vermont art farm

Future City.....

2012-01-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

The Artists at Founders have been learning how to create depth in their work by exploring the concept of foreground, middle ground and background in drawing. They designed cities of the future that encompass what they believe the world will be like in the year 2050!

yes it does.....

2011-11-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Well, my artists, I hope you all know that it is absolutely not appropriate to write on the walls at school....that being said, it makes me happy that you feel this way, my anonymous fan!

Welcome to our creative world for the 2011-2012 school year!

Summer!

2011-06-17T05:12:00.001-07:00

au revoir for the summer! practice your creativity...keep an open mind...and be kind!

whoot! whoot! whoot!....

2011-05-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

Just a small sampling of the third grade artists exploration in ceramic sculpture!...We learned to properly attach clay pieces to ensure they would stay put, how to texture with all kinds of found objects, and most importantly, young artists learned how to use complex underglazing techniques to create all kinds of visual interest...enjoy!

Three dimensional ceramics.....

2011-04-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

We bet you will not be able to guess what this is going to be!...Fourth and fifth grade artists are warming up their ceramic sculpting 'chops'.......we are really good with clay...it is one of our favorite mediums around here....

Clay, oh Clay....hooray!...

2011-04-07T16:06:00.001-07:00

Third grade artists are learning the technique of properly attaching clay pieces to ensure that all of their hard work will be intact when it comes out of the kiln...their challenge was to sculpt a bas relief owl with a myriad of textures....stay tuned for the finished product, after we have our underglazing lesson!

Self portrait fish.....

2011-04-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

Artists at Founders have been exploring the idea of metaphorical self portraiture and learning to work with water soluble pastels. They have created fish portraits that illustrate how they see themselves as they swim along in their lives!

Art and energy.....

2011-02-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Third grade artists have been studying the power of art to focus our hopes and dreams....we created art inspired by Indian torans...beautiful fabric embellishments traditionally hung in doorways to mark our passage into and out of the world at large. Torans can celebrate anything from the day of the week, to the birth of a new baby. We created ours to help bring the energy of our hopes and dreams our way, while learning the principle of symmetry and how to use watercolor pencils in a painterly fashion.

Arcimboldo slideshow.....

2011-02-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

Guiseppi Arcimboldo....

2011-02-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

Fourth and fifth grade artists have been studying the work of Giuseppi Arcimboldo, a painter of the Renaissance who is most well known for his portraits comprised completely of collections of items such as fruits, flowers, animals, sea creatures and more. His more traditional work is not well known, but he was greatly admired by his contemporaries for this well known body of work. Some felt this art was the result of a crazy mind, but you have to take into account the time in which he lived. People of the Renaissance era loved puzzles and riddles. We will never really know, but we were very inspired by his art. Stay tuned for a slideshow of our work, inspired by Giuseppi's portraits!

An artist takes a new perspective....

2011-02-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

Some Founders artists have been experimenting with working at easels, instead of flat on the tables, to see if this new perspective broadens their thoughts about how they see their art while it is in process....

grey scale mandala....

2011-02-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

A wonderful example of the grey scale mandalas we created, this one by Cameron.Can you count how many shades of grey he included?

grey scale or gray scale?......

2010-10-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it doesn't matter how you spell it....4th and 5th graders are currently taking the "gray scale challenge"....we are learning how to use our tools ( in this instance, EBONY brand pencils) to the best of their ability...and to see just how many shades of gray we can squeak out of them to create a patterned design in the round. We are learning about the element of VALUE in art, and simultaneously having a grand time seeing who can find the most shades with their pencil...at last count, grand total was 58...We will post some of our finished works of art when they are complete!

how to fold a paper fortune teller.....

2010-09-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

we are READY, 2010-2011 school year.....

2010-09-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

Here we go!....welcome to another year in the studio! Your place to practice right brain thinking, creative problem solving, imagining, visualizing and self expression!....welcome to all of my new 3rd grade artists...and welcome back to my 4th and 5th graders. I am looking forward to another year of working with you to find your creative voice. My hopes and dreams are that you will come to class with an open mind, and an open heart! See you very soon! Ms. G.

learning about warm and cool colors......

