Artfully delighted

I am so stoked about the presentations that our class gave about the different fine arts. While I was in the drama group, the other groups showed such passion and appreciation for the art they chose. I have not been able to get "Cups" out of my head since the music group played it, and I have been given permission from my cooperating teacher to use PE time to teach the students step dancing.

When it comes to visual arts, I am having a bit of a problem. I want to do a mosaic project with the class, similar to the one I mentioned that I did in grade seven. But one thing I have never thought of up till now was where the heck my teacher got his hands on the glass. Where does one call to acquire coloured glass of the right thickness for little to no funding? Thus far I have been able to track down green, blue and metallic from a distribution centre for windows, but the glass is a quarter inch thick and I think that would be too thick. Who knew finding art supplies could be so difficult?

Through art and beyond

So I had to do a presentation in Aboriginal Education this week, and since the chapter my partner and I were presenting on was written by a Hawaiian educator from a Native Hawaiian perspective, some Hawaiian realia was needed. So my partner brought some leis, and I brought some pineapple. But that didn't seem like enough. We needed something more. Something distinctly Hawaiian. And that's when it hit me: a ukulele. Of course, not too many people have a ukulele lying around the house and I was no exception. So, I had to make my own.

My Shoeboxulele

Pictured above is my homemade shoeboxulele, made from stuff I had around the house, aided by a wonderful YouTube video. I modified the idea, but in the end I had my very own shoeboxulele. While it sounded more like a mandolin than a ukulele, and it could have used some decoration to make it fancier, I am proud of what I made. And it got me thinking about art across the curriculum.

It seems to me that art can be paired with so many other subjects. I paired visual art with music (not very good music mind you) and giving a presentation (meeting some Social Studies PLOs). How many other connections are there? How many times have we coloured a map for Social Studies, sang a song for Science (now Pluto's not a planet anymore...) or acted out a skit in French? The opportunities seems endless. I don't believe that we should always try to incorporate fine arts into our other subjects. Sometimes we just need to focus on Math. And sometimes that special dance routine we are working on needs to be focused on just dancing.

So the way I see it: we shouldn't be afraid to mix and match our subjects when it makes sense, but we shouldn't overdo it.

And for those of you interested in making their own shoebox stringed instrument:

Putting my boat in the water and getting my feet a little wet

At the beginning of my journey into the Fine Arts, I find myself mostly thinking about what kind of assignments that I have done or seen in the past that I really enjoyed. The first thought that I had was what my grade seven class did when I was a student. In preparation for the end of the year art project, my classmates and I created glass mosaics. Mine, if I recall correctly, was a hotplate bearing the frightening visage of Frankenstein's monster. Well, as frightening as one can make something using squares of glass manipulated by awkward prepubescent digits. Even if my family never used it (my mom said it was too nice), I remember is the fun that I had in making the hotplate, and I was proud of the lasting, permanent object that I had made. In fact, I think I still have it somewhere at my parent's house.

It makes me think of how many art projects that students make in school that do not survive past the end of the year, or too much longer past that point. I want my students to have a useful object that they've made with their own hands. Something that they can pull out and show to their children (or, dare I say, their own future students) decades from now. I'm not saying that every art project has to have the same level of permanency, but having a few artful artifacts of one's youth that can survive the ravages of time can't be a bad thing.