November 2014

As Early Childhood artists talked about autumn and leaves, they also learned about nature artist Andy Goldsworthy.  They explored Abintra's campus and picked up fallen leaves to create their own nature sculptures. 

To integrate their classroom study of Africa, Early Childhood artists learn about African patterns. They are creating beads out of patterns they created.

Early Childhood A artists also pin-punched animals and trees from Africa and painted a landscape to put them on. 

Early Childhood practiced rhythm and movement using hoops during Musikgarten. 

Lower Elementary artists ended their lessons on the elements of design with "texture.”  In an effort to reference  their classroom study of land and water forms as well as to explore texture, they created encaustic (beeswax)  paintings.  LE parent, Matt Slocum, donated blocks of beeswax from his bee farm for the students to melt and mix with pigment.  The students were fascinated by the hot wax drying immediately after they brushed it on their board.  They enjoyed scraping and cutting into the wax to reveal the layers of color and to created texture.

Lower Elementary students are learning the time value and names of notes and rests on a music staff and applying that knowledge to sight reading musical notation. Note and symbol recognition has moved along very quickly!  They sing songs that support classroom topics including the names of all the states in alphabetical order and stories read in the classroom.There is also singing of tongue twisters and a few classics.  A variety of instruments are brought in, such as a flute, and passed around and discussed. Then there is a demonstration as well as listening to examples of that instrument. Exploring music through movement and with percussion instruments is always a hit and really gets the motor skills working. There is so much discovery and learning going on already, it is a very exciting time in the LE music class!

Did you know that your eyes are in the middle of your head and that the width of your eye is the same width of the space between your eyes?  Lower Elementary students enjoyed learning these facts and more when given a lesson on drawing portraits.

Middle Elementary's pastel self portraits are part of a series of studies on proportion and observation. Students have diagrammed faces divided into halves and quarters to show the location of the features, and have done self portraits in pencil while observing their own features in a mirror. 

Congratulations to Upper Elementary on a wonderful production of "Coyote Tales!" The students worked on everything from props to costumes to stage management these past two weeks. Thank you to their director, Abintra alumni Christy Berryessa, for working so hard with the students! 

Middle Elementary and Upper Elementary students visited the Nashville Children's Theater to see the production of, James and the Giant Peach. 

Middle School students finished up their self-portraits inspired by local artist, Wayne Brezinka. 

Digital Art students explored the Abintra campus and captured these beautiful photos while learning about depth of field in photography.

Photo by Mikayla

October 2014

ART

Early Childhood artists had their first lesson with our artist in residence guide, Sarah. To celebrate Picasso's birthday and to integrate their classroom study of diversity, they created artwork inspired by Picasso's "Flowers in Hand."

Early Childhood A artists are studying South America. They created this three-dimensional model of the Chilean national flower.

Early Childhood B artists learned about artist Wassily Kandinsky and created family trees 
inspired by his work.  Kandinsky's work is currently exhibited at the Frist.  
Please take your little ones to see his work in person!

Lower Elementary artists explored the element of design and form by making 3D circles inspired by Wassily Kandinsky.  To integrate their classroom study of the solar system, 
they each created their circle as a planet.  

Lower Elementary artists also explore the element of design and space through several projects.  To integrate their classroom study of the Great Lesson, The Coming of Life, they created drawings illustrating the beginning of life forms focusing on proportions and composition to fill the space.

 To integrate their classroom study of leaves, Lower Elementary artists created artwork again 

focusing on positive and negative space.

To prepare for the Kandinsky exhibit, Middle Elementary artists experimented with some of the elements of design.  Equipped with rulers and old CD's, students followed somewhat open-ended instructions like "draw three parts of a circle" or "make a line that turns a corner 5 times".  They completed their complex drawings with colored pencil and watercolor.

Middle Elementary artist have also had a variety of practice with drawing this Fall including drawing the human figure from life. They worked quickly with pastel on colored paper, using the side of the pastel to capture the model's movement with a few broad strokes.

Upper Elementary artists have been working on both realistic and abstract self portraits.  For the realistic self portraits, they studied the work and technique of Chuck Close.  Close is know for his large-scale realistic drawings created through a grid system.  The students are working on a portrait of themselves using this grid system.  For the abstract portraits, Upper Elementary artists studied the portraits of Pablo Picasso, and created a self-portrait that illustrates who they see themselves as vs. what the world sees them as through a realistic portrait.  

