Nazca Double-Spouted Pottery

The Nazca Indians, who have lived on the plains of Peru for 800 years, are noted for their gigantic "land drawings" (which can be seen only from great heights) which feature monkey, bird, whale, human and geographic designs. The same style of linear figure is found in the forms and decoration of Nazca pottery. The pottery is usually painted with both bold abstractions of realistic shapes and geometric patterns. Typical Nazca pottery was created without the use of a wheel- coils of clay were laid to form the body, then smoothed together to form a watertight container. This is the same way that 7th grade students created their forms, rolling coils.One of the most notable of the abstract forms of Nazca pottery is that of the double-spouted jug, which are practical vessels. The jug is divided through the inside with a center partition permitting two different liquids to be poured from a single jug, such as oil and water. The 7th graders' pots also contain a center partition, which students added when they had built up about half of the body of the pot. They continued to add coils around the partition until the essentially had a big circular closed form, at which point they added hollow spouts... Students glazed their pots with traditional Nazca motifs and they look awesome! I was so excited to get them in the display case that I forgot to take nice photos of them with a plain background, but you get the picture!

2nd Place!

Remember the Gingerbread House that my advisory made in December? Well, I was recently informed that our house placed second in the Flik Independent School Dining Gingerbread House Contest!!! The girls came up with the concept and did all of the decorating, but we owe a big THANKS to Chef Ashe, who built the house, and Mr. O for buying us all the candy we could possibly ask for! There is a cash prize of some kind (not sure how much yet) and the girls will get a say as to what to do with it... we'll see what they decide! Click here to see the 1st , 2nd and 3rd place entries in each division.

Empty Bowls

Empty Bowls is an international grassroots effort to fight hunger and was created by The Imagine Render Group. The basic premise is simple: Potters, craftspeople, educators and others work with the community to create handcrafted bowls. Guests are invited to a simple meal of soup and bread. In exchange for a cash donation, guests are asked to keep a bowl as a reminder of all the empty bowls in the world. The money raised is donated to an organization working to end hunger and food insecurity. Each individual or group organizing an event designs it around the needs of their own community and is responsible for their own event.

Locally, St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore hosts an annual Empty Bowls Souper Supper to raise money to support the homeless and hungry population in Baltimore. The sixth grade girls have spent several advisory periods creating bowls to donate to this year's event and will be glazing them next week:

This year's Souper Supper Details:

College of Notre Dame, Doyle Hall
Saturday, March 12, 2011;
*NEW THIS YEAR - 2 SEATINGS!
Lunch seating 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.,
Dinner seating 4:00 – 6:30 p.m.

Enjoy a tasty selection of soups supplied by local restaurants, a silent auction, take part in fun, family-friendly activities and choose a handcrafted bowl.

Tickets are $15 per person (children 5 and under are free). Pack of 10 tickets is $125. Extra bowl tickets available for $10.

First Ever Fine Arts Night!

Last night was Calvert Middle School's first ever "Fine Arts Night" and it was a huge success! We often get to celebrate the achievements of our students in the classroom and on the athletic fields and courts, but we also have some serious talent in the arts... and it was about time we showed it off! The night included five songs by the 7th grade band, the reading of two tales from the 7th grade Folktales class, scenes from the 5th and 7th grade drama plays, and a slide show of artwork from my 5th-8th grade studio art classes and the 6th-8th grade digital arts classes. Here are some highlights from the night, which we plan to make an annual event!:

Kiln Room

I was in the kiln room yesterday pulling some projects out of the kiln, and I was inspired to take a picture of the shelves- I love how full of beautiful projects they are! The very top shelf is filled with project examples that I have made and saved over the years; the next one down has Nazca inspired pottery created by the 7th graders (half finished and half unfinished); the next shelf has a few more pots as well as materials for mosaics that my ceramics club is working on; the next shelf is filled with red trays and 6th grade gargoyle sculptures in progress wrapped in plastic bags; the bottom shelf has bowls created by the 6th grade advisories that are in the drying phase and awaiting their turn in the kiln...

Monster Mugs

In this project, fifth grade boys learned how to roll clay slabs using rolling pins and wooden slats to create the mug form and handles. They then added animal/human/alien features to their mugs and later glazed them to create these usable mugs!

Acrylic Paintings After Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986), a major figure in American Art from the 1920’s on, received widespread recognition for her technical contributions, as well as for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is primarily known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones, and landscapes of the American Southwest in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Her paintings present crisply contoured forms that are full of subtle tonal transitions of varying colors. She often transformed her subject matter into powerful abstract images by monumentalizing, enlarging and cropping her subjects to fit her canvas. She stylized (simplified) her shapes and modeled their edges, often creating abstract patterns.

Seventh graders were challenged to create an acrylic painting on 16x20" canvas boards using O’Keeffe’s techniques and her favorite subjects as inspiration- zoomed in flowers, shells and skulls (which we borrowed from the LS science room). Some chose to paint more abstractly while others chose to be more representational. Every student focused on gradually blended bright colors, bold shapes and the intricate structure of their chosen forms. (Disclaimer: We applied a clear gloss acrylic coating to the surface of the paintings which gives them a beautiful sense of depth as well as protects the surface, but it does lead to some weird reflective areas in these photographs!)

Shoes That Shine!

Second quarter sixth graders recently finished their shoe drawings from observation and they look terrific! After learning some basic drawing skills and techniques, like sighting, students first created contour line drawings of their own shoe (it was a little stinky in the art room during this project since 17 kids had their shoes off!!!). After getting the proportions and details just right, we turned off the lights and put a spotlight on the shoes, creating beautiful shadows and highlights which the students rendered with various drawing pencils. I'm always impressed with their ability to create the illusion of depth on a flat paper, and these drawings are no exception!