2010-06-18T04:49:00.001-07:00

putting silly bandz to a good use......

2010-06-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

I was watching a piece on the national news about a week ago. It was reporting that the extremely popular 'silly bandz' kids have been wearing have been banned in a number of school districts around the country; the reason being that they are considered to be a huge distraction. For those of you who might not know what they are, they're rubber bracelets that come in various shapes:planes, stars, hearts , the alphabet, etc. that you wear around your wrist. As a teacher, I have not found this to be the case at all. In fact, a bunch of my third grade students have put them to great use! We have been learning about color for the last number of weeks, and just completed a project around warm and cool color families. A bunch of my fabulous artists came to class yesterday and showed me they had sorted theirs into warm and cool color families!.....now, if THAT doesn't warm a teachers' heart, I don't know what would! Letting me know that they are carrying all that I bring to them out into their world is such a gift.......

Nigerian metal repousse......

2010-05-04T15:57:00.001-07:00

the finished product!......

2010-04-09T06:04:00.001-07:00

Here are the completed community nests!....as you can see, there is one for each grade level

(3,4,5)....each 'egg' has been filled with 'food' brought from home by each student...items such as beans, lentils, rice, oatmeal, Cheerios and peas are inside each...meant to represent your family and how they feed and take care of you. The eggs were sewn shut and placed in the nest. Each artist wove a reed into the felted sides to represent themselves as part of a community, and added additional strands, as diverse as a pet horses' hair, gift ribbon from a birthday, and old shoelace from favorite sneakers and hair from big sisters' trim! All in all, this was a great experience!

artist residency...Lisa Klakulak

2010-03-30T16:44:00.001-07:00

We are so very lucky to have a PTO that truly believes in and supports the arts!....The 4th and 5th graders are continuing their trip around the world and have landed in Mongolia, where they are learning about the art of felt making from Lisa Klakulak, an internationally known felt artist from Asheville, NC. Ms. K taught all grades the science behind making art out of wool, and taught them how to make felted eggs, that will be filled with small objects brought from home. Finished eggs will be placed in giant felted nests, embellished by the young artists, each representing the idea that we are all one small part of a larger community. I will post more about our project next week, as it nears completion. You can learn more about Lisa, and her fascinating work on her website, www.strongfelt.com.

Mr.White's class and me......

2010-03-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

Today I spent part of the morning with Mr. White's 4th grade class....we had a great time playing an old drawing game begun by surrealist artists in the 1920's called "the exquisite corpse".....here are the directions below if you want to try it at home....make sure you don't let the people you are playing with peek at your paper! ( click on the screenshot to enlarge!)

Vermont Arts Council.....good read...

2010-03-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

This is from the 'pen' of Alex Aldrich, head of the Vermont Arts Council....I know it is long, but it is a timely and IMPORTANT read, especially considering the economic times...thank you for taking the time to consider his thoughts...

