October/November 2023

 

In Art For Bears TK-4th grade students are exposed to a highly engaging curriculum, which is aligned with the National Visual Art Standards. Ms. Libby’s expertise lies in building, refining, and implementing both discrete curricula in the visual arts and arts-integrated STEAM instruction across curricula. Mis. Libby cultivates student engagement and assessment strategies that make learning visible and lay the groundwork for future exercises in inquiry. Students are taught the language of the visual arts, connecting to history, science, math, social-justice, as well as personal views, and the world.

TK/K: Mexican Amate Bark Painting 

TK and Kindergarten artists were engrossed in the Amate Bark painting tradition which originates from San Pablito, a small mountain village in Mexico where this beautiful craft is still taught today. Students sketched Mexican and Mayan inspired designs, such as sun, birds, and floral motifs. To simulate the process of this beautiful hand made amate paper and to create a bark-like texture, students crumpled their upcycled brown paper bags and burnished the paper with flat, smooth rocks. Students used stabilo paint pens to achieve the gorgeous vibrant, saturated colors on their bark paintings. The finished art pieces turned out stunning!

1st: Paper Molas

The Mola or Molas is a hand-made textile that forms part of the traditional women's clothing of the indigenous Guna people from Panamá. Their clothing includes a patterned wrapped skirt, a red and yellow headscarf, arm and leg beads, a gold nose ring and earrings in addition to the mola blouse.

First grade students created colorful paper molas by tracing an animal shape onto construction paper. Repeating the same shape numerous times increasing its size  slightly each time. With this technique students achieved the layered effect of a traditional mola. Students enjoyed practicing their scissor cutting skills and adding additional designs around and on top of their animal shapes. 

Inktober:

Inktober is a drawing challenge open to artists of all ages around the world. Illustrator Jake Parker created Inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year. When Jake Parker started Inktober he had a few goals in mind, and these have not changed in the 10+ years the Inktober challenge has been running. These goals are: 

• Help artists get better at drawing

• Help artists find other cool artists 

• Help artists develop positive drawing habits of practicing daily/weekly

Second and third grade students took on the challenge of starting each art class with a 5 min quite sketching practice. Creating a drawing inspired by the daily Inktober prompt or just sketching away with an ink pen or pencil of their own choosing. 

2nd: Navajo Rug Weaving

Navajo weaving (Navajo: diyogí) are textiles produced by Navajo people, who are based near the Four Corners area of the United States. Navajo textiles are highly regarded and have been sought after as trade items and for purchase for more than 150 years.

“Because the Navajo reservation is so big, our stories are similar but each is a little different. For what people know in New Mexico, people in Arizona have a different version. So, it's really hard to pinpoint the true meaning behind any particular rug. Rugs are like a verse in the Bible—there are 365 ways of interpreting one verse; Navajo weaving is like that, too. Every rug here is completely different and made by an individual, but they all fall under one category—Navajo weaving. This is just like people—we are all Navajo, but we are each different. Our weaving reflects individual differences, too.” —Barbara Ornelas, Master Weaver

Second grade students constructed simple looms out of stiff felt. Using twine students practiced weaving turning their looms into a small blanket. Students were instructed on the personal and cultural symbolic meaning of Navajo tapestry designs and patterns.  Inspired by common Navajo symbols like crosses, triangles, diamonds and zigzags, students decorated their weaving with felt scraps. 

3rd: Dreamcatchers 

In many Native American tribes, a dream catcher is a handmade willow hoop woven to a web or literally, a net. They can include feathers and beads, and they're traditionally suspended on cradles as a form of armor and protection.

Dream catchers are widely viewed as a symbol of oneness among numerous indigenous cultures and tribes. They're also generally looked at as an indication of Native American identity. However, some Native Americans believe dream catchers have been appropriated and offensively exploited by non-Native Americans.

Third grade students enjoyed listening to Hazel, Native American storyteller sharing the magical story: “Kôhkom meets Spider”. Grateful for Kôhkom’s kindness, Spider shares with her a valuable gift, a dreamcatcher. After the story students learned how to draw the geometric structure of a dreamcatcher. The radial symmetry was soothing to draw and students implemented their own creative license in drawing feathers, beads, personal decorations, colorful details and backgrounds with prismacolor pencils. 

4th: Oaxac Alebrijes Animals 

Traditionally, Alebrijes are carved and painted animal figurines that have become a form of symbolic art from Mexico. The word Alebrije means “imaginary” or “fantasy,” describing a style of animal carvings with exceptional paint schema.

Fourth grade students watched a video by Latin America Editor Lucia Newman as she reported from an artisan workshop in Oaxaca. Inspired by the skillful wood carvings students used Model Magic clay to shape and sculpt their personal Alebrijes. Using tempera paint and paint markers students painted their creatures with delicate designs and patterns. 

 Welcome to Art for Bears

Art Blog, August/September 2023

Collaborative Large Polka-Dot Pumpkins created by our youngest TK and Kindergarten artists inspired by artily Yayoi Kusama

Community Building

In the Bacich Art Room we started the school year with establishing art room routines and building and inclusive community culture. We begin and end every class with a greeting and a choral speaking and signing of our art classroom affirmation. Students love learning and practicing American Sign Language to support our greeting and affirmation. 

Sketchbooks

It is a Bacich art room tradition that in the beginning of a new school year students start out their visual arts journey by grounding themselves with a sketchbook activity. Throughout the school year, students will have the opportunity to use their sketchbook in a combination of sketching, note taking and personal journal writing. Students reflect upon and evaluate their own learning. This allows students to place reading and writing in a context that is functional and personally relevant. 

One of the key values of the Bacich art program is that we are all practicing artists. Besides being a means of practicing and recording, the sketchbook is a safe place for students to express their thoughts and ideas in writing and drawing that is not corrected by the teacher, providing freedom for individual expression.

Sketchbook Covers

TK-K 

We celebrated International Dot Day, which was inspired by the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Students connected with the story of making their mark and decorated their sketchbooks with many different dot combinations. 

1st Grade

The Bacich Bear mascot inspired 1st grade students' sketchbook covers. In a guided drawing lesson, students learned to recognize and categorize lines, shapes and space while drawing their individualized cartoon-style art bear. 

2nd Grade

Students were introduced to Jim Dine. The American painter, graphic artist, sculptor and poet. He became famous during the Pop art period as an innovative creator of works that combine the painted canvas with ordinary objects of daily life and art making tools. Students used brushes as inspiration to depict as a popular art making tool on the covers of their sketchbooks.

3rd-4th Grade 

The art of upcycling is to reuse (discarded objects or materials) in such a way as to create a product of a higher quality or value than the original. 3rd and 4th grade students recycled brown paper bags to make their sketchbooks. Students were introduced to the basics of bookbinding, the process of physically assembling a book from an ordered stack of recycled paper sheets folded together into sections. 4th grade students learned how to sew their journals with a saddle stitch book binding method. Students then designed and colored their sketchbook covers. 

Artist Yajoy Kusama 

Students were introduced to the artist  a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts.

Yajoy Kusama at SFMOMA, October 14, 2023-September 7.2024

If you own a Marin County Public Library card your family may check out a free museum pass to see the Kusama show!

Yayoi Kusama: Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart.

For Yayoi Kusama, pumpkins have been a lifelong source of fascination. She was first drawn to them in childhood, citing their “generous unpretentiousness” and “spiritual balance,” and has explored them continually in her painting, sculpture, installation art, and poetry. They first appeared in her work in the 1940s and have been the subject of some of the most important works of her career. Today, polka-dotted pumpkins are synonymous with the artist and her idiosyncratic style.

Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart is among her most recent such sculptures. In it, Kusama pushes the polka-dotted pumpkin to new extremes. For her, polka dots represent self-obliteration — not in a destructive sense, but as a means of merging the individual with the larger universe. As we navigate the sculpture’s massive five-stem form and undulating walls, we are invited to share in the artist’s admiration for this symbol which embodies peace and joy.
 

Hispanic Heritage Month 

Below find a list of projects by grade levels students have started to work on  this month in connection with celebrating folk art from Hispanic and Latinex cultures. 

TK/K Amate Bark Painting from 

1st: Molas from Panama

2nd: Arpilleras from Peru and Chile

3rd: Calaveras from Mexico

4th: Oaxacan Wood Carvings from Mexico

Stay tuned for more information and completion of these wonderful projects.  

May/June 2023 Art Blog

 TK/K: Texture Clay Turtle 

Students had the opportunity to create three-dimensional turtles out of air-dry clay. Students were introduced to the element of art of texture. To create an interesting texture for the turtle's shell, students stepped on a clay ball to imprint the texture of the sole of their shoes. Students viewed and compared the variety of textures every one's shoe had left behind. Practicing rolling coils for the turtle's legs, head and tail was yet another clay molding technique students used. Students cut out pond habitats for their turtles using a variety of painting and drawing techniques to create implied texture of water and light reflection. 

1st Grade: “Kunterbunt” Buildings inspired by artist Hundertwasser

First grade students were introduced to the painter and architect Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (1928 – 2000). He was an Austrian-born New Zealand artist and architect who also worked in the field of environmental protection. His real name being Stowasser, his pseudonym Hundertwasser (by which he is known worldwide) comes from sto in Slavic languages, meaning "hundred".

He stood out as an opponent of "a straight line" and any standardization, expressing this concept in the field of building design. His best known work is considered the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna, Austria which has become a notable place of interest in the Austrian capital characterized by imaginative vitality and uniqueness.

He was fascinated by spirals, and called straight lines "something cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling". He called his theory of art "transautomatism" focusing on the experience of the viewer rather than the artist. This was encapsulated by his design of a new flag for New Zealand. He incorporated the image of the Koru, a spiral shape based on the image of a new unfurling silver fern frond, symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace according to the Māori people. 

First grade students played with the element of the spiral and color and painted a "kunterbunt" (German English translation multicolored) background. Students were guided to paint and design facades of buildings. Inspired by Hundertwasser students experimented to alter straight lines and angles into whimsical, innovative buildings. The multicolored spiral paintings served as a vibrant background for these magical buildings. 

2nd Grade: Tree Wire Sculpture

Students were introduced to the basics of sculptures and studied the difference between two-versus three-dimensional art. Students were guided to use 8 strands of aluminum wire to bend and twist a representation of a tree. Thinner steel wire, aluminum wire, colored twisty wire, beads and buttons were added for volume and color accents. Second grade artists created amazing tree sculptures with unique characteristics.  

Along with this sculpture students were introduced to the concept of "Visual Literacy". "How artists can convey meaning, a message, ideas." In a class discussion students were responding to two different titles for the same piece of artwork. Students shared great connections and insides about how a title of an art piece can change a viewer's perception or opinion.  Students practiced critical thinking in developing a fitting title for their tree sculptures. They revised their titles and came up with thought-provoking, clever titles to support their message or meaning of their tree sculptures. Students analyzed a classmate's tree sculpture and predicted and inferred what the message/idea/story might be the artist is communicating. 

3rd Grade: Hand Sewing Soft Sculptures: Emojis and Stuffies

 

Soft sculpture is a type of sculpture made using cloth, foam, rubber, plastic, paper, fibers and similar material that are supple and not rigid. They can also be made out of natural materials if combined to make a non rigid object. Students were introduced to sewing 101: needle threading, knot tying, the basics of hand sewing: running stitch and whip stitch. Based on their sewing skill levels students chose a stitch to fit their skills to sew together felt fabric. Students gently pushed acrylic fiberfill into their soft sculptures. With appliqué students designed the faces of their emojis and other features and details for their stuffies. 

We are a "maker culture"! Students enjoyed this visual arts/maker project, the process of creating something from start to the finished piece. Everyone was engaged because persistence was required to solve problems as they occurred. Students helped each other, which made this a nice teamwork project as well. 

4th Grade: Hand Sewing: Pouches 

Fourth grade students sketched ideas for their pouches. Some students made asymmetrical designs, some students decided on a symmetrical pouch design. Students were introduced to the blanket stitch. An advanced, decorative stitch to sew the seams of the pouch as well as working as an eye catching decor element along the edges of the flap.  Students learned how to sew on a button and construct a functional opening and closing mechanism for their pouches. Some students decided to sew on a strap. With appliqué students added design elements to their pouches. 

March/April 2023 Art Blog

Display of: District-wide Art Project

The ‘All Our Hearts Are In It’ displays were enthusiastically enjoyed by families at Kent and Bacich during both Open House evenings.  Combining the works of staff and students into a shared expression of our connection proved very powerful to all involved.  

Now as envisioned in our original proposal we are planning to distribute the 20 columns and banners to the District Office meeting room, Kent Library, and Bacich office spaces for ongoing display. 

TK/K: Black Cat White Cat  

Students were introduced to the concept of contrast: to use different elements or opposites to make areas in artwork stand out. The tint white and the shade black are the lightest and darkest shades to create the highest, strongest contrast and a dramatic statement.

 

Are black and white colors? Many do consider black to be a color, because you combine other pigments to create it on paper, but in a technical sense, black and white are not colors, they’re shades and tints. They are augment colors, and yet they do function like colors. They evoke feelings and allow for balanced, and aesthetic pleasing designs.

1st: Bird sketching/drawing 

Students were introduced to Jane Kim, American painter, science illustrator and the founder of the Ink Dwell studio. She is best known for her large-scale murals, created with the purpose of promoting advocacy of the natural world. In 2015, Kim completed a 70-foot by 40-foot mural called the Wall of Birds at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology.The mural depicts 243 modern bird families, all life size and superimposed on a map of the earth. It took her two and a half years to complete the work.

During directed sketching lessons students were guided through a series of sketching check-points, to capture the position and gesture of a bird and its distinctive features, such as, beak, legs, tail and wing feathers. Students enjoyed sketching the California Robin and the California Quail and were amazed how realistic their drawings came out to be. 

2nd: Loom Weaving

Students were introduced to the history of weaving and the different kinds of looms that can be used to create a tapestry art piece or cloth. Weaving is an art form practiced in cultures around the world. 

A loom is a device/frame used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same.

Once the cardboard looms were completed students were ready to take on the weaving challenge. Weaving helps develop hand-eye coordination because the activity encourages children to use the visual information received to coordinate the movement of the hands. It isn't an easy task when starting out but with practice and perseverance students made great progress. It is a common sight to see children really concentrate when they weave. There is often a peaceful calm class environment  as students carefully move the material between the warp. Students were so very proud of their tapestry works. 

3rd: Eyes/Japanese Anime Portraits

Japanese Anime is an art genre that focuses on the eyes of characters. The word anime — pronounced "ah-knee-may" — is an abbreviation of the word animation. Anime character’s eyes are over exaggerated and often take up about one third of the characters face to illustrate the actions and emotions of characters. Students were introduced to “manga” creator artist Osamu Tezuka. Practicing the manga cartoon drawing style students sketched eyes and unique eyelid shapes in creative, descriptive ways. 

With the attention on unique, expressive eye shapes, students drew their own Japanese anime characters and used their previously acquired color pencil cross-hatching techniques to color their portraits. 

This lesson built on our social justice/arts integration unit of human skin color. Students engaged in the inquiry and conversation: “Why do the shape of eyes differ in different races?”

They are not different eye shapes, they are different eyelids. Some Asians as well as others have what is called an epicanthic fold in their upper eyelid and it makes the eye appear to be an elliptical shape.

The epicanthal fold is a skin fold of the upper eyelid covering the inner corner of the eye. It is often seen as a normal finding in very young children and is most pronounced in some people of Asiatic descent. There are also varying degrees of the fold throughout the world's population.As far as its evolutionary purpose, there are various thoughts on this and it has been a topic of discussion since the 19th century.

One hypothesis is that it was a trait that evolved to protect the eye from the blowing sand of the Gobi Desert. Interestingly, the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert also have epicanthal folds. It has also been suggested that the fold itself might provide a level of protection from snow blindness. It can be seen in Siberian peoples and Inuits. There are several other hypotheses but these are the two most widely known.

4th: Repoussé (Metal Tooling )

Repoussé or repoussage (French “pushed up”) is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal is shaped by pushing, pressing or hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief. Chasing or embossing is a similar technique in which the piece is worked on the front side, sinking the metal. The two techniques are often used in conjunction.

Students sketched fantastical creatures to emboss into a 36 gauge, aluminum metal sheet. Using a variety of tools/nibs students burnished and chased the metal to achieve a low relief. The experimentation with patterns, textures and designs gave each student lots of creative freedom to create their own repoussé masterpiece.