What if you had to get to know someone but could only choose 3 questions to ask them?  You then had to create a "portrait" of that person to demonstrate to what you understood and appreciated about their responses.  That is the essence of a project we are testing for ArtSEL.  

The artists, as shown above, who explored this approach to painting, were pushing back against representational art and often striving to represent emotions and ideas simply through color, texture, shapes, and lines. 

The person I interviewed seemed to radiate positivity which I envisioned as yellow/orange colors with a background of gray and blue, much like the rainy weather we're having today.  The first image I made was intended to be this pure golden colors but other colors of oil pastel fell off the colors I was using.  I didn't expect this and worked these discordant colors back into the artwork.  In the end, this reminded me of our discussion of "letting go of control" which was their answer to the "What is one thing life is teaching you right now?" question.

For the next two iterations, I wanted a simple shape to help better represent the ideas from person I spoke with.  

Blending the colors using a light oil pastel, here are the other two iterations of this portrait project.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp  
​(1889 –1943) was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer.  Despite being overlooked at the time of her death, she is now considered one of the most important artists of geometric abstraction of the 20th century. Critics have said that Taeuber's artworks are "joyous abstractions", created as part of the Dada movement and has been called "revolutionary for its influence challenging the established conventions of art by "playing with blocks and blobs of colour, moving them around randomly, letting patterns emerge by chance, in a kind of visual jazz."

Compare these math prompted from 2/22/22.   An effective way to increase engagement is to increase ownership. Which of these prompts feels teacher-centered and which feels student-centered?  How does the open-ended nature of the one on the right compare to the five closed tasks on the left?  Which do you feel more engaged with?  

Students in Ms. Stengl's class at Alice Birney are creating personal art based on memories and learning about abstract art.  They have been practicing abstracting images through simplifying, exaggerating and distorting the original image.   After their first iteration, students shared their work and got feedback from classmates:
​-you could take out some details to simplify the people
-maybe make the ball bigger to exaggerate something on the field
-add lots of colors to the background
-you can make the arms wiggly
-you could exaggerate the Golden Gate Bridge
-you filled in the space but make the background a different color than that guy or make that guy a different color
-add more fins to your shark
-less details, simplify it
-you could make his eyebrows bigger
-you might want some more shapes, it looks like all background
-it's okay if it doesn't look like a thing, that's not good or bad

When creating their final artwork, students have many considerations.  They can use the feedback from peers.  They might keep elements of their first iterations or change something about their work that didn't work well for them.  
It is exciting to see their creativity and the diversity in their work.

One of the best things about creative education is reimagining curriculum in collaboration with others.  A fourth-grade teacher came to me with a California Missions project she had done in the past.  The project had worked okay in the past, but she wanted it to be more creative and original on the part of the students.  She also hoped it could be more integrated with the social studies and/or English Language Arts.  We are still brainstorming ideas with each other and here are some initial thoughts.

 Her previous project had students trace a photo of a mission.  This created a class full of almost identical images. I suggested a 'viewfinder' approach.  A viewfinder is a rectangular opening in a piece of cardboard that allows the artist to crop or reframe the scene-zooming into one area for artistic effect.  Even if a whole class of students used the same original image, it is unlikely any two students will crop the new scene in exactly the same way.  This process emphasizes the Creative Skills of "Envision-Imagine multiple possibilities" and "Create-Make something original" as well as "Engage-Make it yours". For a demo project, I cut a viewfinder from a piece of cardstock, but empty slide frames are ideal viewfinders.  The demo project shown here is done in oil pastel with a watercolor wash, but any medium is suitable.

We're still brainstorming integration concepts for this project.  For example, what if students not only used 'point of view' for creating the visual artwork, but also used 'point of view' when writing?  How would poetry sound from the viewpoints of those affected by the California missions?   How would the colors, mood and tone change in the artwork change when viewed from an Indigenous viewpoint as opposed to a Catholic missionary viewpoint?   Could students collaborate to create a two-voice poem with separate artworks that represent each voice?  

Step 1: Students use the viewfinder to find the scene they would like for their composition.  Here concepts of symmetry and balance can be useful and natural discussions.  

Step 2: Use the proportion of the viewfinder opening to create a similar sized canvas.  In my case, the viewfinder opening was 2cm x 3 cm or a 2:3 ratio.  I set up the canvas as 10 cm x 15 cm to preserve this 2:3 ratio.  This can be done by the teacher if the mathematics is outside the grade level of the student.  If the canvas is a different ratio, the final artwork will be distorted which can be interesting.  