"We are receiving reports from various arts supporters that legislators and newspapers have received letters that target the Vermont Arts Council and a few other small agencies for elimination.
I have read a few of these letters and their basic argument is that, as with household budgets when there is less money available, Government should cut programs (like the Arts Council) until it is operating within its means.
To me this sounds like a contestant on The Biggest Loser being told to eliminate the tablespoon of peanut-butter from his diet instead of addressing his 10-chili-cheese-dog-a-day habit because the peanut butter has, pound for pound, more calories.
Eliminating the peanut butter will, like cutting the Arts Council budget, result in two sure things: the problem won't go away, and worse, without it we will suffer from the lack of some crucial nutrients which our bodies and our society can ill-afford to be without.
The Government is not the same as a Household The basic flaw with the letters I have read is the assumption that Government functions like a household. Government is supposed to protect its interests and the citizenry (sometimes even from the citizenry itself!), negotiate with foreign countries on behalf of the people, and provide programs and services that are in the people's interest but for which there is no market incentive for investment (like schools and health-care, and teacher's and veteran's retirement programs, all of which are topics that are too big to discuss here!).
A head of household, however, tends to preserve and protect what is dear to him/her, even if it is at the expense of a neighbor or the community-at-large. Nowhere is this behavior more pronounced, its effects more devastatingly felt, than when people charged with acting in the public trust behave instead like individuals bent on preserving and protecting "what's theirs." This is essentially what happened in Washington and on Wall Street during the past five or six years during which regulations were either gutted or ignored. Speculators created high risk/high reward instruments that created fortunes for themselves overnight, and when everything went sour, turned to the Federal Government for a bail-out. So-called public servants protected their own assets at the expense of everyone else.
So here we sit in a recession/depression with private capital more or less dried up, unemployment at a 25-year high, and private enterprise at best, in a state of paralysis. It is very tempting to cut Government spending until we have once again reached the point where our revenue equals or exceeds our expenses; where our annual deficit disappears; where are accumulated national debt starts to decrease.
The problem is that if the Government does this, then unemployment will get much worse and inflation will skyrocket because there are fewer goods and services being produced. Depression in every possible meaning of the world will be the status quo on a scale not seen before... It seems counter-intuitive to individuals dealing with their own household budgets to say that the best possible way to improve things is for the Government to spend more, but Government is the only player right now who has access to capital.
Government must invest borrowed capital in order to invest in private enterprise to create jobs and restore consumer and market confidence. It is these jobs, these industries that receive this investment that will, eventually, and not without great anxiety, allow us to move towards a recovery.
Arts=Jobs; Arts = Community State Arts Agencies not only recognize and support vital cultural institutions and artist projects, we partner with a variety of private and public partners to showcase various attractions and festivals that cause huge numbers of visitors and entrepreneurs to come to our state. These visitors spend enormous sums in our shops, restaurants, and hotels. The entrepreneurs start businesses, employ people and contractors, and make positive demands on and contributions to our community's social fabric.
Arts agencies also serve as a catalyst that allows significant amounts of supplemental educational experiences to engage students in our schools, most of which is directly related to the schools' curriculum goals and all of which is directed towards specific performance goals for every student, not the least of which is developing skills for the 21st-century workforce that are highly prized--like collaborative decision-making, public speaking, and creative thinking.
The two most frequently cited reasons why a business chooses to locate in one community over another--all other factors like tax incentives and regulations being equal—are the quality of the schools and the quality of community life, both of which are highly dependent on a thriving arts sector.
Cutting Government’s small investment in the arts, far from improving our economic situation, will actually make if far worse. Not only will the cut place at risk 2000 jobs throughout the state, but the closing of perhaps dozens of our cultural institutions, and the drying up of arts education programs in our schools will make Vermont a significantly less attractive place for people to visit, to invest in new businesses, and to raise families.
So, please, don’t be fooled. Eat the peanut butter. It's good for you. The real threat is those chili-cheese-dogs."

radial symmetry....

2010-02-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

color mixing and radial symmetry.....

2010-01-30T03:31:00.000-08:00

3rd grade artists are continuing to explore the elements and principles of art in their foundational exploration year...we are creating spinning tops out of used CD's that will demonstrate our understandings of radial symmetry. Artists are required to include the three primary colors in somewhere in their design to illustrate how they will combine to create the secondary set.....stay tuned!

senufo cloth = line = gallery

2010-01-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

a moment....

2009-12-03T14:53:00.001-08:00

Today, while I was teaching, I had one of those moments....one of my students was happily painting away at her Senufo cloth, looked up at me, smiled the BIGGEST smile, and said " I feel like a grown-up artist!". I told her the cool part was that she already IS one.....

senufo cloth = line

2009-10-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

Fourth and Fifth grade students are spending the year exploring the art of cultures all over the globe. We are hoping to learn about and understand the similarities and differences of human creative expression no matter where one lives. All cultures 'make marks', some for the same reasons we do, others to serve different purposes. We have begun our journey on the west coast of Africa, in the Cote d' Ivoire, exploring the element of line, and creating cloth paintings inspired by the Senufo people

third grade line sampler....

