Week 24

The Nashville Opera brought their performance of Little Red’s Most Unusual Day, an operatic twist on the traditional Little Red Riding Hood story, to Abintra. Upper Elementary Guide Maria (pictured far right) made a cameo as a lumberjack!

ECA friends experimented with clay.  This work helps strengthen the hand muscles for writing and performing practical life activities.

ECB friends reviewed a book of children from different cultures and chose a child to create a paper doll using fabric, glue, and crayons.

ECC friends experimented with watercolor paint by painting Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting, Sunflowers.

 

ME was honored to have the Nashville sculptor, and former Abintra parent, Alan LeQuire, visit their classroom to teach them about sculpting.  He did a demonstration by starting an armature of a student’s head for another student to finish. LeQuire is best known for his colossal sculptures, Athena Parthenos, the largest indoor sculpture in the western hemisphere and Musica, one of the largest bronze figure groups in the world.

ME visited TPAC to see the performance of Baobab.  In Western Africa, under a blazing sun stands a huge and ancient Baobab tree. The Griot tells the legend of the little boy born from this tree. Making wonderful use of African-inspired puppets, costumes, and live music on stage, Théâtre Motus creates a world where one child has the power, and only the village adults can guide him to use it wisely.

UE continued their study of European Renaissance art by creating a realistic painting of an orange using oil paint.

Drawing by Cora

Oil Painting by Seraina

MS started their Calder influenced sculptures.  The majority of students took on the challenge of creating a mobile.

Week 23

EC students have been working on matching sets of paintings from different European artists such as Matisse, Miró, Renoir, and Van Gogh.

LE created these beautiful landscape paintings using watercolor and the paper they made in their previous art class.

Landscape on handmade paper by Rachel

ME was introduced to Wycinanki, or Polish paper cutouts, representing the Tree of Life. The original Polish designs usually included birds, flowers, hearts and lacey designs and were cut with sheep shears. The students used color opposites for contrast when gluing the trees on a backing.

Tree of Life by Caroline

During the European Renaissance, painters moved from using egg tempura to using oil paint. UE kicked off their study of Renaissance painting by experimenting with both. They enjoyed making their own egg tempura by mixing the yolk with pigment. 

UE also visited the Schermerhorn Symphony Center to see the dress rehearsal of the Nashville Symphony performing Tchaikovsky and Copland.  Copland’s colorful El Salón México opened the performance with lively Latin rhythms. Full of dramatic, explosive music, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony is a powerful masterpiece that finds the great Russian composer triumphing over adversity

MS studied the sculptures of Alexander Calder. After viewing and discussing his mobiles, wire sculptures, and stables, each student designed a mobile influenced by his work.

AC has been practicing their weaving skills.

Week 22

ECA students learned about the work of  Agnes Martin, an American/Canadian abstract expressionist.  The students created drawings influenced by her work.

Drawing by Addie

ECB experimented with paint by placing a couple of paint drops (two colors) on a piece of paper and then fold the paper in two. When they open it they see a beautiful art creation made by the two colors.

Painting by Elizabeth

ECC has spent a lot of time working on Chinese lanterns. They have been talking about the Chinese New Year and the importance of the lanterns in New Years celebrations. We made lanterns using construction paper that the children decorated with crayons. After decorating, students cut slits in the paper and, with some help from a guide or older friend, stapled the sides to create a lantern. We enjoyed hanging the lanterns in our classroom as we look forward to the "new year"!

LE made recycled paper from the paper shredded in the office.  They enjoyed seeing the process of soaking the paper and putting it in the blender to create the pulp.  They each had a turn of dipping a screen in the water of pulp, flattening the pulp with a board, and soaking up the water with a sponge.  Some students chose to embed flower petals from Abintra’s greenhouse into the pulp.  

ME has been studying aerial views, looking at a wonderful book called Earth from Above. They created drawings, done in watercolor pencils, that are designed to be connected.  They call them Rivers and Roads. They took their inspiration from organic shapes made by the interaction of earth, water and weather as well as the patterns made by humans. 

"Rivers and Roads" by Aidan

UE studied visual metaphors through the photographs of Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange.  The students developed a personal metaphor and created a photograph to illustrate it. 

"Honesty" by Maggie

UE ME, UE, and MS visited the Frist to see the exhibition, Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age: Highlights from the Detroit Institute of Arts.  This exhibit presents the greatest Dutch masterpieces by painters such as Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen, Gerard Ter Borch, and the incomparable Rembrandt van Rijn.

Gerard Ter Borch (Dutch, 1617-1681). Lady at Her Toilette,

Abintra was pleased to welcome The S.O.U.L Singers - Singers Of United Lands, who performed for us on campus.  S.O.U.L Singers is a vocal quartet- of which all four members are from a different continental region of the world!  They perform songs, which are native to their home countries while offering interactive multicultural workshops, presentations, and performances for audiences of ALL ages.