Shattered Images 2011

Shattered Images

The original lesson is by Ken Vieth in his book Ordinary To Extraordinary: Art & Design Problem Solving and can also be found on The Incedable @rt Department http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/high/Marianne-Values.htm.



I was very apprehensive when I began this lesson. I was afraid I jumped in to quickly with regards to teaching value with a complex task such as this, but my students proved me wrong. I was very surprised and very proud of the end result.  

Musical Set Design Collaboration

Musical Set Design Collaboration

This year I took part in helping out with the set design for the spring musical, Joseph and the Technicoloured Dream Coat. I and 3 of my art students spent many hours after school working on a HUGE Sphinx head. It was a challenging piece as all 4 of us had next to no experience in creating a relief sculpture of this scale. We spent hours creating, researching and experimenting with different materials to come up with the best way to create the Sphinx’s’ features. Although creating the Sphinx was sometimes grueling, challenging, and frustrating, etc, I am eager to take on next year’s set design project as i did enjoy myself and learned a lot. 

Below is a short CAPIES review:

Alina Abramovich, critic, Glebe Collegiate Institute: Especially notable was the construction done by Liam Vienotte, Leslie Savard and Melissa Henderson on the extremely detailed giant sphinx head that served as the Pharaoh’s palace and fantastic backdrop to the Egyptian song numbers.

Materials:

• plaster cast
• newspaper
• masking tape
• card board boxes (for the paws)
• Gesso
• blue water based house paint
• Egyptian gold water based house paint

Cement Leaf Relief

Leaf Relief

This summer my mother and I went to Kiwi Gardens located in Perth, ON. Found here: http://kiwigardens.ca/welcome.htm. We fell in love with a garden art project called “Leaf Relief” created by Deb Stagg. She creates an assortment of garden Leaf ornaments such as bird feeders or bird baths, fountains and stepping stones. Found here: http://www.debstagg.com/leafrelief.htm.

Both my mother and I felt that it looked simple enough that we could figure out how to create them on our own, with some help from the Internet of course.

We began by mixing mortar cement in a standard size wheelbarrow. It is important to make sure the cement isn't too runny/wet. It should be similar to the consistency of brownie mix.

We then created large piles of sand in which we each molded into a form that would support the size of leaf and the desired shape we wanted our cement reliefed leaves to form.  We then laid down plastic and placed our leaves face down so that the veins of the leaf would create the leaf relief in the cement.

It is important to read more details online of the best way to create these leaf reliefs. There are several ways of laying down the cement. What we did was placed handfulls of the cement one by one from the center of the leaf outword. it is important not to have it to think, nomore than 2-1/2" to 3". We also used small chicken wire between the layers of cement to act as extra support.

Once it is left to dry (leaving a plastic bag over it so it doesn't dry to quickly) and the cement is no longer cool to the touch, flip it over onto your sand pile and again leave to dry longer. The leaf will begin to peel off as it drys. A wire brush may be needed to remove any remaining leaf. A sealer needs to be applied in order to leave outside, especially if used for a bird bath.