The Bacich Box Art Show

Please join us for the grand opening of 

The Bacich Box Art Show 

Open House: April 10, 2014 6:00-7:30 

The Bacich Box Show

Kindergarten -4^th grade

The Bacich Box Show Installation is based on the “Pt. Reyes Box Show”, an annual art event organized as a fundraiser for the Art Gallery Route One in Pt.Reyes. Wooden boxes are altered and decorated by local artists and auctioned off at the closing of the event.  Our large size school community of 704 students lends itself well to create a powerful visual installation by creating our very own “Box Show”.

For the Bacich Box Show students had the opportunity to alter a cardboard tissue box into an exquisite piece of art. A contemporary artist was assigned to each grade level, (please see below).  Students were guided to use the tissue box as a building block to create sculptures based on the assigned artist's work. 

Artist Theme and Concept:

4th grade: Henry Moore, wire coat hanger semi-abstract sculpture

3rd grade: Louise Nevelson, wood assemblage shadow box

2nd grade: Friedensreich Hundertwasser, “Kunterbunt” buildings

1st grade: Nava Lubelski, recycled rolled paper shadow box 

TK and K: Wassily Kandinsky, concentric circle box 

4^th grade: Henri Moore, wire coat hanger semi-abstract sculpture

Henri Moore, English sculptor and artist (1898-1986). He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures, which are located around the world as public works of art. His shapes are usually abstractions of eroded bones, stones, and sometimes human shapes. The process of his large-scale sculptures always started with several loose sketches, transforming the sketches into small Maquettes, and lastly enlarging the finalized shapes into the end product.

Students were introduced to working in a similar way. Sketching loose, soft forms around the straight lines and right angles of a square or rectangle. The curvy forms of the sketches were used as inspiration to alter the tissue box. Students used a wire coat hanger to curve around and pinch the box. A Nylon knee-high was stretched over the structure to enclose the shape. Students carefully applied two coats of white acrylic gesso paint to turn the sculpture into a solid, semi-abstract sculpture.

3rd grade: Louise Nevelson, wood assemblage shadow box

Louise Nevelson (1899 –1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall assemblage pieces and outdoor sculptures. Usually created out of scrap wood, her sculptures appear puzzle-like, with multiple intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures or independently standing pieces. A unique feature of her work is that her figures are often painted in monochromatic black, white, or gold.

Students altered the opening of the tissue boxes and used the depth of the box to create an interesting, balanced assemblage using wood scraps, corks, and egg cartons.  Students painted their wall sculptures based on Nevelson’s color scheme.

2nd grade: Friedensreich Hundertwasser, “Kunterbunt” buildings

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Austrian artist/architect (1928-2000) who later took New Zealand citizenship, became best known for his environmentalism, philosophy, and design of façade, postage stamps, flags, and clothing. The common themes in his work are bright colors, organic forms, reconciliations of humans with nature, and a strong individualism, rejecting straight lines. He describes his work as “Kunterbunt” German for higgledy-piggledy, multi-colored, jumbled up.

Students designed personalized façades using the opening of the tissue box as a window. Hundertwasser’s idea was that everyone should have a “window right”, meaning that you should be allowed to design the area around your window where you live. Students decorated and individualized their window and living spaces in a collage technique. The façades boxes stacked together create a display of a “Kunterbunt” community.

1st grade: Nava Lubelski, recycled rolled paper shadow box 

Nava Lubelski born in New York 1968, a contemporary artist, is known for a series of flattened sculptures made from shredded and cut paper. Lubelski likes to use recycled papers. One of her pieces titled “Tax Files” depicts an organic shape of a tree configured out of a mass of rolled up deposit slips, pay stubs, receipts and tax forms.

Students painted their tissue boxes in neutral shades of black, gray and brown. The paper recycle bin in the art room became the student’s material resource. Students created a great variety of paper rolls. The paper rolls were glued to the inside and outside of the boxes to create a shadowbox effect.

TK and K: Wassily Kandinsky, concentric circle box 

Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter and art theorist (1866-1944), is credited with painting the first purely abstract works.

Students were introduced to Kandinsky’s painting “Squares with Concentric Circles”. Concentric circles, arcs or other shapes are shapest that share the same center. Students created concentric paper circles and glued them on a paper cone. The cone was adhered to the inside of the square tissue box to mimic the affect of Kandinsky’s painting. Students decorated the outside of the box with colorful art tissue paper.