135).

I place the balloons in a line, so that people would be drawn to them, and could follow the direction of them to read the story. The line of balloons in this cause allowed from people to physically move from one place to another to understand them story.

Pretend Play and Magical Thinking: A Cardboard Box or is it??

Children are the best demonstrators of what Creative Play and Magical Thinking are. There worlds just seem to light up as they use their creative thinking to engage in play and entertain themselves. A simple cardboard box could take a child any where they want to go. It could all of a sudden be turned into a jet plane sorrowing through the sky, it could be a firetruck racing down the street, it could become a house in the middle of an enchanted forest, or a submarine exploring the wonders of the ocean hidden beneath the water's surface. A cardboard box could be turned into a bed for a doll, a magical castle, it could become a car and gas pump, a boat or a Robot! There are an endless about of possibilities a simple cardboard box could become.

http://www.paperpod.docutoaster.com/

           

To find more cardboard craft ideas see...http://www.parents.com/holiday/christmas/crafts/genius-and-fun-crafts-to-make-with-leftover-boxes/

Paperpod and Cardboard Design

As i considered how a child could turn a simple, boring,old card board box into the most imaginative creative best toy in the world, i thought i should give myself the challenge to a cardboard creative too! 

Here is Sally Spring!

This is Sally Spring

She is a Robot. 

Sally is 20 years old. 

She loves the season spring!

Here favorite thing is a flower.

Here favorite flower is a Daisy.

Her favorite thing to do is water the flowers. 

Sally loves rainy days when she gets to wear her rain boots.

She loves to jump in puddles and squish her feet in the mud. 

Sally like afternoons in the garden, and enjoys a nice glass of lemonade when it's hot. 

Sally likes to read about flowers, and gardening. 

Her favorite dessert is ice cream, strawberry is her favorite flavour. 

Sally likes hearing the birds chirp in the early morning and waking up to a nice cup of tea. 

Sally lives in a little farm house off in the country. 

After a good day in the garden, she enjoys having dinner with friends on the porch in her backyard.

Sally is very friendly and loves to meet new people. 

Sally likes riding bicycles, and and skipping stones in the lake. 

Sally likes to watch the stars at night. 

And making wishes on shooting stars. 

Sally's last wish was to find another Robot friend. 

So now it's your turn to make something magical out of a simple cardboard box. You don't need any special supplies just use odds and ends you find around your house, and make Sally a new friend.  

Children are the most imaginative creative individual but if they aren't given the opportunity to use their creativity they might just lose it so give your students a chance to become creative magical thinkers, and give them a cardboard box!

ART WORD of the week: SHAPE

A shape is the size, length, and width of an object. Shapes include rectangles, square, circles, triangles and many more. Sally Spring was made up of two rectangular boxes. The shape of an object can change the way you view it. Shapes can be seen everywhere, everyday. While my friend sally is rectangular and so are most cardboard boxes, see what you can do change it's shape. Children making a rocket ship cardboard box had to change the top angle of the box to make it point up, and changed the shape. The little girl cut the shape of a cardboard box to make a bed for her doll. How can you change the shape of a cardboard box, using your creative thinking while making something magical. 

  

A creative photo found on 

http://www.villiard.com/blog/category/humour/arts

GO BANANA'S!

 Food items have been used as a basis to a number of commercial adds. Like an Apple for the Apple Store that sells computers, ipod, iphones and ipads. Or chocolate M&M's as the spokes people for the chocolate candy on commercials. So this week our teacher asked us to think about the foods we see when we walk into the grocery store. How many ways can you view one food item. My Topic .... a Banana.

A Banana is Yellow when it's ripe.

 Green when it's not.

 It comes in a bunch.

 It has a curved shape.

                                                   You peel it to eat. 

That is one way to view a Banana in it's original form. Here are 14 other ways...
 Banana Bread
          Banana Cake
                 Banana Chips
                           Banana Smoothie
                                       Banana Muffins
                                                  Banana Split
                                                             Banana Fritters
                                                                       Banana Juice
                                                                                  Banana Pancakes
                                                                                               Banana Waffles
                                                                                                         Banana ice cream
                                                                                                                      Banana Pudding
                                                                                                                                  Banana Yogurt                                                 
                                                                                                                                         Fried Bananas


All these ways of serving Banana's change the way the banana is originally formed. Banana muffins, bread, pancakes, and waffles. All change the shape and texture making a banana turn into a bread like form. Instead of being a curved shape the banana it then shaped into either a rectangle or circle. Banana smoothies, juice, yogurt, pudding, or ice cream all change a banana into a blended smooth creamy, or cold texture. A Banana came be changed and use to create some delicious things!

