Styrogami

Ever since I first found the whole idea of Styrogami (probably on Pinterest like everything else I do), I have been obsessed with it! It's things like these sculptures that make me really wish I would have thought of them first because they're all just so gosh darn cool. Have no idea what I'm talking about? Styrogami is the process of using styrofoam cups to create beautiful sculptural forms. This whole process was started by artist Jules Vitali. Seriously, check him out, because it's some super cool stuff. 

As always, I can't start anything without appropriately matching attire that perfectly corresponds to the lesson. It just wouldn't be natural! 

I made this outfit and used it for the first time last year, but then my styrofoam cup skirt was completely destroyed from being left in my car in the unusual for Ohio bright sun. I thought about not making another skirt... but how could I not?! It's just too much of an attention grabber to ever possibly teach this lesson without it! The kids all think I'm totally nuts when I wear this whole ensemble, but I love it. And so do they. 

Here's a full body shot of the ensemble. Styrofoam skirt (made entirely of cups and too much hot glue to keep track of with duct tape straps to quickly slip on and off), necklace of styrofoam balls, cup bottoms cut out and attached to my shoes and earrings, head piece with styrofoam scraps, and bracelets made from cup rings. I'm also holding my example sculpture for the lesson. 

I basically start this Art I lesson by showing a Prezi with lots of examples of Styrogami and other examples of how artists have creatively used styrofoam in their art making processes. Then I give students a day to just practice with a cup and an x-acto knife since it's a little tricky to get the hang of at first. I have students try and cut out a circle, a ring, a square, a piece with cutouts, and a piece with a slot for another piece to attach to it. 

Now I'm not going to lie, this is one messy project. Hello static cling! You're going to find styrofoam pieces everywhere for days on end, and you'll constantly be telling your students about the styrofoam pieces they have in their hair too. It's just a fact of life with this project. The trade off, though, is that it can lead to amazingly beautiful sculptures like these that were both made by freshmen!

BUT... your room will look a lot like this, and you have to be super careful about moving them as things can easily break or stick to you thanks to our static electricity friend. 

When it comes to holding everything together with the sculptures, we use tacky glue and occasionally a little bit of hot glue when it's really necessary. Students definitely get impatient with this, but I just know if I let them hot glue everything it would melt the styrofoam and be a total hot mess. The blue painters tape you see on a number of sculptures is used just to very lightly hold pieces in place that might be a bit stubborn when it comes to actually sticking together. The tape all gets removed in the end, though, so it's just styrofoam and glue on a mat board base, nothing else.

This year, I had a few students that wanted to paint their sculptures after it was all said and done, so I allowed them to use tempera paint in the colors of their choosing to paint their sculptures if they had extra time. 

The second part of this project once the sculptures are all said and done is to draw them in negative space. This is a great way to teach kids at this stage who are totally unfamiliar with the whole positive and negative space concept how to draw using only negative space successfully. Why? Well, students don't feel the pressure of having to make their drawing anything specific, like a chair or a stool for instance. It's all just abstract shapes, so it's often easier for them to see what they're doing. How do they accomplish this? I use the triangle self portrait mirrors and cover each side with a colored piece of paper. Each student places their sculpture in front of the mirror and we talk about only drawing the colored shapes we see and filling those in with Sharpie. My example is below:

These also look really cool when you display the sculptures to have these drawings hanging up right behind the right corresponding sculpture. This is just a 9" x 12" piece of paper, so it really doesn't take too much time at all. And it totally helps set Art I kids up for better drawing skills with future projects. 

Overall, this is definitely going to be a staple project of mine for at least a few years to come since I am always stunned by what students are able to do with something as mundane as  a styrofoam cup and very little direction from me. 

Living the Zentangle Life

Last year, I started with a zentangle project to kick off Art I. Why? I don't know. Let's be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted something simple, relatively quick, and something everyone could do without too much struggle. Hence, the zentangle idea stuck. Some kids loved it, some hated it, and some insisted it was their favorite project even at the end of the year. Either way, it left a lasting impression, which is my mind makes it a keeper. 

Here's some examples of my kids' work last year. Some of them turned out really great!

When it came time for planning lessons for Art I this year, I decided to stick with the zentangle. It's a "no fail" project that everyone can get into (at least in one way or another), it's a great project to establish simple craftsmanship standards, and it gets kids thinking in more abstract ways that can be applied to and enhance some of their future projects. Being my second time around with this project, I had to go big this time!

