Landscape Paintings in Acrylic

This year, a Calvert School alumnus from the class of 1935 generously made provisions in his will to leave his personal art collection to Calvert as a legacy gift. This impressive art collection features more than 20 paintings (mostly landscapes) from leading Maryland artists, and it is his desire that his art be used by Calvert as a teaching collection. So far, it has been just that!

In this painting unit, eighth graders were first able to participate in two workshops with a local artist, David Cunningham. During this time, students were introduced to landscape painting and were able to talk about the work and the process of creating a point of view through composition, color, and atmosphere. For the duration of the unit, eight of the paintings from the collection were available in the classroom to view and use as inspiration.

The eighth graders’ works consist of paintings inspired by various landscapes- scenes from personal experiences, scenes from Calvert’s campus, and some directly reproduced from work in the collection. They are all painted with acrylics on stretched canvas- the sizes vary from 8x10 to 16x20... I let the students choose what they wanted to paint on. Enjoy!

** Three artists are not finished with their paintings yet... I will add photos of theirs when they are complete!

Prints inspired by the Aztec Sun Stone

The Aztec Sun Stone is a revered Mexican artifact that is said to be perhaps the most famous symbol of Mexico besides its flag. The Sun Stone was discovered and excavated in 1970. The original basalt version measures 12 feet by 4 feet thick, weighs 24 tons, and is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Because of the carved hieroglyphs, with the names of the days and the cosmogonic suns, the Aztec Sun Stone was first incorrectly identified as a calendar stone. Actually it has been a "temalacatl“, a round stone used to tie captive warriors in gladiatorial sacrifices. Only recently deciphered, it actually tells the history of the four great disasters which caused the migrations of the Native Americans who would ultimately build the great Tenochtitlan (Mexico City, today).

Fifth graders used the Sun Stone as inspiration to create their own sun designs for printmaking. They used graph paper to create designs that were stylized, simplified and symmetrical which they transferred to a rubber-like printing plate. Using a tool called a gouge, students focused on balancing the positive and negative space in their carving. Finished plates were printed with colorful inks and papers to create a series of prints for display!

Snowflake Stencil Plates

I am pretty OBSESSED with this project... Ceramics students created these stunning plates in class last week. I showed them how to create an intricate cut paper snowflake and we spent a period making those first. The next day, we rolled a clay slab to cut the plate from and pressed it into a paper plate to create a sloped lip. While the clay was moist, we pressed the paper snowflake onto the surface of the clay plate and underglazed three coats of a color on top. Then we peeled up the paper snowflake. After the plate air dried for a day, students used some plastic modeling tools to carefully scrape off any glaze that might have leaked under the paper stencil. Once the plates were bone dry, they were bisque fired, overglazed and fired again. Check out these beauties!: