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.