So how can this apply to ECE, you may ask. Well have your students look at an object that is common, like a Banana, then ask them to look at it in a new way. Ask them how they see the Banana, you can look at the colour, shape, texture, lines, and the mass and volume of it. You then ask your students to be creative and turn the banana into something new. Who know's what they will come up with, a banana could perhaps spark their imagination!

ART WORD: Mass and Volume. 

Mass and Volume refer to a solid , three dimensional body that has height, length, and width ( Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009).  

2011 Esty Inc.

                                                            

                                                                                      Banana's In Pajamas

Painting with Mosaics

After reading an article called Painting with Scissors by Honigman and Bhavnagri’s (1998) our teacher asked us to create an ARTs activity that communicates personal understanding and identity in the world. Taking on the ideas of the articles Painting with Scissor i went in the direction of painting with mosaic. So here it is...

image:best house painter

STep OnE:

 Give you students a choice of papers, and a variety of

colourful paints. Ask them to use the paint to cover the paper, 

while they experiment with what happens when you combine

colours to make new ones! They can see what happens when 

mixing red and blue or adding white to make a colour lighter. 

STeP Two:

Once the paint has dried , have the students rip the

 paper all up into different size pieces and sizes. Let them 

fun and enjoy doing something that may seem a little 

unusual.  

SteP THreE:

Have the students now take the paper                                               

that is all riped up and make a mosaic! You 

could show them examples of mosaic artists so

that they understand what a mosaic is. Give them the

 freedom to make an abstract mosaic or a picture from the pieces.

They can glue the ripped pieces on card stock from a firm backing.

This activity gives students the opportunity to express and explore

their personal identity in the colours they choose to paint with; in the 

way choose to place the pieces, and in what they choose to create. 

This activity gives students the freedom to explore and use their creativity

to represent themselves in an abstract way. 

ART WORD OF THE WEEK:

Colour: pigments used that can set moods, express feeling, and represent objects. It is something that must be seen visually. Colour is all around you. You see it everywhere and everyday!

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind...

    
                                                    Google images.

It took me forever to remember the entire title of this movie. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It is such a great movie title for an Art Film. It definitely makes you wonder what it is about. After watching the movie I now know that the confusing title reflects the confusing movie. Well confusing until the end. I had to pay close attention to the the story to catch all it's insights. The plot played off of it self and was very interesting. It was such an interesting concept what would really happen if you just erased someone from your memory. Would face really step in and lead you back together. I almost hope it would, but am not willing to find out for myself.  I don't think i would ever want to erase my memory. Even if you have hard times in a relationship there are always good ones to balance the bad times out.  Well this is what me and a friend had to talk about after watching the movie. Enjoy!

Shelby K says:

hey heather

Heather Hayworth says:

Hey!

So what did you think about that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Shelby K says:

i thought it was quite strange, it kept going back and forth between past and present and memories

Heather Hayworth says:

I know it was really confusing, i thought it would never make sense.

Shelby K says:

yea, ive seen movies like that before but i didnt expect the movie to be like that when it started, orginially I thought there was something wrong with the guy, that he had some sort of disorder or something that made him weird

Heather Hayworth says:

i was thinking that to i thought they both have mental problems, or something.

Shelby K says:

yea i kept trying to analyse this guy and his social situations and i was thinking that he must have some form of autsim

Heather Hayworth says:

yah he did seem to have difficulties interacting with people, the girl did as well though

I thought it was really interesting how the movie kept switching around, it made you want to pay attention to what was going on , so you didn't miss anything

Shelby K says:

yea you definatly get wraped up in the story because their are so many things going on, especially because the concept of erasing your memory is so strange it makes you watch to see how they attempt to do that. I thought it was going to end badly in the end, that he was going to wake up and remember her still

Heather Hayworth says:

I was thinking that to, the whole situation seem bound for disaster. it was so strange, it was something i would have never thought people would do or want to do

Shelby K says:

yea they make the concept to erasing your memory so easy though so its weird when you think about it in real life, but thats what makes the film unique, the way it is presented

did you notice those little potato head people?