2009-10-31T15:15:00.001-07:00

Third grade students are working on their own version of line exploration, by creating samplers, adding personal embellishments, and color......

We are studying line.......

2009-10-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

colored pencil project.....

2009-10-02T03:40:00.000-07:00

What is never ceases to amaze me about the "what if" drawing project we began at the start of the school year, is the incredible number of individual responses one gets to the query "what if your next door neighbor was a dragon?". Here is one response, in process, by a fourth grader, who always has the most incredible sense of composition!

ten important reasons kids should study art....

2009-09-26T06:32:00.003-07:00

I am paraphrasing an article written by Eldon Katter, co-author of Exploration in Art, that is important and informative. He wrote it to serve as 'talking points' making a case for the maintaing of arts programs in the schools, which in many parts of our country, fall victim to the educational 'belt tightening' of tough economic times.

+ art education nourishes creative ability.

Children who study art learn how to discover original solutions to problems, discover innovative techniques, and are informed by the risk-taking and use of the imagination that artistic studies provide.

+ art education fosters communication skills

The complex graphics and fast paced imagery of the new media communicates ideas that need to be understood, analyzed, and critically discussed. art education provides the language of comprehension for this new media.

+art education offers marketable skills for the workplace of the future

The study of art develops qualities employers say they look for in employees: engagement in analytical and creative thinking, ability to develop and deliver product, a disciplined approach to personal skill development and a collaborative work skill set.

+art education will enhance our children's ability to compete in the global marketplace

Twenty first century skills will require sophisticated visual understanding. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, says that in the next millennium, right-brainers will rule the world! I highly recommend you read this book. Careers such as architecture, product design, computer imaging, communications and science rely heavily on visual training.

+art education improves student achievement in all areas of the curriculum

Skills and attributes cultivated by the study and making of art include:creativity, imagination,problem solving, critical thinking,self expression, self esteem transfer across to other studies.

+studying art encourages the attributes of self discipline and persistence

+studying art teaches about human nature and cultural diversity

+studying art encourages the participation of family, community and business

What better way to bring parents to school, for an art show, or connect school to the 'real world' than by inviting businesses, cultural institutions and the like to partner with student artists in their education?

+art making is basic to life

Art is the language of human expression. We use our visual sense to give meaning to the world around us. We take in information and create understandings daily in advertising, fashion, movies, architecture, media....each other's facial expressions...as they say, our eyes are the first place we take in and process information. The study of art helps us to define and understand ourselves and our world.

open house, september 23......

2009-09-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder, open house is tomorrow, September 23rd from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Spaghetti dinner too!....The art studio, for those of you who may not know is room C-107. Come and say "bonjour!".

art is....

2009-09-18T04:22:00.001-07:00

we have begun!

2009-09-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

Founders artists have already begun to exercise their creative muscles with a short drawing assignment. They chose playing cards that had questions on them such as: "what if people lived in the ocean and fish lived on land?", "what if everyone was magnetic?" and, my all time favorite, "what if a dragon was your next door neighbor?". The great art education theorist, Maxine Greene, said something at a conference that continues to drive my perspective about how I teach. She stated that "it is necessary, for greatness, that children be capable of imagining the world could be other than it is". Creativity endures as one of the most powerful tools for change whether your 'medium' is art, engineering, social activism, law.

Gerry Spence, the 'winning-est' lawyer in the United States, says that creativity is the key to greatness in any field....so....flexing those right-brained muscles are good for you, no matter what you grow up to be!

Artists are constantly saying to themselves "I wonder, what if?" and these student artists are no different. They are drawing, what the world might look like to them if these "what ifs" were true!

Please pardon our plain looking studio...we are just getting started!

we are READY!

2009-09-05T06:25:00.000-07:00