Lion's Arts Beat

Lion's Arts Beat A celebration of the arts at Lusher

THIS WEEK'S SPOTLIGHT VISUAL ARTS

Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving break. As you will soon see, we have much to be thankful for! This week our Arts Beat will focus on our Visual Arts classes. This team of instructors has been hard at work guiding our talented students to create amazing work. This letter will share some of the impressive work that our students have been producing, from Kindergarten through 12th grade.

Enjoy!

Megan Neelis, Arts Director

The Willow Street Campus

Third grade students practiced skills of observation to create a still life drawing of a vase filled with swamp sunflowers. We looked at the flower paintings of Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova and then supersized our observational drawings to create a still life painting.

First grade students in Ms. Squassoni’s class had the wonderful opportunity to go on a virtual field trip to Pollack Glass Studio Gallery. Artist and Lusher parent Mr. Andrew Pollack generously set up his torch and created beautiful blown glass sculptures right before our eyes! We noticed the contrast between transparent and opaque in Mr. Pollack’s glass sculptures and created our own vase designs by collaging a variety of transparent and opaque materials onto contact paper.

Students in 4th and 5th grades practice using art to make a change they want to see in the world. After learning about what activism is and looking at and discussing different artists/activists, students chose a social issue that they felt a connection to and designed a protest pin to get their message out there.

Thanks to the generous help of the permanent substitutes at Lusher Willow, art pieces from the 2019-2020 school year are being organized and sent home! Be on the lookout for art treasures, like these New Orleans house prints made by last year's 4th graders.

Students in grades 2 and 5 learned a technique for exercising our “seeing muscles” called blind contour continuous line drawing. After looking at the wire portraits of Alexander Calder, students were paired up and challenged to draw each other without looking down at their paper and without lifting up their pen! After many warm up drawings and lots of giggles, we made a final drawing with some peeking at the paper allowed and broke it into abstract shapes to add color.

4th grade students are learning about the theme of identity in works of art. After considering aspects of our own identity, and the labels that we place on ourselves or that others place on us, we are in the process of creating a unique self portrait in the form of a walled city or fortress.

The Middle School

Please click anywhere on this text to see a slideshow celebrating our talented Middle School Visual Art students!

High School

CA VISUAL ARTS LEVEL 2

Violet Nemeth and Julianna Parker paint their clip art drawings in various color theory studies in CAVA 2.

CA VISUAL ARTS LEVEL 1 AND 2

Level 1--Creature Linoleum Cuts: Students designed a creature, carved it out of linoleum then learned the printmaking process of transferring and registering a 2 color print.

Level 2--Linoleum Cuts from Photos: Students studied photographic composition and technique, shooting photos around their homes. They chose one of their photos, brought it into Photoshop to convert it to line art, then transferred the image to a piece of linoleum. They then carved and printed the linoleum and will also learn to transfer the image to a 2nd plate to make a 2 color print of their image.

Level 2--Portrait Stencils: Students took photos of themselves or a friend. In Photoshop they converted the photo to midtone and shadow thresholds, which were printed onto card stock and cut out with xacto knives. They then sprayed the cut out stencils with spray paint to create multi-color stencils of their images.

Level 1--Creature Linoleum Cuts: Students designed a creature, carved it out of linoleum then learned the printmaking process of transferring and registering a 2 color print.

CA VISUAL ARTS LEVEL 3

This year, our level 3 students are working towards a cohesive body of work. These are independent projects that can be on any subject and in any medium. By working on a series, they hewn in on their style and develop time management skills, resulting in a more concrete artistic identity.

CA VISUAL ARTS LEVEL 4

Series work. A selection of work from CAVA seniors working on their senior shows. Each senior develops their own area of focus in senior year and creates an individualized body of work around this area of interest.

CA VISUAL ARTS LEVELS 3 & 4 5th Block

The CAVA 3 and 4 students created plaster sculptures at home! For our first project, we experimented with piping plaster to create amorphous and abstract forms and textures. The second plaster project was created by making a cardboard mold that revealed architectural elements when casted in plaster. We also learned how to dye fabric using a wax resist, shibori, and bleach.

ART OF COMICS HIGHLIGHTS

Students learn the ins and outs of writing and drawing comics and produce a wide variety of comics over the course of the class. We cover drawing techniques, shading and coloring, character development, storytelling and narrative techniques, joke structures, and how choices like point of view, framing, choice of moment, and more can impact the clarity and effectiveness of the storytelling in a comic. Students draw comics every day and work toward building a collection of work that we hope to assemble into either a printed or online format for viewing.

3D Elective

In our 3D elective, students learned to see everyday objects as art! We do this by changing the context and function, with an emphasis on formal qualities like color, shape, mass, volume, and texture. In this elective, we also learned about fiber arts. Student’s learned how to weave, felt, and shibori tie dye.

Lusher's Arts Faculty

Our Team

Arts Beat Archive

October 19 Lion's Arts Beat featuring Media Arts

November 9 Lion's Arts Beat Featuring Creative Writing

November 23rd Lion's Arts Beat featuring Music

Created By

Avery Pierson

Appreciate