Heather Hayworth says:

haha yes!

that was kinda funny, definitely something creative. do you they represented people?

Shelby K says:

yea she definatly had a whole family collection of them, at first when i saw them i thought they were kind of like voodoo dolls haha, so i was like oh man this girl is definatly crazy!

Heather Hayworth says:

oh haha really! thats so funny. i wouldn't be surprised if they were.

what did you think about the background music to the movie, i think it added to make it more of an art film

Shelby K says:

yea i noticed the music at the beginning when they were on the train, it was like not a happy sound, that would typically be in a movie, but it wasnt sad it just was unique in the fact that right off the bat it gave you this little suspisious feeling that something was different

Heather Hayworth says:

yah it did..

it change the whole feel of the movie... it wasn't a typical hollywood movie that's for sure

Shelby K says:

yea and usually they have more of a happy ending, where this movie i was like oh ok they know they erased their memory, but that was it they were just like oh ok, like it was no big deal

Heather Hayworth says:

yahh... i thought they would have reacted a little more to the whole thing

Shelby K says:

yea the way the blonde girl mary reacted was what i expected

Heather Hayworth says:

yes, she did act more like i typically would think. i guess thats why its more of an art film. it makes you think.

Shelby K says:

yea the way the movie presents it self is artistic in its own way, anyways, it was weird, but cool at the same time

Heather Hayworth says:

Yah it was. Something to think about.

Watch the trailer for a closer look :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34oYgz6bGs&feature=related

Art Word of the Week: Space - the way in which the artist chooses to use the canvas, paper, objects,.


In this movie space can be seen by the way the film maker decided to cut the clips. It was shown when he cut clips short moving one to the next quickly, and in the flash backs he created. This movie was an example of using space as an element of the artistic elements of the movie.   

Urban Patterns

Walking down the street looking around there are so many patterns in the neighbourhoods around us. From the sidewalks, the escalators, to windows on a house their never seems to be a place where you can’t see patterns. The first pattern I noticed was the bricks on my house as I walked out the door. The bricks on my house are rectangular in shape, and have reds, and browns in their colour. The bricks line up horizontally across the outside of my house.

 After noticing the brick pattern on my house I began to look at other houses around me and their styles. There are so many different patterns and styles made with bricks. Patterns surround us.

        

In the Patterns I found, I noticed that they held balance. Balance can be achieved in two different ways.  One is through being, Symmetrical.  This is where shapes are evenly or equally balanced around some point, up or down, right or left, horizontally, vertically, radially, or diagonally. The other way is through being Asymmetrical, where objects are not evenly balanced around a point.  But using space can balance out a picture. 

The bricks that i found all represented symmetrical balance. 

ACTIVITY: Sponge Painting!

If you were to have a discussion with the children in your class about the patterns you see around the neigbourhood ,  bricks may be one of the patterns they notice. You could then have the kids in your class experiment with pattern making, using sponges and paint. You could provide the class with different shaped square and rectangle sponges to see what kind of brick patterns they can make. Give them different colour paint and they could make even more complex patterns with the colours they use as well.

Look for more painting ideas at 

http://puffypaint.com/kids-painting-ideas.php

 Reference: Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children (6th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar

AGO TRIP

 I have always like the saying A Picture is worth A Thousand Words. After our trip to the AGO last week i have decided that it applies to A Painting too. So...

Chevreuse II by Jean Paul Riopelle, 1950's

A Painting worth a thousand Words ...

  Amazing. Incredible. Colorful. Impressive. Huge. Massive.

 Time. Textured. Detailed. Thick. Fascinating . Movement.

 Crazy. Interesting. Intriguing. Line. Jaw Dropping. Awe. 

Yellow. Orange. Captivating. Colour Explosion. Red. Green.

Oil Paint. Canvas. Fan. Pink. Black. White. Wow. Chaotic.

 Blue. Patterned. Exploration. Imagination. Love It. Hours.

 Effort. Dedication.Cool. Creative.Wonder. Original.

 Real. Emotion. Circle. Rhythm. Variety. Inspiring.

ok well maybe not a thousand...

