Technology and ART at CAHTS: Audio is Added to a STEAM art display

Technology and ART

Recently Ms. Reyes' CAHTS STEAM art class drew animals using a mathematical grid.  These extraordinary drawings are now in a new display case with the CAHTS Bridge project involving art and engineering. The new display case LINK features pen and ink drawings of a:
DOG, an EAGLE, a HORSE, a TIGER, a ZEBRA.  

For the SOUNDS these animals make click on the links below!

Pen and Ink Drawing by Samantha Pula, Grade 10  18x20"

DOG sounds CLICK HERE: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Dog_Sounds_sound
DOG words:  bark, woof, arf, bay, bow-wow, howl, yap


Pen and Ink Drawing by Coralys Tavarez, Grade 12  18x20"

EAGLE sounds CLICK HERE:  http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Bald_Eagle_Sounds
EAGLE words:  scream


Pen and Ink Drawing by Evenide Charles, Grade 12  18x20"

HORSE sounds CLICK HERE: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Horse_sounds_audio
HORSE words:  neigh, snort, whinny, nicker, sputter


Pen and Ink Drawing by Coralys Tavarez, Grade 12  18x20" 

TIGER sounds CLICK HERE: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Tiger_Audio_Sounds
TIGER words: growl, roar, snarl

Pen and Ink Drawing by Pen and Ink Drawing by Jacqueline Romero Grade 12  18x20"

ZEBRA sounds CLICK HERE: http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Zebra_Sounds
ZEBRA words:  whinny, whoop


Sources for words:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_sounds

The audio portion of the blog post was developed during meetings between SOIT Art Teacher Simon, CAHTS Art Teacher Reyes, WPU Art PIR Triada Samaras, and GOPA Science Teacher Michael Schulties.  This grouup of teachers meets regularly for STEAM project planning.  As of this blog post, Mr. Schulties, Ms. Reyes, and Ms. Samaras are collaborating on new grid-art lessons for 2015-2015, inspired by this project.

Monochromatic Abstracted Flower Art with Ms Reyes at CAHTS

Biology, Technology and Art

An exciting STEAM art project has been in process for several weeks in Ms. Reyes’ art class.  Entitled, “Abstracted Monochromatic Flower Paintings”, students are reintroduced to the different parts of the flower and to the artist, Georgia O’Keefe, who spent her life painting and seeing flowers in many different ways. O’Keefe is renowned for her close up view and examination of natural objects including flowers and skulls.  In this STEAM project, students were able to use monochromatic colors to bring to life to their paintings. This enhanced their understanding of tints and shades while increasing their skills in mixing and applying paint.

To begin this project, students looked for a flower of their choice using technology: their cell phones.  Best choices were: orchids, irises, daffodils and begonias.  Next, they took a screen shot of that flower.  They then magnified the flower making sure that the background was not in the screen as they proceeded to take another screen shot of the flower.  

Using the second screen shot, students drew the image from their cell phone screen onto an 18" x 18" heavyweight white paper using pencil.  Next the students chose a tempera color from a selection of primary, secondary or tertiary colors.  

Finally the students had to produce a monocharmatic painting using tints and shades of their color: five tints and there shades that they mixed with the addition of white tempera (tints) and black tempera (shales).  

To begin this process they focused on abstracting the flower by going to straight to the center of the flower and working outward.  

The results are extraordinary and hanging both in the classroom and in a display case in the hall.

Some of the students found different images within their flowers and commented that some look like insects and animals etc.

Architecture with STEAM Students at GOPA

In Mr. Jones' STEAM class at GOPA, students are working on an architecture-related STEAM project. This domestic architecture project combines art, math and engineering and is based on a simple house design pattern.

Students were first given a flattened house pattern to trace onto poster board.  Of course, this did not appear to be a house at first. After the students traced this shape they cut it out carefully.

Next, students were instructed to follow the directions for folding this shape into a three dimensional house without using anything besides their fingers for this portion of the art activity.

Finally students added features to their house including roof shingles, windows, doors.  Some students created a house inspired by the one they live in.  Others created a fantasy house.  Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect who developed the "Prairie House".

"Wright's residential designs were known as "prairie houses" because the designs complemented the land around Chicago.  These houses featured extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs, and terraces all using unfinished materials.  The houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan." "   LINK

Building Bridges at CAHTS in Ms. Reyes' STEAM Class

Ms. Reyes' STEAM art class has been building bridges as part of their most recent STEAM project.  To begin this project: a combination of art, engineering and physics, students researched bridges.  A website provide by Dina Scacchetti, WPU Science PIR provided students with an excellent beginning on the basics of bridges as well as new vocabulary words and concepts.