Middle School artists are currently working on self-portraits influence by local artist Wayne Brezinka.  In preparation for these portraits, they have been practicing the basics of portraiture: drawing eyes, noses, lips, ears - and, with the assistance of mirrors, drawing self-portraits.

MS students had the wonderful opportunity to visit Brezinka at his studio to learn more about his art and his process.  Brezinka is famous for his portrait of Abe Lincoln which will hang in the Ford Theater for a year. Here is a kind note about their visit:

"I had some visitors in my studio yesterday afternoon from  Abintra Montessori School  here in Nashville.  A group of very bright, eager and creative individuals learning about portrait collage in their art class stopped by my studio yesterday afternoon. They were interested in learning more about my process and wanted to see my behind the scenes mess in person!    Thank you to Missy Wood and John Toomey for reaching out and making this happen.  I look forward to seeing the kids portrait collage work in early December."

ME, UE, and MS all visited the Frist to see the exhibit Kandinsky: A Retrospective.

Aftercare artists created these shape paintings inspired by the work of Kandinsky.

Aftercare artists explored painting with resists by drawing with a bottle of glue mixed with black paint.  After the glue dried, they then painted the drawings with watercolor.

Aftercare artists learned how to create movement in art by creating colorful, diagonal lines, cutting them into strips, and then gluing them down in a way that made the lines look like they are moving.

Digital Art students assisted Missy in taking all the student photos this year.  They have been editing, organizing, and loading the photos on a website for easy viewing and ordering. The photos will be available to the parents very soon!

MUSIC

EC friends have the opportunity to experience a music and movement program with artist in residence Kari. Each of her classes are structured with traveling movement so the children are able to feel the difference between a duple meter and a triple meter, stationary movement such as "the stick passing game" where they develop ensemble activity and a sense of community with music, plus ear training with tonal and rhythm patterns. The instruments are mainly percussion at this level, with some use of tonal bars.  There are many things being taught in these classes that are an integral part of developing true musicianship. Impulse control, crossing both the horizontal and vertical mid lines through movement for brain development, and developing a greater sense of spacial awareness through the use of hoops and scarves, are just a few examples of activities used in these classes. Kari is introducing a wonderful foundation for children to build and develop their love of music.

Friends in the LE classroom began an introduction to music class with artist in residence Duncan.  In the classroom, he brings percussion instruments and his acoustic guitar. The classes not only focus on the basic elements of music such as rhythm, melody, dynamics, and pitch, but there is also a lot of singing. The class sings a variety of songs that support classroom activity, as well as encourage each student to be creative. Not every student has the same exposure to music and few have experienced the vocabulary or language of music. The ear training, rhythm exercises, note recognition, and group discussions emphasize the basic foundation some students may already have while introducing these concepts to those students who have not yet been exposed to music theory and chorus. Duncan is bringing music and singing into the classroom and is combining learning and fun.

September 2014

Abintra is off to an exciting start in the Arts!

Early Childhood artists worked with the new EC art guide, Sarah, and some UE students on a collaboration piece for the Wine & Cheese Social.  Each child in ECA and ECB painted a large canvas that was cut into strips to hang origami books that the Upper School students made.  Sarah will be teaching art every Thursday with EC children starting in October. 

Upper School artists created over 100 origami books.  The books and canvas used were all recycled pieces. This beautiful installation cost only $8!

One of our goals in art for Early Childhood is to introduce the elements of design: color, line, shape, pattern, space, texture, and form.  This month the students are focusing on color.  They learn what the primary colors are and how to mix them to create the secondary colors. While exploring the mixing of colors, students learned about the American painter, Jackson Pollock.  He was known for his unique technique of drip painting.  This is an abstract form of painting in which paint is dripped or poured on the canvas.  Children learned what abstract art is and how it is more about what the artist thinks and feels.  They really enjoyed this lesson!

In Lower Elementary, the students begin to experiment with the elements of design.  They too started the year off with color.  They cut out primary and secondary colors mixed with the intermediate colors out of magazines to create these color wheels. 

Color Wheel by Oleja

Lower Elementary artists also explored the elements: line and shape.   After studying the work of American modern artist, ReggieLaurent, they created their own “shapely abstractions”.

