A Summer At IS183: End of 1st Week at IS183

End of 1^st Week at IS183
(Wire Sculptures In Space camp: 8-10 yr-olds: Amanda as the art teacher)

So the theme this past week (my first whole week!) of the camp I was lead T.A. of was “Wire Sculptures In Space!” Our students made 7 total projects in 5 days: space Crayola resist drawings/paintings (to brainstorm how they might get into space), paper mache with wire sculptures of space travel machines; wire, stick, and paper, Calder-inspired mobiles; clay and wire sculptures of solar system elements and aliens, wire astronaut and alien sculptures; wire and pantyhose painted “space shape” sculptures, and gravity/anti-gravity wire and bead sculptures!! WE. WERE. BUSY. (And we loved it!!)

I just got home from my class’s art show; their parents came in at the end of the week/end of the camp, and today we set up all of the finished art work around the classroom for them to see. The students were SO excited for their parents to see the show; they even made the sign at the door together! The art show was also a great sort of “exercise” for the kids, to get them to talk about their work: what they did, what they were thinking while they created, etc. It also enhanced their pride and ownership of their artwork: also SO important for artists! The earlier we can develop skills like that, the better (I think). And the parents were all so happy about the program; every single one said they were impressed with how much their children did, and that every single child had a great time this week (came home raving about the camp)!

I’m absolutely exhausted (and headed into a long-weekend class at Lesley-BRING IT ON!), but I’m really excited to see what next week brings- “Site Specific Odyssey” camp, with Amanda again. I might get to lead some filler exercises with the kids next week, too! (By the way- did I mention that I read Art & Max to the kids this week? At one point in the story, a character is reduced down to a line drawing, and then unraveled; when he is “re-sculpted,” it’s just the way the kids worked with wire this week! It was a great little reading time in which the kids could settle down after lunch, and think about the concepts and processes behind what they were making- versus just focusing on the “finished product.”)

A stick and zip-tie outdoor sculpture another class did: probably similar to what I can look forward to next week...

...inside, they hung these cubes made out of old slides from an art history class (that were being thrown away)...

...so when you picked a cube to look into, the sunlight went through two images at once and you saw the overlap. SO COOL! (I also observed that this hut was the "cool" spot for snack-time...)

This was done by one of our kids; she so loved working with the wire that she bought her own and continued working through lunch and snack while she ate. During recess time, she wrapped this string she found around two trees, and made a huge wire spider to put in the web. (Can you see it in the upper left?)