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Category Archives: contemporary artists

New Ideas and Resources to Teach about Contemporary Art

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In previous blog posts, I talked about contemporary artists you may not have heard about before and I put together a round-up of blog posts about contemporary art projects. Today I have some more ideas to share. Don Masse said, “hey marcia! the majority of my lessons are based on living artists. i just did a fun lesson with my kinders inspired by the mosaics of jim bachor http://www.shinebritezamorano.com/2015/05/street-sweets.html and followed that up with them creating a real mosaic. Another … Read more… →

Rubber Ducky Public Sculptures in St. Joseph, Michigan

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A couple of weeks ago we took a summer trip to my brother’s cabin in Michigan.  We spent some time in the lovely city of St. Joseph, Michigan.  It is right on Lake Michigan and we enjoyed playing in the sand, walking on the piers, eating ice cream, playing on the beach playground, splashing on the splash pad and tinkering around in the two children’s museums.   As an art teacher, I was delighted to see large public art sculptures of … Read more… →

Contemporary Art in the Elementary Art Classroom: A Blog Round-up!

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This year my professional goal was to learn more about contemporary artists and to create art lessons inspired by these artists.   I taught about William Wegman and Justin Vining.  We looked at contemporary artists inspired by microscopic things and living artists that used Disney as inspiration.  At the end of the year, my students learned about Shinique Smith, Nicolas Lampert and various artists that used stuffed animals as a theme in their art (blog posts to come soon about all … Read more… →

Easy End of Year Art Project: Collaborative Banners

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Easy End of Year Art Project

Are you looking for an easy end-of-year art project?  On the last days of school, I had some students that needed to finish up art projects and others that really just wanted to be done with the school year.  This was a fun and easy collaborative project that many students opted to participate in. I got the idea from Romero Britto’s word artworks, like this one and I think I may have seem *something similar* somewhere at some time.. but … Read more… →

Inspired by Artist Justin Vining: Abstract Whimsical Landscapes

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This may have been my favorite unit we studied all year!  We looked at the whimsical landscapes of contemporary artist Justin Vining.  Here is one of his paintings: We watched videos of him talking about his influences, watched time lapses of his paintings and emailed him some questions about himself.  He responded to our questions in this interview I posted previously.  This was a perfect artist to study for us because Justin lives in Indiana in a rural area and … Read more… →

An Interview with Artist Justin Vining

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Back in September, I posted a huge list of contemporary artists.  One of the artists, Justin Vining, saw that I included his artwork in my post and left a comment on my blog.  We exchanged a few emails and I decided to use him as a resource in my classroom.  I was excited that one of the artists reached out to me through my blog and I thought it was especially cool that Justin used to be an elementary art … Read more… →

William Wegman: Photomontage Project for Kids

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William Wegman: Photomontage Project for Kids

My third grade students learned about the photography, films, paintings and children’s books by contemporary artist William Wegman.  I actually talked to Bill on the phone and had an interview with him, which you can read in this blog post. William Wegman is known for his anthropomorphic photos of dogs dressed in various costumes. Anthropomorphic means giving human characteristics to animals (or other non-human things.) We read his books, watched some of his short films and saw pictures of his … Read more… →