8th Grade Field Trip to Glassblowing Studio!

This morning my 8th grade art class went on a field trip to Corradetti Glassblowing Studio located nearby in Clipper Mill, as an extension of their study of warm glass in art class. We got an overview of the process of working with hot glass and Anthony Corradetti showed us around his studio and explained how he created a lot of the work:

Each student got the chance to work with the assistant, Emma, to create a glass flower of their own by crimping, pulling and twisting the molten glass. Here are the steps we followed to create our work...

Blow pipes are twirled in the molten glass (2100 degrees) to "gather" the glass on the pipe, much like using a wooden stick to gather honey. Glass is gathered three times to create a flower:

The pipe is cooled a little with water so that it is more comfortable to touch (the rod must be held and constantly rotated to keep the glass from dripping off):

The glass is pressed into colored glass frit and melted- I don't have a pic of that! Next, students use a crimping tool to create a pattern on the "petals" of their flower (they are rotating the pipe at all times):

The glass is reheated and students used larger tweezers to pull the petals outward (some look more like sea creatures than flowers- very cool!):

Using the tweezers, we stretch the whole piece about a foot and twist the "stem" however we choose:

The assistant detaches the flower from the pipe and torches the end to round it out:

The pieces are put into an annealing oven... Annealing is the very slow process of cooling the glass down from about 900 degrees to room temperature to prevent cracking and breaking. You may notice that the pieces are not very colorful. When the colored glass frit is hot, it looks brown, but it will be bright and beautiful when cool:

Here are some of the kids working:

After making our pieces, we watched Anthony Corradetti demonstrate the glassblowing process several times to create different forms. It was so interesting and the students had a blast!

Future Doctors?!?

In sixth grade art class today we began the process of creating plaster casts of our hands using plaster gauze strips... This is the second part of a two-step henna/mehndi project. First, we learned about the ancient art form of hand painting (more to come on that later) and did a 2-D art project. Now, we are making hand casts that we will paint with henna designs which gives us a way to "paint on our hands" without actually painting on hands! Here are the future cast makers at work:

Summer Camps 2009!!! Sign up NOW!!!

I am SO excited that I will be running two different Calvert camps this summer!!! Both camps are full-day and include a free camp t-shirt, snack and lunch. Check out the information for each of them below and click here to download the 2009 Application and Health Form when you are ready to sign up!


JEWELRY CAMP
Girls and Boys entering 5th-8th grade
June 15-19th, 2009
9:00am-3:00pm
MS Art Room


Campers will create a variety of unique jewelry pieces using many mediums and techniques. Projects will include handmade polymer clay canes/beads, glazed ceramic medallions, Egyptian wire bracelets, fused glass pendants, paper mache pieces, advanced wirework/beading, and the creation of a jewelry box too!

ART CAMP
Girls and Boys entering 7th-10th Age
June 22-26th, 2009
9:00am-3:00pm
LS Art Room


Campers will have a great time using a variety of mediums to create exciting projects such as ceramic planters/votives, handmade glazed/broken/grouted mosaics, printmaking, paintings, and paper mache sculptures!

Fabulous Fountains!

After completing their gargoyle sculptures, ceramics club members spent the remaining part of the term creating these awesome working tabletop fountains. Students filled a large bowl with clay coils and "cream cheesed" (my own personal made up clay vocab word) the inside to make it leak-proof. Then, students created a hollow base to cover the fountain pump and some sort of sculpted top. Many opted to do a traditional tiered piece while others got really creative and did various characters and such.

Here are some photos of club members working with the clay and glazing the bisque pieces:

Here are the completed fountains. These photos REALLY don't do these pieces justice, so please take the time to see them in person (they are in the showcase in the main lobby). I photographed a few of them "in action," with water flowing:

Pop Portrait

Second trimester sixth graders completed their Pop Portrait with Tessellation paintings and they turned out great. Here are some photos of the tessellation-making process... These three students all started with a hexagon shape (some other students chose squares) and traced it in a sort of grid/honeycomb patter on large paper. Then, they cut simple designs out of three non-adjacent edges of the hexagon, slid the cutouts to the opposite side and taped them down. Lastly, they traced their new tessellation shape onto their grid, creating the puzzle-like pattern:

Here are the final paintings!:

Kimonos Take 2

My Spring session of LS art club completed their kimonos two weeks ago, but I am just getting around to blogging about it. Click here to learn more about the project from the first time around. Here are some snapshots of the students weaving followed by the finished products: