Laurelhurst School

 I have just received my new group of 6th grade students. It is great to see familiar faces, but I will surely miss my first class. They were stellar. So now we begin again. We will be talking a lot about drawing techniques, line, value, texture, etc. I gave the kids my spiel about the left and right sides of the brain, and how we need to train ourselves to observe what is actually in front of us by breaking down objects into shapes, angles, negative/positive spaces etc. This accesses the right side of our brain which is best suited to the artistic task. It also quiets the left side of the brain which is constantly labeling things and providing symbols for the objects we see. The left side of the brain makes the drawing task much harder. Ask your kids about this. They can probably explain it better than I. In any case, we are going to do several exercises designed to access that right side of the brain and quiet the bossy left. Upside down drawings are first up. Very cool.

The 7/8 class had a broad variety of art experiences this fall. I wanted to be sure that they had an opportunity to try out different media- acrylic, watercolor, blick markers, soft and oil pastels etc. I hope you have had a chance to view some of their wonderful work on the walls of Laurelhurst. If not, do check out the link below to view some of the art work middles schoolers have been making- Laurelhurst Art Gallery.

One of our favorite, perhaps most successful, projects this year began with a study of the sculptor Giacometti. We then made our own "giocomettiesque" sculptures from styrofoam, wire, paper towel and wheat paste. We painted them with black acrylic and added bronze highlights to produce a metallic appearance. I loved the way they looked as a group installation in the main hall showcase..