Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Cheekwood Topiaries!

One of the classes I taught this summer at Cheekwood was a class called Wild World of Art for 10-12 year olds. I had a great class, and they worked really hard this week. One of their favorite projects was the topiary project that I found on the Dick Blick website. We used a wire mesh and wire to sculpt the form of the topiary. Next, the students glued squares of tissue paper to the wire form. When the form is covered with tissue paper, plaster was poured into terra cotta pots and a wooden dowel rod was placed into the plaster before it had set. Using wire and hot glue, the tissue paper covered form was attached to the dowel rod (after plaster set of course) and brown string is then wrapped around the dowel in order to simulate wood bark. When we were finished, the students were able to take their topiaries outside and choose a place in the gardens at Cheekwood to "install" their topiaries, and take pictures.







Art-al-Sol 2010

I was very lucky to manage another Art-al-Sol camp this summer. Art-al-Sol is a summer art camp run by MNPS, and is a week long, all day camp open to 8-13 year olds. This summer, we focused on a theme that was inspired by the Chihuly exhibitions at the Frist and Cheekwood. We were able to go to the Cheekwood exhibit (on a very, VERY hot day!) and the children loved it! Below is some of the projects that we were able to complete during the week. We worked on microwave kiln glass, glass coasters, Classroom Chihuly, Shrinky-Dinks with pastels (hint: wet the pastels first, then draw on the shrinky dinks), friendly plastic pins, silk painting, window cling mobiles and bead pictures (using the fusible beads that are available at Wal-mart).








Monday, July 19, 2010

Now Featuring: Jewelry!

I have finally gotten around to posting some images from my jewelry class at Cheekwood. I have been very busy with camps this summer, with five half day, week long camps at Cheekwood, and two week long camps for the school district, I feel like I haven't even had time to breathe! The pictures below show the sculpey pins that are based on some of the Chihuly work that is featured at Cheekwood, specifically the Sun sculpture that is on the lawn of the mansion. The last picture is a paper bead that was created by a student.