current events response collage: protests in the middle east and wisconsin

I organized a teen group that meets once a month at our center. It's designed to be a gateway for teens in the surrounding communities to get more involved with our programming. Our lowest enrollment in classes is among teens, hence the creation of the "Teen Advisory Group." I am still figuring out exactly how the group should be structured, but lately I've been organizing different team-building/art-making activities that hopefully are fun and engaging. The point of the group is also to find out from teens what kinds of classes they'd like us to offer here, and to have them help design classes and plan events at the center. We hope that with their input, they will feel a sense of ownership over their community arts center, and will be more likely to sign up for classes and ask their friends to sign up, too.

african-inspired masks

goal

To create masks using papier-mache to wear at an event that our family celebrates.

national community arts convening

I spent the last couple days at the National Community Arts Convening at MICA Place in East Baltimore. Here are some links to people and places that have presented or were otherwise involved with the conference...

lesson plan: chuck close-inspired, large-scale self-portraits

Here's a lesson plan I wrote for tomorrow's "Art in All Dimensions" class, which I co-teach with math teachers at a nearby elementary/middle school. The purpose of the class is to review math concepts through visual art.

how to plan a mural, steps five through nine

step five: mix your chosen colors in large batches

Students can now mix paint to match the colors they chose. They might need lots of help getting the colors close to one another. Mix a lot of each color and keep the paint in containers with lids, so that you can maintain consistent colors throughout the project. You can have students label each section of the image with a certain number, and match that number to a color, paint-by-numbers style. Not very inspiring, but definitely a good way to keep things coordinated with lots of people working on the same thing.