GOPA STEAM students go to WPU on an artistic adventure

On November 3^rd, STEAM students from GOPA/School of Government participated in a field trip to William Paterson University in which they learned about the work of Artist in Residence Maria Lux.  Award-winning visual artist Lux has created artwork spanning a wide range of media from traditional drawing and painting methods, watercolor illustration, and scientific diagrams, to photography, dioramas, wooden constructions, and large-scale sculpture. 

Lux provided a 45-minute lecture in the Cheng library auditorium, discussing her artistic practice and recent work. She explained her creative process: how her work begins with existing research and stories from other fields—such as evolutionary biology, medicine, agriculture, history, literature, film, and anthropology—and uses the tools of visual artistic practice to create cross-disciplinary, installation-based works.

Students then traveled to the Art Department’s Power Arts facility, where they visited the Center for New Art’s laboratories (which include a CNC mill, 3D printers, and 3D scanner). They also visited Lux’s studio, and viewed current exhibitions in the Power Arts Gallery (which include student artwork).

After lunch the students engaged in a walking tour of the WPU Outdoor Sculpture Program led by Kristen Evangelista, Director of the University Galleries.

Lux will be in residence at WPU from October 6 – November 14, 2014.  The residency will culminate in a solo exhibition on view from January 20 – March 27, 2015 at the University Galleries with an accompanying publication.  A follow-up field trip in February will take students to the University Galleries to see the outcome of her residency.

Back in the GOPA classroom in Paterson, NJ, Art Teacher Mr. Jones engaged the STEAM students in a thoughtful discussion about their field trip.  A meaningful learning moment took place when one STEAM student stated he was surprised that Mr. Jones had expressed his reservatioms about what he had seen on the artist's website to the artist while on the field trip.  Mr. Jones further encouraged the student to express his feelings, and the point was made that art discussions can provoke controversy.  Mr. Jones explained that the expression of the true feelings of each person in an art dialogue allow for the honest dialogue that is essential to the art process.  

STEAM curriculum continues to grow at SOIT

The STEAM curriculum at SOIT/School of Information and Technology in Paterson, NJ has continued to evolve this year.

STEAM students in Mrs. Simon's Art Class are creating Cubist paintings using watercolor pencils and brushes on large-sized white paper. The c. 22 x 28 inch white papers are being drawn first with pencil by the students then painted later taking their inspiration from Picasso Cubist works.  

STEAM students learned that Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, and many other well-known artists that revolutionized European painting, sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature, and architecture.  Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century.  Arriving at the concept of depicting an object as seen from different viewpoints independently, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque soon became good friends and went on to develop the visual language of cubism in close cooperation, an alliance that Picasso would sometimes call a marriage.

In addition to creating artworks, students made a virtual tour via Smartboard to the Metropolitan Musuem of Art in New York City where a current exhibition of Cubism is on display.  Art teacher Mrs. Simons pointed out the many connections Cubism has with geometric forms.

Dodge Funded STEAM Program is off to an enthusiastic start at CAHTS

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation funded STEAM Program is off to an enthusiastic start at the CAHTS/Culinary Arts, Hospitality, and Tourism School in Paterson, NJ this year!

STEAM students in Ms. Reyes’s Art Class are creating two point perspective cities using acrylic paint and brushes on canvas boards.  The 12 x 16 inch boards are being painted on table easels by drawing a sketch first with pencil then painting later.  The goal of this art project is for the students to understand how objects and buildings appear to get smaller in the distance, and how to create this effect artistically by using linear perspective methods created in Renaissance Italy by Fillipo Brunelleschi. 

Around 1420, Brunelleschi demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists, by painting the outlines of Florentine buildings onto a mirror.  When the building’s outline was continued, he noticed that all of the lines converged onto the horizon line. Ms. Reyes’s art students re-created these experiments in the classroom using a mirror before they began their paintings.  In so doing, students understood the close connection between linear perspective in art and mathematics, especially geometry. Later in history Leon Battista Alberti, an Italian architect, added mathematics to Brunelleschi’s findings.

STEAM students in Ms. Reyes' CAHTS class are also learning scientific principles in this art project, or how an imagined light source in their artwork can create three dimensionality through color changes the students can utilize as they paint.  Light plays a critical part in these artworks.  Thus, students are learning to using mix colors that create three dimensions in their buildings and roads, and make them appear as though they recede in space toward the horizon line.

In addition these art students are learning to create both aerial and atmospheric perspective in there artworks.  These techniques were used to make buildings in paintings look three dimensional in the Netherlands in the 15th century and even as early as 30 B.C.E. in Ancient Rome.