Art Trekkers Depart from AAC: Class Wrap-Up
We had a blast as we went on an artistic journey in our Art Trekkers class last fall, and now that the new year is upon us, we wanted to share with you some of the highlights from that adventure!
AAC instructor Jennifer Wilkin Penick looked far and wide to find nine artists to serve as inspiration for our “globetrotting” student artists. Students even got to participate in a studio visit with AAC resident artist Becca Kallem!
We have more to tell you about that special experience, as well as details on some of the artists who inspired our art projects last semester, allowing us to explore art fundamentals, concepts, techniques, and materials in a truly unique way.
Artist Inspiration: Becca Kallem (Arlington, VA)
Class began just a few days after our summer exhibition PLAY: Tinker, Tech, & Toy closed, but our students had the very special opportunity to visit PLAY artist and AAC resident artist Becca Kallem for a studio visit.
There, they had the chance to see where Becca makes her art, and talk to her informally about what motivates her.
“Smooshy!” is how Becca describes the beginning of her work. She mixes colors, blurs, and “blobs,” which she covers with linear and geometric forms.
By topping these gestural backgrounds with geometric overlays, Becca creates a beautiful illusion of depth.
Back in the classroom students put this inspiration to work using straight edges to create linear forms while also employing a painterly method based on Becca’s discussion of imprecision and the handmade!
New Concepts: studio visit, abstract art, linear vs. nonlinear, geometric shapes, figurative vs. nonfigurative, gesture, overlay, illusion, space, handmade, collaboration
Artist Inspiration: El Anatsui (Anyako, Ghana)
El Anatsui uses recycled materials, and he employs hundreds of young people to help him create giant sculptures that look like glittering tapestries.
Students used photocopies of colorful bottle caps and product labels to construct their own artwork.
Using these materials helped students connect their artwork to themes of consumption, waste, and the environment, just like El Anatsui, while still focusing on the aesthetics.
New Concepts: collaboration, found objects, installation art, kente cloth, art & politics, aesthetics
Artist Inspiration: Mark Hearld (York, United Kingdom)
British artist Mark Hearld is a Renaissance man! He’s a print-maker, painter, fabric designer, book illustrator, and probably much more.
Instructor Jennifer Wilkin Penick loves Hearld’s painted collages, and had our students create works inspired by these. Students painted animals and what makes up their environments. Once dried, they cut out these items before pasting them into wonderfully layered scenes.
New Concepts: collage, layering, foreground, mid-ground, background
Artist Inspiration: Louise Nevelson (New York, NY)
Louise Nevelson is one of America’s most prominent sculptors, hailed by some critics as one of the leading most sculptors of the 20th century.
She is most well-known for her monochromatic, large-scale assemblages, made of wood. Her work transforms spaces, along with our ideas about art.
Besides all of that, how cool is Nevelson for saying that if reincarnated, she’d choose to come back as herself?
In Art Trekkers, students made their own monochromatic assemblages.
They problem-solved by testing various placements of their found objects, observed how each of the pieces played off one another, pasted them down, and finished off their work with a color of their own choosing.
New Concepts: monochromatic, assemblage, installation, “art,” problem-solving, found objects
Artist Inspiration: William Kentridge (Johannesburg, South Africa)
Kentridge is well known for using a wide range of media including drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance.
In Art Trekkers, students looked at a specific body of his work: Sleeping On Glass, 1999. This work is a portfolio of six etchings, which features the juxtaposition of text and imagery on old book pages.
We could probably develop more than a few lessons based on this work, but for Art Trekkers, we focused on artistic process and formal elements.
Using one of our favorite art supplies, scratch foam, students were introduced to basic printmaking techniques and created beautiful trees of their own design, which they printed onto old book pages.
The finished projects were stunning!
New Concepts: print edition, etchings, juxtaposition, art & politics, process, formalism, scratch foam
We covered a lot of ground last fall, thanks for coming with us and letting us share what we learned about some of our new favorite artists! Stay tuned to learn about the other artists we covered – we have a special post coming up where we’ll dive deeper into the Outsider Art we learned about in Art Trekkers.
After reading about all of these fantastic artists and art projects are you now inspired to create? AAC’s winter classes are open for registration for ages 2 to beyond! Space is limited, so sign up now! For those of you thinking further into the future, we’ve even opened registration for our annual Spring Break Escape camps for ages 4-14!
Also, look out for Art Trekkers news in the coming months – we redesign this class every summer, and this spring in our atrium you’ll see a collaborative installation by our summer 2015 instructor Melanie Kehoss and her Art Trekking campers!
