Adventure Time!

Many of you have walked by the art room and seen my Adventure Time bulletin board outside the art room.  If you've talked to me about it, you know that I LOVE this show.  Here's what the board looks like right now:

My brother, Sam, submitted a photo of my bulletin to the Adventure Time Art tumblr blog, and it was featured on the blog!  Unfortunately, the photo is not the "updated" board, but the original without the spiffy new background:

...people still seemed to like it anyways, so I thought that was kind of neat.  Hopefully you like it too.  I know it makes me smile every time I walk into my own room!

Cool Idea

I just found a really awesome blog post from Apex High School in North Carolina.  It explains the how-to of creating a post-it note mural.  Look what they did!

This is so cool... even if we don't do this as a "project" in class, it'd be a great idea for some mural art around the school... what do you think?

Hungry? How about a cupcake?

These are my prototype samples for our CERAMIC CUPCAKES project in seventh grade art!  I'm really excited about it, since it's a new project we've never done before at Sandburg.

Today, we read a Scholastic Art magazine article all about Wayne Thiebaud, a painter who's known for his cake and pie subject matter.  We combined the art history with current artistic trends of cupcake shops, like our own Heavenly Cupcakes in downtown Elmhurst!

After browsing the menus of a couple cupcake bakeries, we brainstormed ideas for our own cupcake creation.  Next week, we'll be making our ceramic cupcake sculptures a reality!

An extra fun detail is that our cupcakes will open up and be hollow inside, providing a place for small trinkets and treasures when we're all finished!  Hope you like it!

Welcome Back!

Hello!
Welcome back to school!  The first week is nearly over, and boy am I tired!

Over the summer, I often forget how much work teaching is, but also how much fun it can be.  It's been great to see familiar faces return (both students and staff) and to have new 6th grade artists to meet!

I have a lot of fun upcoming news bits, projects, and plans for this year.  In October, we'll be joined by a student teacher, Emily Bruzzini, from Elmhurst College.  She'll be around to learn with us from about Halloween-time until Winter break.

I'm trying out new sculpture projects with both seventh and sixth grades this year... but I won't give them away quite yet, since I want it to be a surprise!  Other projects will be tweaked and slightly altered to fit our very short 6-week schedule for both 6 and 7th grades.

Be sure to utilize the Sandburg Art website for project info and other grade-level specific information.  Right now, a lot of last year's project info is still posted, but much of it is still relevant and will still be used this year.  As information changes, the website will be updated, so be sure to check back periodically.  If there's something specific you're looking for, or if you have questions... or just want to drop me a line to say "hi," you can always send me an email: jleban (at) elmhurst205 (dot) org

Let's make it a great new year!