CAHTS Students Study Grid Art and Chuck Close

Students in Ms. Reyes' STEAM Class have embarked on an exciting new pen and ink drawing project using animals, the grid art enlargement method, and the inspiration of living and contemporary American artist, Chuck Close.

As Ms. Reyes recently explained to these STEAM students, using a mathematical grid is one of the easiest ways for an artist to enlarge any image by hand.  First one creates a grid over a selected image.  Then one enlarges the grid while maintaining the proportions.  This second grid is placed over a larger blank paper that will eventually become the finished artwork.  "When art teachers grid, measure, and draw, we use geometry," Erica Gibbons writes in the December 2014 issue of School Arts on p. 8.*

To begin this project each student selected an image of an animal of his or her choice.  The student was then required to research the characteristics of the animal and document the information into his or her writing journal.  Characteristics included its physical makeup and structure, its place in the food web, and the environment in which it lives.  Special attentionwas paid to any unique textures of the animal's skin, fur or hair,as these would be reproduced in the artwork.  Next students printed out an image of this selected animal from the computer.  Math skills were then needed to lay down the first and second grids carefully.

STEAM students learned that, "Fifteenth century artists wanted to find a way of being able to record the natural world more accurately, so they invented a number of different machines to help them draw what was in front of them. Leon Battista Alberti, 1404 - 1472, wrote the first general treatise Della Pittura on the laws of perspective in 1435. Alberti's Frame was the name of the most successful of the drawing devices invented. This drawing machine is made up of a square wooden frame, across which horizontal and vertical threads are stretched at regular intervals to form a grid. A foot or so in front of this gridded frame is a rod, the same height as the distance from the bottom of the frame to the middle of the grid. This rod is important because, by lining up the eye with the rod and the centre of the grid, the eye is always fixed in the same position when looking at things."  LINK

     In addition, students researched and learned about the living American artist, Chuck Close, who uses the grid extensively and from his wheelchair to make his large scale artworks.  In one of the many videos Close has placed on Youtube, the artist explains that when he was growing up, no one in education recognized his learning disability.  Close has difficulty in the way his eye perceives the three dimensional world.  Thus he developed and still uses the grid method of enlargement to help him to break down the large image into smaller, more manageable pieces.  He further explains how his painting is much like writing.  LINK

     Thus these STEAM students realized they were not alone in facing the daunting task of making a small image larger (or vice-versa) with a small artistic tool such as their pens.  Their capacity to struggle with their new medium was also inspired by Close's methods.  Pen and ink drawing is a slow labor of love and Ms. Reyes was there every step of the way to help the students.

     Students were asked to comment on their experiences. 
     Samantha said "sometimes the pen gets a little stuck on the paper and the ink goes everywhere."

     Yvenide said "it is easy to make a mistake.  You have to be very careful but I like the challenge."

     Katherine said, "It's a lot of work but the effect is worth it!"

Mr. Reyes commented that she is, "impressed that the students are working so well with pen and ink even thought this is the first time working with this medium."






* School Arts 

STEAM Students and Teachers Exhibit Art at WPU ArtStart

Above:  WPU Art/Math PIR Dina Scacchetti and CAHTS Art Teacher Vivian Reyes

Recently several STEAM students from the School of Government (Rosely Martinez and Amado Villar,) the School of Information Technology (Shammoi Brown, Angeline Francois, Dahiana Medina, Alan Rodriguez, Shaviann Thomas, and Lizbeth Ullloa,) and the School of Culinary Arts (Katherine Aguilar, Jaqueline Romero, and Coralys Tavarez) participated in the 2015 ArtStart Exhibition taking place in the Power Art Gallery at William Paterson University.

What is ArtStart?

ArtStart is the Annual High School Art Exhibition at William Paterson University that includes over twenty-five public and private high schools from all over New Jersey. LINK

ArtStart is organized by Thomas G. Uhlein who is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and M.F.A. Program Director at William Paterson University
with other members of the WPU Fine Arts
faculty.

In addition to the student artworks on view, ArtStart invites art teachers to exhibit works of art alongside their students, creating a unique opportunity for students to see their teachers as artists and creators in their own right, and ultimately as their mentors. Participating art teachers Marilyn Simon (School of Information Technology) and Vivian Reyes (School of Culinary Arts) each exhibited alongside their students.  

Above: SOIT Art Teacher Marilyn Simon with her students

Left:  SOIT Art Teacher Marilyn Simon with her artwork

Below:  CAHTS Art Teacher Vivian Reyes with her artwork

On Saturday, January 31, 2015, the ArtStart reception was held at the Power Arts Building at WPU, and featured food and live music for the many students, families, teachers, and WPU Art Professors who attended.  Students were also invited to have an on-site art portfolio review at WPU as a step in applying for the WPU BFA program. 

Left and Below: WPU Art Professor Thomas Uhlein announces award winners with other members of the WPU Art faculty.

In additions student were invited to the 3-D printing lab where Professor Michael Rees showed them a work in progress and discussed the bright future of 3-D printing technology in the arts. Rees explained to the students that 3-D printing and other emerging technologies will create jobs and new types of employment for the art students of the future.  
Below left:
Professor Rees with Dina Scacchtti and Vivian Reyes

 

                                                    Above Left: STEAM Students Art work from SOIT, GOPA, and CAHTS

Right: Professor Michael Rees in the 3-D Printing Lab with STEAM Students 

Naturally the students were very interested in this information.  (As an aside some of these same students were involved in a STEAM collaborative project last spring with Professor Rees at GOPA and SOIT.  LINK    LINK   LINK
Three D printing technologies and art making would appear to be the ultimate STEAM project/curriculum that might start at the high school level and then continue into college level courses perhaps even at WPU.

WPU Art Department 

http://www.wpunj.edu/coac/departments/art/

Art Start LINK

http://www.wpunj.edu/coac/departments/art/art-start.dot

Above: WPU Art PIR Triada Samaras and Math/Science PIR Dina Scacchetti

Planet of the Exponents!

An exciting new art/math STEAM project was just created at Paterson School 7!
This lesson is an extension of a project found at:
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/82808892

It required that students create a handbook or pamphlet. However at School 7 Art Professor in Residence/PIR Myra Winter and Eighth Grade Math Teacher Rosa Kopic collaborated to add extra elements.

The teachers presented the following problem and task to the students:  
"Imagine a strange planet where the rules that everyone has to follow are the rules of mathematical exponents.  But there is a problem:  "space tourists" visiting the planet do not know the rules of the exponents and are not obeying them, upsetting the citizens."

Each student had to act as the "Director of 
Tourism", preparing a kit to be distributed 
to all visitors to the planet, explaining the 
math. Each box had to be created using 
geometric folding techniques that 
resulted in a rectangular prism.  



Ms. Kopic demonstrated the folding.....

..............and the students followed her instructions.

 



















The kit contained a box with a series of enclosures that explained the rules and the consequences for not following them.

The students then decorated the boxes in a way that would attract tourists and encourage them to follow the rules.