Artapalooza 2013!

Kindergarten self-portraits

Once again, the halls have burst with color as banners and tables display the phenomenal creations of our K-8 students at the 4th Annual ARTAPALOOZA! It is my pleasure to celebrate such a diverse body of work, ranging from the abstract paintings of 5 year old artists who are just learning how to hold a paint brush, to fine tuned acrylic masterpieces created by our 8th graders. 

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." -Pablo Picasso

Third Grade splatter art

Robinson Hall

Amazing third grade pen and ink drawings!

First grade ceramic felines

Huge thanks to the amazing parent and student volunteers helped to hang the artwork !

2nd grade flowers open up the show in Heckerman Hall

Rousseau Jungle Paintings

Tropical Forest with Monkeys by Henri Rousseau

The second grade students created these vibrant works after exploring jungle paintings by French Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau. Rousseau was considered a naïve painter, as he commenced his career as a self-taught artist much later in his life, having absolutely no formal training. Not only that, but he devoted his subjects primarily to jungles even though he had never seen one in real life. In fact, it is widely believed he never traveled outside of France! Instead he was inspired by visits to botanical gardens and zoos, in addition to relying on his wandering imagination while reading books about foreign, tropical places.

The second graders used their imagination and images of plants and animals for reference as they created depth in their drawings, showing a foreground, middle ground and background. After tracing their drawings on clear mylar, they took an interesting approach to painting, when they began applying acrylics in reverse on the back of their mylar. This allowed them to place more emphasis the planning aspect of their artistic approach. In addition to this new style of painting, they were challenged to hand mix every color that hit their surface using just the primary colors RED, YELLOW and BLUE and black and white, resulting in an array of brilliant, original palettes!

5th Grade Animal Etchings

The 5th graders created phenomenal etchings of animals in  scratchboard- a thick board coated with a layer of black ink that the students scratch into.They applied the grid technique to create proportionally correct contour drawings of photographs. Next, they applied impressive drawing and etching skills when using stippling, hatching and crosshatching to render light and dark value to create forms and texture in their drawings. The scratchboard challenged them to think about the drawing approach in reverse, as they removed black ink to reveal light versus the traditional approach of adding dark value to light paper

Pacific Northwest Masks

The 4th graders created 3D versions of spectacular mask drawings they made inspired by the Pacific Northwest Native Americans’ prolific design motifs and simple yet striking color palettes. The students did a wonderful job employing extensive planning and problem solving skills to turn everyday objects including balloons and paper plates into unique masks. After constructing them with plaster gauze, the students painted Northwest-inspired designs including the U, split-U, ovoid and S-curve on their masks using acrylic paint and embellished them with raffia and feathers.