A Summer At IS183: 6th Week Reflection

Reflection: 6^th Week at IS183

My last week! This week’s theme was “You Are Here: An Exploration of Place,” and it was an 11-14 year old group I assisted with. I also observed the 8-10 year old group and took more notes about how their teacher ran her classroom (one thing in particular I liked was that she didn’t use the tables and chairs when they worked and checked in; she used a circle of mats on the floor, and let them spread out on the floor to work, supplies in the center! This really seemed to keep each child focused because they weren’t bumping into one another, they had their own spaces, and they were calmer in general than some other 8-10 year old classes I have seen…).

My 11-14 year old group made natural sculptures of a village they created together, wheel pottery, soapstone carvings, figure drawings, portraits, and horse-hair decorated pottery: all exploring mapmaking ideas/concepts/aesthetics, mapping the self, and creating place concepts.

(At the end, I have also included a couple photos of my internship classes' collaborative pieces!)

Class's sketches for their natural village: made of natural found items and corks and hot glue...

It had a church...

...and a public garden area...

...and a grocery store...

...and a restaurant...

...and a home...

...and another shelter!

This was a two-point perspective exercise I did alongside the students; then we worked with watercolor resist to add color (oil pastels that resisted watercolor placed overtop them)

One student's personal experiments in ink with portraits and doodles...

...and another of his experiments with watercolor. What was so great about these was this student's focus while he did them; he has Asbergers, and so is usually somewhat restless in class. However, while he did these, he worked the entire morning without a stitch!

A student's one-point perspective drawing done in ink over the graphite

A volume and light study with pastels

A human proportions study that was abstracted in a somewhat Van-Gogh-esque style

A personal experiment with oil pastels (abstract)

Soapstone sculptures!

I made one, too! Not sure if it ended up being half of a flower or half of a sun... Maybe it's a sunflower!

Working on the horse-hair pottery; pieces fired in the kiln to a certain temperature so when you add horsehair to them, the hair immediately burns and leaves black marks behind. The result is a texture that looks like a map!