Shapes & Lines by Sophia

Lower Elementary artists discussed how they can express feelings through color and line.  They explored these feelings with this fun exercise of creating colorful lines coming out of their mouth.

In Middle Elementary, students begin a more in-depth study of the elements of design.  The created these colorful drawings focusing on all the elements.

Elements of Design by Arthur

Middle Elementary artists are also practicing focused drawing of still-life compositions. An important part of the creative process in visual arts is training the artist to see the entire composition, notice details, and record what they have seen.  The still-life compositions were arrangements of white objects of varying shapes, sizes, and details. The students spent a minute just looking at the still-life, noting relationships between elements, light and dark, shapes, and how lighting affects shapes. They were given fifteen minutes to record what they saw without erasing. The view was rotated, and they followed the same procedure. The students also learned some techniques for loosening their pencil grip and incorporating mistakes into their drawings. Some of their comments:  "I like doing this because I could see more things."  "This was a lot of fun.  I like the way the objects looked like a building."  "It was really interesting to watch the light change."

Upper Elementary artists had the privilege to start their year in art off with their classroom guide, Maria. Maria attended the Tennessee Arts Academy this summer where she chose to focus on visual art. Among many wonderful art experiences, she enjoyed a clay project she did creating a tiki. The first great lesson in Upper Elementary is the Timeline of Civilization, and this year, the focus of the students' first research project focused on Polynesian culture. Maria wanted to do this project with her class, which integrated art with their current curriculum. I would say the project was a success to say the least! I’m not sure who had more fun, the students or Maria!

Middle School artists are currently exploring the fundamentals of drawing. They have been introduced to a variety of techniques, including how to draw 3-D shapes, show perspective, and the use of shading. By making “Zentangle” inspired drawings, they focused their attention upon line quality, pattern, texture, value, and shading. (A Zentangle is an abstract drawing created using repetitive patterns)  They are also practicing the use of 1 and 2-point perspective to create the illusion of three dimensional space, transforming basic shapes such as cubes and prisms into buildings of various shapes and sizes.

After Care artists created fall trees using tape to shape the trees and then painted the background using colors of fall leaves.

Fall Trees by Lily & Carter

After Care artists explore positive and negative space by creating these Notans: Japanese Principle of Dark and Light.

Japanese Notan by Ben

ME, UE, and MS have a year full of field trips in the Arts.  So far this year they have all visited the Frist to see the exhibition Real/Surreal:  Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art.  A survey of works from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that examines American artists' representations of reality as a subjective and malleable state of mind rather than a fixed truth. Influenced by European Surrealists of the 1920s like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, some American artists used the tools of illusionistic representation to subvert reality entirely, while others subtly tweaked the conventions of realism to turn the familiar into something unsettling and uncanny. The exhibition includes works by Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Man Ray and Thomas Hart Benton, among others. 

UE & MS also visited Cheekwood to see the exhibition of Andy Warhol’s Flowers.  This exhibition featured nearly a dozen screen prints from Warhol’s original “Flowers” series as well as paintings, studio photographs, and his audacious floral proposal for the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington.  
 

UE visited the Symphony to see the performance of “Sunlight and Storms:  The Climate of Music”.  The performance was a musical journey through Earth’s atmosphere. Tying in science, it explored the ways in which composers such as Beethoven, Debussy and Prokofiev have been using the weather as inspiration for centuries. 

Upper Elementary had their first visit to the Nashville Children’s Theater to see the show, The Outsiders.   In this intense coming-of-age story set in 1965 Tulsa, Oklahoma, you're either a Greaser or a Soc. When these two gangs from opposite sides of the track clash, young Ponyboy will have to depend on his brothers and friends to survive.  Written by a teenager, about teenagers and for teenagers, S.E Hinton's first novel has captured generations of adolescent readers and is just as relevant today as it was when it first burst on the scene almost 50 years ago.

Middle School is reading the 2005 republication of the authoritative American English writing style guide, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. This book was illustrated by Maira Kalman, who recently had a show at the Frist Center.  Middle School had the wonderful opportunity to see the show.  Kalman’s illustrations whimsically embody the didactic examples of grammar rules and their breakage provided by this essential text for writers. Phrases like “But animals do not comprise (‘embrace’) a zoo—they constitute a zoo” and “None of us is perfect” inspired Kalman’s visual witticisms. Her use of flattened space, strong colors and childlike figures provide an enjoyable lesson in both literary and visual literacy.