Thus, this zentangle dress creation just HAD to happen! Now I'm not even gonna lie about it, I can't sew. I've hand sewn a number of skirts and even a couple dresses from old clothes, but the machine totally baffles me. How the heck do you get it to sew the middle part without sewing it to the other piece? I realize this question sounds totally ridiculous to some of you, but you have to understand the only sewing machine I ever had the chance to play around with was ancient and might work for a minute or two before breaking the thread or coming undone if you're lucky. It wasn't worth the frustration! Nevertheless, learning to sew on an actual working machine is on my ever growing bucket list that I have no doubt will some day be accomplished!

Because of my lack of sewing ability, I started with a blank white dress. I chose one from Forever 21 because they have a ton of cheap stuff and every piece I've purchased fits me very well, but you can find basic white dresses just about anywhere. Unfortunately I don't have any in progress pictures of the dress, but there's really not much to it. I used Tulip brand fabric paint (the kind that comes in the squeeze tubes). I think I had to buy 3 of the large bottles to finish the dress and shoes. Thank goodness for that JoAnn's teacher discount card!

I thought about just attacking the dress with the paint and winging it, but I wanted to make sure it would still turn out really well, so I did a basic sketch. I started by coming up with a number of patterns I knew I wanted to use, and I divided the dress up using lots of diagonal and straight lines in a way that would be somewhat symmetrical. The hardest part of this dress was not smearing any of the paint while it was drying!

Once you zentangle all over a dress... (well, just the front - because I didn't want to over do it or my hand just hurt too much; I'll let you decide) you just have to do it to a pair of shoes. Because you can't have a complete outfit without matching shoes!

For the shoes, I took to Pinterest first to look at zentangle shoes other people have already done. I took some of my favorite patterns and designs and mixed them with my own. Again, I used the same black Tulip fabric paint. 

The last thing to complete my outfit? Earrings of course! Now I'll be totally honest right now and say that I didn't make these. Could I? Absolutely! But I was lucky enough to find these babies on Etsy and decided they were well worth it. Plus the patterns just perfectly matched what I already had going on everything else!

It took all my kids a little while to realize that my entire outfit matched like it and that I was wearing it for a reason, but they're still getting used to me and my ridiculous ways, so I'll let it slide for now!

I'm happy to report the zentangle lesson was once again a success. Which is really good since it gives me more excuses to wear my dress and shoes! Student work / displays to come soon!

Last year in a nutshell - I couldn't be more grateful!

I thought I'd start off (finally!) my first blog post by talking about my journey to getting where I am today, the infinite lessons its taught me, and the immense happiness it's brought me.

I knew I wanted to be an art teacher for literally as long as I've had any conscious memories. Literally. I may have said once or twice that I wanted to be a singer or something silly like that, but it's always been art teacher. Really! Why? I don't know that I can really tell you exactly what it is that made me say that from such an early age, but teaching and art both run in the family - so I guess I just got the best of both worlds! This photo was taken at my grandmother's house when I was three or four. Painting on coffee filters - such a classic in the 90's, right?

I'm a proud graduate of Kent State University; everyone in my family has at least one degree from Kent State so it was kind of a given that's where I'd be attending. Plus they do just so happen to have an out of this world art ed program, so there's that! I'll be the first to admit I thought getting a job after graduation would come easy. I was finally legally allowed to do what I've always wanted to do, so obviously someone would give me a job, right?

Wrong. I had never known such gut-wrenching heartache in all my life. That summer after graduation, I probably filled out 40+ applications and attended interviews at nine different area school districts. I learned very quickly that when people say they'll call you back either way, they don't always mean it. And even if you think you had an awesome interview and would be a great fit for that district, there very well could be someone they already know and have in mind who will get the position no matter how outstanding you are. I really am an optimist, so don't take that as me being a super negative Nancy here, but it's the truth! I think understanding the politics and reality TV show game-like strategies is the toughest lesson to learn when you're first looking for a job. Because you know you deserve it!

The ninth school I interviewed at was, I'll be totally honest, a place I had never ever not in a million years heard of before seeing the posting online. It was for a long term sub position for the entire school year - while not the most ideal, it was still something! So I set out on my 45+ minute drive from home to the interview (I even got in an accident and was 20 minutes late to my interview!) and I played it off like I would be the perfect fit and that I knew so much about the district, as you do, always. Even though in reality I know nothing. Not. A. Thing! Fortunately, I landed the job. Somebody was finally crazy enough to give me a chance! 

I got to work decorating that classroom faster than any other teacher in the building had even really started to prepare for the imminent back to school time. I just couldn't help myself - I finally had a classroom that was MINE! (well... at least for a year) Here it is!

