FREE Mask-Making Workshop for students!

Mrs. Leban is looking for talented artists interested in creating decorative masks out of plaster after school. These masks will be donated to the District 205 Foundation and used as decorations for their Midnight Masquerade fundraiser on October 22nd.

The Sandburg art room has benefitted from several District Foundation grants – the most recent being this year’s new SMARTboard and set of 3 iPads! We’d like to thank the Foundation for their generosity by making as many masks as possible to help decorate at their event.

This opportunity is open to ALL Sandburg Middle School students, grades six through eight, regardless of whether you’ve had art this year or not.

You must be able to attend all of the dates listed below, in order to finish your mask on time for our deadline, which is October 19th. IT WILL GET MESSY, SO BE PREPARED!

Here’s when we’ll be meeting:

• · Wednesday, October 5th from 3:20 to 4:20 in the art room
• · Wednesday, October 12th from 3:20 to 4:20 in the art room
• · Friday, October 14th from 3:20 to 4:20 in the art room
• · Monday, October 17th from 3:20 to 4:20 in the art room (optional, if time is needed)

All you need to bring is yourself! A 4:20 bus is available to take home for $1 each day, if needed. Otherwise, you must plan for your own transportation home.

Any questions? Please email or talk to Mrs. Leban in the art room (room 027 in the basement).

We're in the news!

Sandburg Art is in the local newspaper!  A reporter from the TribLocal Elmhurst came and took photos of our "Crochet Coral Reef" club last week and asked us some questions about the project.  The article first showed up on the internet on the TribLocal Elmhurst website.  There's also a photo gallery of us and our crochet pieces!

Today, Mr. Dahlman chased me down in the hallway to give me a copy of the physical paper, which came out today!  Yippee!

Coral Reef Photo Gallery

I've been promising some updated Crochet Coral Reef photos for a while now, so here they are!  This is in the display case across from the main office at Sandburg.

Our "background" is a sandy-colored fleece Mrs. Bensfield found at the fabric store.  Eventually, we can sew pieces onto it permanently and hang out reef anywhere we want!  For now, pieces are placed down and/or pinned to the corkboard behind.

One of our favorite new techniques is to crochet around pipe cleaners to make our coral bendy and defy gravity!  Do you see the tall blue piece above?

 

These little mushroom-like pieces were made by Mrs. Bensfield.  She's always giving us cool ideas!

Above: Brainy coral, fuzzy coral, and a round ball-shaped piece of coral!

 

Wow!  What a variety!  We'll also be showing off our crochet skills at our "Sandburg at 60" birthday celbration at the end of May, so be sure to stop by and check out how we've gotten EVEN BETTER!

Full Funding!

Yayy! Just a couple of days ago Mrs. Bensfield and I discovered that our Crochet Coral Reef project has received full funding on DonorsChoose.org!  We had several generous donors to thank in the end, but the final amount was completed thanks to U.S. Cellular- Bolingbrook Customer Care Center in Bolingbrook, IL.  We raised $389 total!

We're very excited about having full funding, and our sets of new crochet hooks and yarn will complete a collection of supplies already started, thanks to parents, staff, and other special friends who have separately donated supplies to us.

Keep an eye out, as I will be posting update photos soon of the project on display.  We also have plans to set up a demonstration table at our end-of-year art show for visitors to do some crochet work with us.  The end-of-year art show will be in conjunction with our Sandburg 60th birthday celebration this year... more details to come on that soon!

Thanks to all of our supporters!  We're so excited to work on our reef!

Crochet Coral Reef Wins a Grant!

Hooray!  Do you remember when I told you about our crochet coral reef project?  Well, Mrs. Bensfield wrote and won a grant to pay for the intellectual rights (a $200 value) for our project.  We just found out yesterday, and are very excited!

The grant comes from the National Girls Collaborative Project, an organization that works to support programs that create "gender equity in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)."  (Hmm... perhaps I should let them know that our project is not so much a "STEM" project as it is a "STEAM" project... the A is for ARTS!)

We still have our project up at DonorsChoose.org if you'd like to help support us with supplies.  We're more than halfway there with $$$ donations right now, and only have about $140 left to go! Here's how our reef looked as of last week:

Pretty cool, huh?  Just yesterday I was working on a really neat piece of red-violet "brainy" coral - I'm really excited to add it to the reef along with a sweet starfish made by Mrs. Bensfield.  We also meet today after school, so I'll probably have even more to add!  I'll try to remember to twitpic a photo or two to keep you all updated!

Thank you for supporting the arts!

