MATT NOLEN Matt Nolen, City States (Coney Island), 2011 Soft ground etching, digital print and letterpress embossment, slip- cast porcelain, over- glaze, decal and luster, 16 x 12 inches Arts Integration: Target Audience: Description: Curricular Objectives: Visual Art: English/Language Arts: Visual Arts and Language Arts Grades 4-12 After analyzing and interpreting City States (Coney Island) by Matt Nolen, students either write dialogue to fill the thought bubble in the print or write a characterization of the girl. Subsequently, they create their own artwork to show a city state in their community. Students actively engage in the processes of creating, interpreting and responding to art. Students use critical thinking, problem solving and decision making skills. The student develops and demonstrates creative writing techniques in writing dialogue. 1
The student develops and demonstrates creative writing techniques using figurative language. Lesson Logistics: Materials: City States (Coney Island), the print that is the focus for this lesson, can be found on pages 8 and 9. Optional: City States (Chelsea) is on page 10. For Language Arts/English part of the lesson: Paper and pen or pencil For elementary level students: A Penny for Your Thoughts worksheet at the end of this lesson For the Visual Art part of the lesson: Optional: digital camera, digital scanner, computer, printer Space: Vocabulary Viusal Art: English/Language Arts: Classroom three- dimensional, emboss, digital print, etching internal, external, city state, adjective, simile, hyperbole Lesson Procedure: Starting the Lesson: There is a game show on television that asks contestants to guess a category from a list of words. ($10,000 Pyramid) Share a list of words that define our external environment (e.g. water, air, land, unpolluted, habitat). Invite students to figure out that this word list defines our external environment. Invite students to create a list of words to define internal environment. (what we think or feel but keep inside ourselves) If students were to make a list of words for a personal, internal environment, what words would be on the list? (happy, hungry, tired, etc.) Explain that together the class will look at an artwork that is about both an external and an internal environment. Building the Lesson: Show City States (Coney Island) and read the picture by asking: o What s happening here? o What makes you say that? o What else do you see? 2
Summarize the discussion, explaining that Matt Nolen shows both the external environment the amusement park, and the internal environment what the girl is thinking. Now show the side view detail of City States (Coney Island) where the thought bubble is visible. o What is visible that you couldn t see before? (the embossed thought bubble with the word More ) o How does this view change your interpretation of what is happening? Creative Writing A Penny for your Thoughts? (Elementary Grades) Have you heard the expression a penny for your thoughts? When might you ask that kind of question? In effect, it is as if Nolen asked the girl in the print to give him a penny for her thoughts. He makes her talk by embossing the word More on paper. He goes further, showing what more the girl is thinking with images illustrated on the ceramic thought bubble. The girl is smiling and seems happy, but her thinking is still elusive; the images on the ceramic piece could mean a multiplicity of things. Use the worksheet A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS? to explore what the girl might be thinking with regard to the word more. Characterization (Secondary Grades) Writing a characterization requires very expressive language. What are some adjectives that describe the girl in the print? (smiling, thinking, old- fashioned, dressed- up) What kind of similes could be used to describe her? (as happy as a kid in a candy store, feels like a million dollars) What kind of hyperbole could be used? (a smile as big as a barn door, or as wide as the Mississippi [these are also similes]) Think about how you would describe the girl in City States (Coney Island). What does she reveal, or put out there for people to see? What does she hide? Write a one page characterization of the girl that takes into consideration the external qualities you observe, and the internal qualities that are hidden. Thinking about City- States What do you think a city state is? (an independent city or entity that operates autonomously) 3
Matt Nolen used the word city- state to describe Coney Island very purposefully. What can you infer about Coney Island from his title? (See Background section for information on Coney Island) Optional: Explore City States (Chelsea), which can be found at the end of the lesson. From just looking at this print, what can you deduce about Chelsea as a city state? (See Background section for information on Chelsea) What in our community might be considered a city state? (Walt Disney World, your school, or perhaps a particular neighborhood) Give reasons for your answer. In the Studio Nolen s Technique Discuss some additional aspects of Nolen s artwork. Nolen used varied media in making City States (Coney Island). What you can identify? (the digital printing includes the Wonder Wheel; the etching is the image of the girl; the embossing is the thought bubble on the paper; the clay is the ceramic piece suspended above the girl s head.) How would you classify this artwork as a print or sculpture? Why? (accept reasonable answers) What new term could we create for this type of artwork? Making a talking picture The goal of this assignment is to create a city state (the external