There I was, the epitome of your stereotypical "white girl" from a large upper-middle class suburb referred to as a "bubble" teaching in rural Ohio with more students who lived on farms than I knew existed in the area. I started the year with the best intentions and high expectations for both myself and my students. I assumed drawing on my own high school and student teaching experiences would be quite applicable in this environment, and I was excited to apply the skills I learned along the way. The first time I learned this place would be different, though, was on the second day of school. I don't think I'll ever forget it. I tried to start class and give basic instructions/reminders about something when a freshman blurted out, "Why don't you just shut the efffffff up already and just let us work without interrupting us?" To say I was shocked would be the biggest understatement of the millennium. Never in my whole entire schooling would anyone have even dared to do such a thing, especially loud enough for the entire class and teacher to hear! When I graded their SLO pretests later that week, I was disgusted less than half of them could actually name the three primary colors. You learn those in kindergarten! And every year of art after that! They never go away, how could they not even know them as high schoolers? 

It didn't take long for me to feel ashamed and disappointed in myself. The results I saw from my students were less than ideal in my mind to say the least, and I blamed myself. I knew I was capable of producing MUCH better work with students, so obviously it was me that failed them, right? Well, it took me a long time to admit that this thought was wrong. In my mind, I was comparing apples to oranges. I was comparing what I knew my own peers in high school had done to what these kids in an entirely different setting with an entirely different background could do. I wasn't being fair to them and I wasn't being fair to myself. Realizing this, though, took months before I really internalized it. I think it was the first time I had to really accept that not everyone is just like me... and that's okay!

The rest of the year was filled with ups and downs - thankfully more ups than downs! I chose to use my students' lack of exposure to the art world and support from other avenues in their lives be a motivator for me to challenge myself to concoct new ways of getting them excited about art. I started giving them more choice in materials, subject matter, and I started to incorporate a weekly video of the week every Friday featuring a contemporary artist working in nontraditional means. These moves were rocky at first, but they ultimately laid the foundation for me being able to build the best relationships with students I could have possibly imagined. I became so proud to be such a positive part of their lives, and it was a privilege to see and work with them everyday. I absolutely miss them, but I'm so proud of everything they gave and taught me - things I'll take with me forever undoubtedly.

While the students themselves gave me infinitely more rewards and satisfaction than I could have hoped for, it still wasn't the best fit for me overall. I found it to be too small of an environment and seeing how easily other teachers reached a level of complacency with their teaching scared the living daylights out of me! I worried that if I stayed there I may never uncover or achieve my fullest potential as an educator. And I was not okay with that. 

So, time came for more interviews. Another 20-30 applications and interviews with four more districts happened before I got the answer I wanted. But to be fair; it was totally worth the wait. I got the exact answer from the exact place I wanted all along. Finally, all the rejection, stress, and crying nights (let's be honest, you did it at least once too!) were over and I could celebrate! And celebrate I did! I got the official word on my last day of school, so when I came back into the room after letting a few key people know they surprised me with this, and I'm soooooooooooooooo glad my one super snoopy student thought to grab my phone and capture the moment for me! The most priceless photo I have of myself to date. 

Three weeks into the new school year at my new dream school, I've realized just how much I have to be grateful for last year. For starters, I basically got a full year free of any consequence of formal evaluations and all that mumbo jumbo. I got to try out any and all of my own lesson ideas, and I had an administration that was excited by my willingness to do so in spite of simply being a long term sub. I've learned to be humble and embrace humility as I appreciate all that I have now after having to work that much harder to achieve it. 

With my new students, I often find myself wondering how anyone decided I was responsible enough to teach students last year. Why? Because I can't even put into words how much more confident and sure of myself I am this year in comparison to this time just one short year ago. And that excites me tremendously because I can only imagine the things I'll never ever worry about or be weary to try in a few years time. I'm not saying I'm perfect or anything, in fact I'm far from that, but I have become such a believer in knowing all the magic I can make happen now. I always knew I had it in me, but actually knowing from seeing it happen is just all the more validating. 

In the end, I would not be where or who I am right now had I not fudged my way through my ninth interview and pretended to know way more than I really did. I would not be the teacher I am today had I not been graced with students with far different lives from me to force me out of my comfort zone. I would not have the appreciation for life I have today if I had not had to work my way up in order to prove myself. Moral of the story: sometimes, the places and things you've never heard of or think very little of are exactly what you need to propel you to where you aspire to be.