Summer Art Opportunities

I receive a lot of mail from places that offer summer art camps or classes for students.  I thought I'd take a moment to share some of these with all of you, so that if you are interested you will have plenty of time to sign up!

Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp - I've written about this camp before.  Several students from our school have been awarded scholarships for both music and visual arts for this camp in West Michigan.  I've heard many good things about this program, and students seem to really enjoy themselves. They have a variety of sessions, divided mostly into groups for grades 7-8, 5-6, and 9-12.  More info.

Shell Lake Arts Center - What really interested me in the advertisement for this grade 6-12 camp in Wisconsin wasn't just the pottery, drawing, and painting classes so much as the FILM MAKING CLASS!  How fun would that be?!  The description says: "This week long, intensive course is designed to help you build a story or experiment with themes, learn the basic techniques of digital filmmaking (including: camera, lights, and sound) as well as discovering the magic behind persistence of vision.  The course will conclude with a screening of all finished projects." More info.

Western Illinois University Art for Gifted & Talented Students - Two sessions are being offered: one for grades 4-6, and one for grades 6-8.  You get to stay on campus for the session.  The classes offered are: drawing and painting, airbrush, computer art, and three-dimensional expression.  I was really interested to see that they offer airbrush, since that's something students wouldn't typically experience in most schools. More info.

Maybe staying at a camp isn't really your style.  In that case, don't forget to also check out our great local art offerings and classes (found on the links page) as well for fun summer art opportunities!

Pottery Class!

Elmhurst, IL is a pretty cool town because they support the arts, and offer a lot of art classes that you can take outside of school.  I have a list of lots of different places that you can go to take classes or buy art supplies on my LINKS page here.

One set of classes that's pretty awesome is Teri Litavsky's pottery classes.  They're at 101 N. Addison on the second floor (Suite 205) in Elmhurst.  She's getting geared up for Spring classes right now, actually.  In this class, you will learn hand-building techniques to make some unique pieces that will be glazed after firing.  They're on Friday evenings from 4:00 to 5:30.  The cost is $90 for the class, but includes all tools, clay, glaze, and firings.  You can even sign up for private group lessons if you have a group of 3 or more!

If you're interested, I have some sign up forms here at school.  Otherwise, you can download and print out your own form here.  Alternatively, you can email Teri Litavsky herself for more info.

Crochet a Coral Reef

It's almost time to return back to school from winter break. I'm at home with a cold (booooo...) but thinking about art class when we return.

Mrs. Bensfield and I are planning to start an after-school club for textile arts! Our project is "Crochet a Coral Reef," which is a really sweet mix of math, science, and visual arts. We're going to learn basic crochet skills to create incredible pieces of "coral" made from yarn!

Want to see some more photos of what we're thinking of? Need more information? Check it out here or at the Institute for Figuring, who were the originators of the idea.

In order to run our club, we need help with supplies.  Can you donate, or do you know anyone who might be able to?  Please share this link with them: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=493031 -- this is our "Donors Choose" site to raise funds for our project.  Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

If you're interested in joining the Crochet Coral Reef Project at Sandburg, keep an eye (and ear) out for information posted at school when we return!  Tell your friends, too!

After School Art Class

After School Art Class is FULL for the last session of the school year! The last session is going to be all about jewelry-making. We're going to start with some resin bottlecap pendants (I'm thinking they'd make pretty cool pins, too...) and we'll then move on to metal symbol pendants that we will cut & file from copper sheets. Mr. Leban (my fiancee, I've talked about him here before) is an art teacher who will be helping us out with the second pendant project, as it's tricky!!!

I am very excited about this last session, as it is something that I do not get to do very often! We'll be sure to post some pictures on artsonia once we get some finished products!

NAEA Art Exhibit!

The students who created the YMCA mural (Hannah, Julia, Emma, Margaret, Jazzmin, Sean, and Erin), will have their artwork (via a digital photo of the mural) in the NAEA convention exhibit: "Landscape for the 21st Century" art gallery in Minnesota at this year’s NAEA convention.

Each of the 186 participating schools are represented in a slideshow form that will be shown at the convention. This slideshow, along with the submitted artwork, is available for viewing at this link:

www.artsonia.com/naea/minnesota

Our Mural!

Yesterday after school, we finished our YMCA mural! Above you can see a photo of our final work... pretty nice, huh? A special thank you to after-school art class members: Hannah, Julia, Sean, Jazzmin, Margaret, Emma, and Erin who are the student artists behind this AWESOME work! In the next few weeks, our work will be taken down here at school and brought to the YMCA for installation.