environment) in which an appropriate character appears and speaks one word that indicates something they are thinking about (the internal environment). This may be done in any medium drawing, painting, collage, etc. If you have the equipment, have students take a digital photograph of a city state neighborhood, scan it, print it and use the digital print as part of the artwork. Think about ways to make the artwork three- dimensional. Clay is one option, but other options include paper pop- up words, a word on a pipe cleaner, or two thought bubbles stapled together and stuffed with paper or fabric. Sharing the results Ask students to share their city states and have others in the class respond to what they see and understand in the artwork before the student provides his/her point of view. Please note: Very often what a viewer sees and what the artist intended are different, so artists should not be discouraged or frustrated that viewers take their ideas in new directions. Assessment: The student is able to write what s/he is thinking in dialogue format. The student uses expressive language to write a characterization of the girl in City States (Coney Island.) Student artwork reflects an understanding of the concept of a city state. 4
Student artwork reflects an understanding of the concept of external and internal environments. Summary: Innovative thinking by artists not only pushes the boundaries of what types of art can be made, but also helps us expand our thinking about external and internal environments. Documentation: Post the student thought bubbles next to a printed image of Matt Nolen s City States (Coney Island). To Do another Day: Look at a circa 1914 painting of Coney Island done by American Impressionist painter Edward Potthast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:potthast- coney- island. Compare and contrast it with Matt Nolen s piece. Create more talking pictures by adding thought bubbles to paintings. You can use this for almost any topic. For example, a lesson on American history might be augmented by asking students to imagine what George Washington would be saying to himself in the 1779 Charles Willson Peale portrait done after the Battle of Princeton. A lesson on writing dialogue or studying weather might be enriched by asking students what the family in John Steuart Curry s Tornado over Kansas might be saying to each other. You might use a pair of beaded Sioux moccasins that say You should walk a mile in my shoes as a story starter. The possibilities are endless! Resources: Photographs of Matt Nolen s sculptural ceramics can be found at http://www.nolenstudios.com/ 5
Background: Coney Island is part of Brooklyn, New York. This spit of land is famous for its beach and its amusement parks. Many New Yorkers go to Coney Island because they can take the subway. Coney Island is best known for: the Wonder Wheel, a large Ferris wheel that opened in 1920; it has both rocking and stationary cars; the Cyclone, the world s oldest operating wooden roller coaster, which opened in 1926; Nathan s Famous, a hot dog stand that opened in 1916; Nathan s holds a hot dog eating contest every Fourth of July. We can locate Nathan s Famous in many other U.S. locations now. Chelsea Chelsea is an historic part of New York City on the West side of Manhattan. Because of its proximity to the Chelsea piers, where many ships docked, it drew many ethnically diverse immigrants who lived in tenements and row houses that were mixed in with industrial buildings. Chelsea is now a chic area of Manhattan where there are over 200 art galleries in about an eight- block area; the galleries show contemporary art. A construction boom is changing buildings from warehouses and factories to condominiums and more art facilities. A Print or a Sculpture? Matt Nolen s work is considered part of the printmaking genre because the majority of the work on paper is two- dimensional. However, work like this is sometimes defined as multi- media instead. FHE director Theo Lotz wrote, Since 2008, the projects at FHE have attempted to push the boundaries of printmaking - to stretch the notions of what a print is.matt Nolen s ceramics- and- digital images take traditional printmaking qualities and marry them to cutting- edge technologies that result in surprising works of art. Matt Nolen lives and works in New York City. The prints he did at Flying Horse Editions (FHE) are unique because he added a ceramic thought bubble to each one, making them three- dimensional. This is Matt Nolen s artist statement: As a painter, storyteller, and architect, ceramics provides the means by which I can marry my loves: the painted surface, the three dimensional form, and narrative content. Ceramics gives me the language to communicate my stories to a world audience. (Retrieved 3/22/12 from http://www.nolenstudios.com/about.html) Nolen also teaches art at Pratt Institute, New York University, and at Queens College. 6
A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS? In Matt Nolen s City States (Coney Island) the word More is embossed on the print. Nolen shows an explanation of what more means on the ceramic piece above the girl s head. The images can be interpreted many ways. Imagine you have a chance to ask the girl, A penny for your thoughts? What do you think she would say? Use clues from the print to form your answer. In the thought bubble below, write her possible response; use the correct grammar for dialogue. A penny for your thoughts? Name 7
www.marypalmer.org Susan Rosoff, Associate @ 2012 8
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www.marypalmer.org Susan Rosoff, Associate @ 2012 10