Above: "Suspension"

 Above: "Cantilever"

 Above: "Tension Test on the Joints"

Above: "Arch Bridge"

Next students began planning their bridges using pencil and paper.  From these plans, they constructed their bridges using wood scraps and glue guns.  They referred to more bridge building website for guidance such as this one:  LINK . 
In addition Ms. Reyes discussed the architects of several well known bridges such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.

Students thoroughly immersed themselves into this project and their results prove it!  A wide variety of interesting bridges emerged and students had much to say about this process.

SOIT Cities of the Future: One and Two-Point Perspective Study at SOIT

Cities of the Future is a STEAM project involving Math and Art done in Mrs. Simon's art classes at SOIT. This project incorporates both one- and two- point perspective drawing techniques with repeating patterns and colors.  Students are asked to envision an imaginary futuristic city and to create it using both their newly learned drawing techniques as well as their research and imaginations.  This project has yielded powerful student art works!  

Perspective is a combination of art and mathematics. It is a technique used to create the illusion of 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional surface through the apparent recession of lines to a vanishing point.  Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446,) an Italian engineer and architect, discovered perspective in the 15th century. He observed that with a fixed single point of view, parallel lines appear to converge at a single point in the distance.  He used mirrors to paint a building in perfect perspective, mathematically calculating the scale of objects within a painting in order to make them appear realistic. Many other Renaissance artists used this method of perspective in their paintings.

Mrs. Simon asked her SOIT students to combine both one and two point perspective techniques using rulers and triangles and a single horizon line with two vanishing point on it.  She explained how the picture plane, a mathematical element, is created with these two points of reference.  She also encouraged her students to invent many aspects of their their cities as well as their foregrounds after the skeleton of the city was created using perspective techniques.

For a peek at last year's "Cities of the Futures Student works" see this blog at:

http://steamempowerment.blogspot.com/2014/03/one-and-two-point-perspective-student.html

WPU Practicum Teacher Creates STEAM Lesson Plan for GOPA art class

WPU Art Practicum teacher Marissa Hogan recently created a STEAM lesson plan in Mr. Jones' GOPA STEAM Class.  This lesson plan, featuring a blend of art, science, and engineering was inspired by caricature masks.  

The first step involved the students adding exaggerated features to pre-formed plastic masks and wrapping them with plaster-soaked gauze bandages.  Students added large noses, ears, chins and other features to their masks, personalizing them and making their unique statements.  Engineering was involved as students thought through the problems of adding mass, size and weight to their structures. They also learned about the scientific properties of plaster as a wrapping medium and about how the medium of plaster changes completely as it goes from wet to dry.  

Next students were instructed to experiment with color using paint on paper the same scale as their mask sculptures.  When these students were satisfied, they returned to the actual mask, where they applied their paint with confidence.  The results were impressive!  Students created a wide variety of solutions to the original prompt to this STEAM art lesson given by Ms. Hogan and were clearly proud of their 
achievements.

The resulting colorful masks display a wide variety of creativity and problem solving.  They will soon be on display on the second floor science display case with other STEAM art projects.

Three D Construction Art at SOIT

Three D Construction Art at SOIT 

Ms Simons' STEAM students have created extraordinary works of art based on a STEAM lesson involving science, engineering and art.  Ms. Simon began this multi-media art project by discussing her own artwork entitled "Song for All Seasons" that was on public display at Paterson Museum last year (LINK)

Above: Song for All Seasons by Art teacher Marilyn Simon

This work is an example of a three dimensional construction using found objects as well as paint.  It is in the tradition of artists such as Lousie Nevelson and
Marisol Escobar who also collected and/or found objects to create their art works. 

Ms. Simon explained the process by first giving the students masks and plaster bandages to begin.

Students created three dimensional forms with these materials using the masks as the original aperture and wrapping them with the wet plaster bandage.

When the bandage was hard and the students were done wrapping, Mrs. Simon explained to the students how to attach the masks to a canvas board.  when this part was completed she asked the students to bring in meaningful objects from home or elsewhere that they wanted to attach to their artworks.  She emphasized personal meaning and creativity.  She then explained how to complete the artworks using paint

 

The results of this art project were truly extraordinary.  The student artworks have a very high degree of personal meaning and originality.  These works of art express some of the highest levels of artistry the STEAM students have achieved this during this school year.