Step 3: Set up a grid.  Since this image was so simple, I cut the space in half vertically and horizontally creating 4 quadrants.  If the image was more challenging (a portrait, for example), smaller sections might be needed. For example, 6 vertical divisions and 4 horizontal divisions.  As shown below, the original image has 4 quadrants and the larger canvas also has 4 corresponding quadrants. 

Step 4: Draw the image lightly on the canvas.  Here is where the grid can come in handy.  For example, the building had a dark line exactly on the horizontal division line, and the tree occupied the entire bottom right hand quadrant, the building is about 2/3 the way across the left-hand quadrants, etc.  

Step 4: Erase the quadrant division lines from the canvas and complete the image using the media of your choice.  In my case, I used oil pastels and then a wash of watercolor to fill the white spaces on the paper.  To emphasize the hard edges of the architecture, I used a cardstock 'blocker' to create the straight edges of the building and the curve of the archway.

Step 5: Add framing, poetry or reflection.  How artwork is displayed often determines how it is perceived.  The artwork is perceived as a thinking activity when writing, revisions, reflection and curriculum are part of the display. 

Students in third grade at Grant School created art with chalk pastels.  They used techniques like distortion, simplification or exaggeration to abstract images from significant memories.  

Fourth grade students in Mr. Magnuson's class studied the abstract art of Wassily Kandinsky.  They looked at examples of abstract art made by other fourth graders.  Here's what they had to say about abstract art:
-can't tell what it is
-it's fun because you can't recognize all the things
-emotional
-random
-exciting
-confusing
-a way to show your feelings
-hallucinating, like it's moving with shadows
-it can be beautiful
-can be an escape from stressful reality
-illusions and nauseous
-if you're going through something, you can get it out
-it can have images you can recognize but are distorted
-a gateway to freedom
-it has things that might remind you of something but reminds someone else of something else
-images you can recognize but they are distorted


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About 50 teachers from Humboldt and Del Norte Counties came together on January 11 for the 2020 Winter Training.  The day was spent learning about Adobe Spark Video, Visual Thinking Strategies, Math Arts Integration, Collaboration Skills, and ways to help students reduce the apprehension they have about being wrong or different.  

Students across Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino and Lake counties are practicing learning to share their ideas, justify why they suggest their idea, compromising on one idea, planning, and woringk together to create these artworks.  The process of learning how to collaborate is critical for all group learning.  

Here's what students in Ms. Holland's class had to say when looking at examples of student art:
I notice...
they have 3 colors
there are different textures on each one
the designs are different in them
some look smooth and some look not smooth
the lines look like they used tape
all the different shapes
some parts are so dark
I wonder...
how they stopped the color from spreading
did they use paint?
Are we going to do this?
how the paper didn't tear
who made those
how they mixed the colors
if they used a lot of water
how it's going to turn out and if we can do that
who is in my group for making this

In Spring 2019, Droop Capone (dr. Oop for short) did a teaching artist residency as part of the North Coast Arts Integration Project at both Trinity Valley Elementary and Hoopa Elementary with 7th and 8th graders.

Click here for more information

Melanie Rick from Focus 5 facilitated Day 1 of the summer institute.

Many have written about what compromises creativity, but what skills can be taught that support becoming more creative?  This question is at the heart of the work of Create Humboldt and the Arts & Creativity Initiative.  We have identified eight concepts which are at the heart of the units and the work we do in schools.  This graphic, in English and Spanish, explains those eight ideas.  

PDF of the skills in English and Spanish here

If you would like a vinyl sticker of these skills, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Bill Funkhouser-sticker request/ Arts & Creativity Initiative/ 901 Myrtle Ave./ Eureka, CA 95501

7th and 8th grade students at Trinity Valley and Hoopa Elementary Schools created two original hip hop songs with teaching artist Droop Capone (dr. Oop for short). Catch the songs on the radio this weekend! Friday 6/21/19 on KMUD between 3-5:30 pm and Sunday 6/22/19 on KHUM between 10 am-3 pm. Thanks to Cory Goldman and Jay Tilghman of The MARZ Project for audio recording and video editing and Piet Dalmolen for mixing the tracks!

(Open the audio tracks in a new window to download.)

Students at Arcata High's Arcata Arts Institute collaborated on a sticker project by exchanging stickers they created with ones that 5th graders created at Arcata Elementary School.  These photos show some of the AAI students receiving their sticker from the younger student and reading the letter that was written to them about the artwork.  

And here are some of the 5th graders working on their stickers.  

Here are some of the stickers from the high school students in AAI.