ARTicles. The Newsletter of the Art Department of the Phoenix Elementary School District. January 2016 Established August 2003 Issue #169

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1 ARTicles The Newsletter of the Art Department of the Phoenix Elementary School District January 2016 Established August 2003 Issue #169 An elementary school that treats the arts as the province of a few gifted children, or views them only as recreation and entertainment, is a school that needs an infusion of soul. The arts are an essential element of education, just alike reading, writing, and arithmetic. William Bennett, former US secretary of Education Happy New Year What is it about a new year? We feel that our batteries have been re-charged. After the holidays, during which we ate and spent too much, it is now time to begin to get back to business and try to at least get through the month of January before we forget about those resolutions. So, Happy New Year it is. We should all try to make it the best year ever. Make life better for someone else and you will make life better for yourself. Pay it forward. Visit someone you haven t seen for a long time. Smile and say hello to a stranger. Buy a homeless person a meal. Over tip a good waitress. Think about what you have learned in life and pass it along. You will make someone s day better, and you will make your year one to remember. Happy New Year from John, Rudy, Nancy, Abby, Crystal, Carrie, Lauren, Kyle, Stacy, Leah, Vicky, Alisa, Deb, and Janet MLK at the State Capitol Our wonderful students will again participate in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Art Exhibition at the Arizona State Capitol. The show will open Thursday, January 21 from 4:30-6:00. This event was once open to other school districts but for the past 12 years, PESD is the only one invited to exhibit. Everyone is invited to this event in which more than 100 pieces of student art will be featured. Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. by Heard art student, Ariel Chavez Our Qwn Jackson Pollock Month The cover of Life Magazine in 1949 asked, Is Jackson Pollock America s Greatest Painter? Our most famous alumnus, Jackson Pollock ( ) changed the direction of world art by creating the Abstract Expressionist movement. Pollock attended Monroe School in the 1920s. This is now the Phoenix Children s Museum. He is best known for his huge non-objective paintings that had no center of focus. They were meant to create an environment in which the viewer felt surrounded and able to enter into another realm. We celebrate Pollock in January by having our students study his life and work. Watch for an exhibition at the Burton Barr Library this spring.

2 Blue Poles 1952 Pollock at Herrera Tearing it up at Garfield Ms. Vicky Ross s Herrera students created paintings ala Pollock using a Christmas theme. The paintings will grace the hallways of the school and the door to her art room. Ms. Nancy Caternolo s younger Garfield art students created shapes by tearing construction paper to aid in identifying organic shapes as well as strengthening fine motor skills. It Looks Great On Papier Whittier art teacher, Ms Leah Mitchell, works with a student on a papier mache squid. Students were up to their eyeballs in a messy flour and water paste, but the results were fantastic, and the students had a great time. Calamari anyone??? All Roads Lead to Edison Some of Ms. Abby Christensen s Edison art students worked on the mathematics of perspective. They did one point perspectives in which a road going to the horizon line disappeared at a vanishing point. Notice that even the broken lines in the road are in perspective.

3 How they see us Students always have a great time drawing their art teachers. Avian Abodes Ms. Crystal Conover s 5 th grade art classes made bird houses which are now hanging around the Shaw campus. They constructed the ornothoid apartments from wood and then painted them bright colors hoping to attract young feathered couples wishing to start families. These birdie bungalows should egg them on. The wrent is low and it is a gated community near good schools. Arborial Abodes Abound. Ms. Janet Tucker (Heard) Ms. Abby Christensen (Edison) Mr. John Avedisian (formerly of MTS) Ms. Stacy Hedrick (Bethune)

4 7th and 8 th graders at Capitol are also using a grid to make the full dragon bodies. They began by drawing a grid on their paper, then mating the lines in their drawings to the spaces. Ms. Nancy Caternolo (Garfield) Capitol under Siege by Dragons Mr. Rudy Begay s team of Dragon slayers at Capitol have been hard at work creating textures, both implied and real in their images of dragon eyes. Even 2 nd graders got into the act. Mr. Begay demonstrated how to draw the different body parts of dragons and the kids took it from there. All of the dragon artists at Capitol did a super job.

5 ARTifacts: What s in a 20 th Century name? Surrealism- Ideas taken from dreams and the subconscious. Often images were realistic, but set in unusual circumstances. Fluxus A blend of media including painting, film, architecture, etc. detail. Paintings made from pure emotion. Dadaism An absurdist art movement in which the artist uses non-conventional art materials. Impressionism Light, color in an instance of time were studied to create paintings using minimal Pop Art Art depicting everyday objects. The best known is Andy Warhol s lithograph of a stack of Campbell s Soup cans. Op Art Art that employs optical illusions. Abstract Expressionism Artwork with no reference to the physical world. Non-Objective Coined by Vassily Kandinsky, it is a term describing a painting that has no reference to any real life objects. Suprematism The movement was based upon artistic feeling and emotion rather than specific references to physical reality. Social Realism Depictions of stylized and heroic working class people and events. It was the main art thrust in the early days of the Soviet Union and other Socialist/Communist countries. philosophy. Art Deco The origins are from 1920s France and spread to the rest of Europe and the US. It is a style of art, architecture and design using the simplicity of line as its main theme. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was mostly a stately architectural style which used nature as its base. Simple elegance was the Fauvism Fauve is a French word that literally means Wild Beast. When we look at the work of artists like Henri Matisse now, we do not think it is very outrageous, but it certainly offended the sensibilities of the art world in the early 20 th century. American Regionalism Artist who painted realistic landscapes throughout the US and celebrated the beauty of America. The Ash Can School-early 20 th century movement in which the artist painted the working class of NY and even some of the seedier parts of the city. Cubism The reduction of all objects to very simple planes and colors. Background and foreground are often on the same plane. Der Blaue Reiter Started in Germany by Russian immigrant artists and native Germans it is a movement that pushed the boundaries of current rules and sensibilities. It had no specific identifying imagery. Futurism Begun in Italy the movement was meant to suggest abstraction and speed, youth and energy. The ideas spread to other parts of Europe and many of the artists and their work became synonymous with Fascism. De Stijl Very simplified minimal images. Other things like furniture design and architecture were also reduced to simple forms and colors.

6 Art among us Shaw Ms. Crystal Conover s art super stars at Shaw have created a four foot by eight foot mural that is hanging in the gymnasium. The handprints of many Shaw students will be a permanent part of the Shaw landscape. Garfield Garfield school just got a fresh new mural designed by artist, Edgar Fernandez who also designed the fabulous mural at Shaw. Mr. Fernandez was aided in this project by Garfield 6 th grade students.