Artist Study in the Mups (2nd/3rd)

In mid-January, the Mups embarked on our third art unit of the year, an artist study. With three teachers available to teach art this trimester, we thought we would take advantage of the abundance and teach three different artists. When the idea of teaching three different artists was proposed, Sarah, Olivia, and Sara each thought separately about the artists that they would like to feature in their respective classes. When we reconvened to share the artists that we chose to feature, we discovered that our choices were all Black artists whose works are all uniquely different from one another.  For two weeks at a time, groups of five or six kids meet with either Sarah Noble-Dziura to learn about Ming Smith, Olivia to learn about Jean-Michel Basquait, or Sara J. to learn about Romare Bearden.  Then, after two weeks, students rotate to a new group. We are excited to share the lives of these Black artists as we now move through Black History Month. Below, you can learn a little bit about what each class is doing: 

In Olivia’s group, we began our artist study by reading a book about the artist's life called Radiant Child: the Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Javaka Steptoe. Then we looked at some of Basquiat's most famous works like "Untitled (skull)" and "Hollywood Africans". We learned about the word motif and why some artists use the same subject matter repeatedly in their work. We noticed a few different motifs in Basquiat's work; eyes, crowns, skulls, and words. We used what we learned in our reading to think about why those symbols might have been important to Basquiat in his work. We also noticed the stylistic choices Basquiat made as an artist. We noticed his work was full of movement, layers, and had lots of color all over the place. Then we started making our own Basquiat-inspired drawings. We used oil pastels to layer color and combined Basquiat's motifs with our own imagery. 

In Sarah N.-D.’s group, we began by watching a video about the work of Ming Smith and learned a bit about her life. We looked at her photographs, where we had noticings and wonderings about her techniques. Ming Smith is a photographer who mainly takes photos of famous black cultural figures in Harlem. She plays a lot with light and reflection in her photos, and also takes candid pictures of people on the streets of Harlem focusing a lot on movement. For our project, we first walked around the inside and outside of the school taking photos that focused on the elements of movement and light. The next week we looked at our printed photos. Students shared their favorites, and talked about they touched upon movement or light. We then watched another video about how Ming Smith manipulated photographs after they were printed by adding paint to accentuate the elements of movement and/or light. Students thought about the painted elements they would add to one or more of their photographs and then shared with each other what they added and why. 

In Sara J.’s group: To learn about the art of Romare Bearden, we needed to dive back into history by learning a bit about the Great Migration, which led to the cultural and artistic movement called the Harlem Renaissance.  Because Romare Bearden was so heavily influenced by the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, it felt important to listen to songs sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Robeson, look at photographs of Augusta Savage’s sculptures, and read some of Langston Hughes’ poems.  After getting a sense of the people who influenced Romare Bearden’s art, we took a deep dive into looking at some of his collage pieces. We noticed that you can often find trains, smokestacks, and cats in his work.  Then, using magazines and newspapers, we set off to reproduce one of Bearden’s pieces, only with our own twist.  During the first week, students had fun replicating Bearden’s piece, “Pittsburgh Memories”.  Other groups will work to reproduce Bearden’s “Sunday After Sermon” and “Early Carolina Morning”.