Chittenango Falls State Park is located at 2300 Rathbun Road (RT. 13), Cazenovia, NY 13035. The attraction is a 167-foot waterfall. There are hiking trails, a playground, plenty of spots to have a picnic and as of two hours ago, home to a dozen painted rocks.
I painted these yesterday for this park because we are the bears. I have worked for the Chittenango school district for 26 years and this is the first time I visited this park. It won’t be the last. Go bears! <3
My 8th grade accelerated Studio in Art students created these clay face masks (with Miller #10 clay purchased from Clayscapes). We used the slab technique over a plastic face form then added clay to shape the features. I poked holes at the sides to secure a Twisteezwire to the back. They can hang on a wall – I love that!
The glaze is called Mayco Jungle Gems. It contains glass bits! So cool.
Here are some of the celebrity portraits my 8th grade Studio in Art students (from Chittenango Middle School) finished back in March. I didn’t display them because I was saving them for the school fair, which never happened.
I allow students to pick almost anyone – meaning anyone “appropriate”, and this year you will see a variety from sports, performing arts, the art world and social media (and one grand-dad). Two Steve Harveys, lol. He wins as most popular this time.
They are pencil drawings on Canton paper.
Tonight’s the night for the annual Chittenango School Fair at Chittenango High School (150 Genesee Street, Chittenango, NY 13037). It takes place from 5:30 – 8:00 pm. This is my display – set up in the hallway between the two gyms.
Once again, my 8th grade Studio in Art students created illustrations for the Oz-stravaganza coloring contest! Eight drawings were selected for 2019. They are available on-line and at various stores on Route 5 in the village of Chittenango, New York.
Students used Sharpie marker to outline their pencil drawings. This was one of the six sketchbook homework projects I assigned last quarter. I have eighteen students in my class – eight of the drawings were printed to be used in the contest. Organizer Judy Waite told me it was very difficult to narrow it down to just eight. They were all wonderful! Coloring contest drawings from previous years have been bound into a coloring book for sale at the event. Win-win!
It is truly an honor for all of us to participate in this community event. Several of these artists won the coloring contest when they were elementary students! My 5th graders are coloring the illustrations now. Entries were sent to all eligible students at Chittenango Middle School and the two elementary schools in the district. Entries are due on May 8th, 2019. They will be judged by members of the Oz-stravaganza committee and winners will be awarded at a ceremony on Sunday, June 2nd, 2019 at 11:00 am in Oak Park in the village.
Chittenango, New York is the birthplace of L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz. Each year there is a festival to honor him. This year’s theme is “The Magic of Oz”. There will be all sorts of events including a parade. For more information go to the committee’s web page – here. <3
I thought it would be fun to create trompe l’oeil donuts. We made them from an armature of aluminum foil, paper towels and masking tape.
Students then applied Mod Podge with a brush to paper towel bits, adhering them to the armature. They really looked like glazed donuts – so cool!
Cell-u-clay was next. It is a paper pulp that is applied wet in a sort of oatmeal consistency. This was the frosting.
Each student (in two of my 8th grade art classes) created a dozen donuts. Because I didn’t think six was enough, lol. They painted the Cell-u-clay with acrylics and added decorative details.
Some students glued their finished pieces to foamboard and others placed them in boxes provided by the local Dunkin’ Donuts. The projects are currently on display in the library at Chittenango Middle School, Chittenango, New York.
I just loved this project. I think everyone loved it! Students in the 9th period B day class even came in during their study hall to become “donut fairies” – they helped the A day group! Everyone helped each other and it was truly magical. So fun! <3
Kindness Matters was the subject of this year’s Lions Club sponsored Peace Poster contest. My Studio in Art class students spent about six weeks working on their illustrations.
Emily’s poster won the local and regional competition. It is on its way to the state competition next and if she wins at the international level – well, that would be a huge win for all of us: $5,000 for her and twelve years of poster-making and working closely with the beautiful people/lions who make up the committee that will culminate in an enormous sense of pride and victory for our small community in Chittenango, New York.
The Chittenango Lions threw us a classroom pizza party and awarded monetary gifts and plaques for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place picks. The rest of the students were all unanimously honored with honorable mentions. Their work was spectacular.
These peace posters will be on display during December 2018 in the Community Room at the Sullivan Library, 101 Falls Blvd., Chittenango, New York 13037. Visit their website for hours of operation.
Last night Chittenango Central School held their annual School Fair at the high school. Each year, my colleague Katy and I spend several hours installing the middle school art show on the walls of the hallway between the two gymnasiums.
Then at 8:00 pm we take the whole thing down and pop the art into our cars to return it all to the middle school on Monday. We displayed around three hundred pieces of 5th – 8th grade artwork.
This was my twentieth year of said fair. Here are the pictures I remembered to take! It is pretty cool to see this visual representation of what we do all year.
Here are the pictures from my art exhibition at Chittenango Middle School, Chittenango, New York. I’ve combined the Messages from the Other Voice series with the Pompano Revisited series to saturate the yellow walls of the school library with my personal narrative.
They will be up through April 2017.
The work looks better in person – the lighting is not great in the pics, but that is because the artwork is so high up on the walls. I do love the way the library looks soooo fresh and different with each show we install and everyone’s artwork ends up looking great. The captive audience thing always works for me, but it is funniest when I ask students if they have been to the library – if they have seen my art and they say something like I didn’t notice.
That actually doesn’t matter to me – no, not one bit – because I know that they have noticed it, if only in a smidgen of a subliminal fashion. It doesn’t take but a glance to place a positive aesthetic into someone’s visual cortex, lol. And then you can sit back and witness the processed results. It’s kind of amazing. And I really LOVE that. Art benefits people in so many ways in which they are not even remotely aware. It is everywhere. All around us. That’s me being subversive – in a good way.
Blanket of love, people. Blanket of love…. <3
On Tuesday, I gave each of my twelve Studio in Art students a valentine. I prepped 3″ x 5″ canvas panels with a few layers of beeswax. I carved in a heart stencil. I thought this would be a quick and fun way to introduce them to encaustic painting.
I took an encaustic course (graduate level) at Syracuse University in 2012 with free credits I’d earned for hosting a student teacher. Davana Robedee was my instructor. I love incorporating this relatively new-to-me media in the art classroom.
Students melted oil pastels on pancake griddles (all the windows in the room were open and the fans were on high) and went to town tackling their tiny canvases. The thing about wax is that when warm, it produces a luscious liquid color on the brush – but as soon as you remove it from the heat source, it solidifies, so…that brush stroke needs to be a quick thinking confident one – needs to count! They really loved the process. We decided to add a second day of it, which gave them time to process the process and make better decisions once they got the hang of it.
I painted 11″ x 14″ canvas panels with black acrylic paint for each of them and glued wooden plaques to the centers. Students carved into their encaustic paintings with clay tools to enhance the texture then added mixed media items to it and/or to the black frame. We brought the encaustics in for the landings with Elmer’s glue.
I am in love with the decisions they made and the fact that in three classes they all created these wonderful emotionally-charged finished products. So beautiful. I love heart energy! <3
