Art: Welcome (Back) To Art!

The summer was a good time to unwind after a busy first year as your Bethlehem Art Instructor. However, I am so excited to begin a new school year of art! This year, we will focus on building the students' abilities in the art classroom through the Studio Habits of Mind, a set of eight dispositions that an artist uses.

1. Develop Craft: Learning to use tools, materials, artistic conventions, and learning to care for tools, materials and space.

2. Engage and Persist: Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, to develop focus conducive to working and persevering at tasks.

3. Envision: Learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed, and imagine possible next steps in making a piece.

4. Express: Learning to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning.

5. Observe: Learning to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary "looking" requires, and thereby to see things that otherwise might not be seen.

6. Reflect: Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one's work or working process, and learning to judge one's own work and working process and the work of others.

7. Stretch and Explore: Learning to reach beyond one's capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

8. Understand Community: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists (i.e., in classrooms, in local arts organizations, and across the art field).

This year we will once again participate in the Square One Art Fundraiser. Your support provided the necessary funds for our clay exploration last year. And this year - drum roll, please - we'll be doing kiln-fired clay! A huge improvement over the clay we used last year.

WHAT ART WE DOING IN ART?

To being the school year, all grades will be exploring the work of acclaimed author Roald Dahl. All classes will learn what it means to be an illustrator. Lessons not only coincide with particular works by Dahl, but also explore the Elements and Principles of Art.

This year begins a year-long exploration of the Elements of Art and Principles of Design. These are the foundation upon which artists build their images. Here are some examples of what we'll be doing as we start the year!