Student projects

I was up early this morning grading student projects, and a number of them were so good that I photographed them for my "portfolio" as a teacher.

My students are second-semester freshmen at Framingham State College who are elementary education majors, and my course gives them their first taste of visual art and ideas on ways to incorporate art projects into their classrooms.

This assignment was to draw from a hat the name of a famous artist. Students were then asked to do extensive biographical research on this artist, analyze one of his/her works of art, write up lesson plan based on this person's artwork, create a prototype of the art project in their lesson plan, and give an oral presentation on their project to the class.

Here are two wonderful pieces that resulted from this assignment. The project pictured at the top of this post was created by Sarah Blake, who painted fabric in a print inspired by Paul Klee's "Flora on the Sand" and then stitched it into a pillow.

The project pictured below was made by Erin Derby, who used Jackson Pollock's drip techniques to embellish a white cotton T-shirt. (Reminiscent of Pollock's workwear as documented by Hans Namuth's filming.) I have a group of talented, imaginative students!