During our trip to the AGO, I came across an oil painting that i was FASCINATED by. It was a HUGE, MASSIVE, CANVAS that cover an entire wall.   The painting did not have any people, buildings or objects but to me appeared to look like a COULORFUL EXPLOSION. The OIL PAINT was layered THICKly across CANVAS in a FANning motion. Every FAN stroke was filled with a VARIETY of COLOURS. It had WHITE, RED, BLUE, GREEN, PINK, BLACKS... The painting to me appeared as though it may hold the artists various EMOTIONS, that as the COLOUR wove it self across the canvas, it held COLOURS that represented good times spent and rough times to. The THICK TEXTURE of the paint made the painting pop-out, and made you WONDER. How long did it take? How many hours were spent working on it? How many tubes of paint did he use? Did the artist start in the middle of the page and work his was out? Or did he work from one side of the page to the other?  It captured an experience this artist took, I felt as though i was EXPLORING his CREATIVE IMAGINATION. It was as if I had stumbled across a story that was told through the paintings COLOURS, LINES, SHAPES, and RHYTHM. 

I could have stood in front of the painting for hours, and still felt that I hadn't had enough time to explore and understand the entire painting. It made me WONDER.

The painting was called Chevreuse II, it was painted by Jean Paul Riopelle. He lived in Quebec in the 1950's. The painting took from 1953 to 1954 to complete. He used oil and a large canvas to create his work.  

ART WORD of the WEEK: TEXTURE

Texture is the surface quality of a work of art, how it feels. (Schirrmacher& Fox, 2009)

Riopelle created an intriguing painting that was a true example of Texture. The thick paint made for a complex and interesting surface for it's viewers.

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children (6th

Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar

Instant Creativity!

A instant. A moment. A spark of inspiration. A spark of creativity.

Image from: theage.com
Barbara Brash, Australia, 1925-98: Peacock (1958), colour linocut on Japanese paper, and on colour screenprint on paper; 43.8 x 55.8 cm (block and screen), 55.4 x 66.2 cm (sheet). Purchased 1958, National Gallery of Victoria.

 My instant creativity... inspired by a PEACOCK.

This Peacock. Began it's life as a simple pad of sticky notes. After many folding and a little tape,and a pipe-cleaner for feet it is now something much more than it was before. A creative little patterned Peacock. 

Pattern. Yes. Patterned. Meaning a mark or design that is repeated in a reoccurring sequence.

 (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009,p.366.) 

To me a Peacock is a perfect example of a of a pattern.  A Peacock's pattern has rhythm, movement, repetition, that is made of lines, shapes, and colours. 

Nature has many hidden patterns throughout it. The natural world around us might just be the best example of creativity itself. 

by ADMIN on 14. SEP, 2010 in PHOTOGRAPHY

Baul Haque. 2010

bamjam.net (2007)

http://www.pentaxforums.com-sheela

Perhaps if we took time in our day to look at the world around us, we may just be inspired to be a little more creative.

It can be found in a leaf, a tree truck, water droplets, flower petals, birds sitting on a wire, in snowflakes, in the clouds in the sky, in the waves in the ocean, in seashells, or even the frost found on a windshield.

Creativity. Nature. Patterns. Peacocks.

A craft idea for the week: A Paper Peacock.

http://www.highlightskids.com/Express/Crafts/decorations/C0798_peacock.asp

What is Creativity?

Creativity                          

.... the act of letting inspiration take you by the hand

.... the process of  letting your imagination run free

.... the act of following a moments thought

.... the process of actually doing something

.... the ability to take a risk and try something new

images from www.christinemasonmiller.com

Let Imagination Take Over. posters (2008).Kinetic Design and Advertising Photographer : Jeremy Wong, Nemesis Pictures

In the process of defining creativity for my self i found this image/ quote that i feel is very relevant. Creativity is in itself an expression of  a persons imagination, inspiration, and individual exploration. It is occurs when an individual takes a chance to try something new and different, making or doing something completely original. I had always though of creativity having to end as a product, yet the more i consider it creativity seems more like a processes. It is the process in a task or of a thought, or during an act which is when someones creativity shines through. Creativity can be found in more than just a piece of artwork. Creativity can be found in when an individual gets dressed in the morning what they choose to wear, how they do their hair, or where their makeup. Creativity can be found when someone try's a new recipe, or when someone makes a spontaneous decision. You may view creativity when someone takes a difficult situation and turns it around for the better. It may be found when someone takes something broken and repairs it. Or creativity may be found in the way a person expresses themselves, through writing, dance, song, poetry,fashion or even blogging. One thing about creativity that is for sure is that 

Creativity can be found anywhere and everyone is creative.