Art Gallery Visit

I didn't get to talk about the Two Rivers Gallery visit! I found that little field trip to be a great big breath of fresh air. It was nice to be in a different environment than our windowless room at the university. 
I liked the... activity?... that we had to do; creating a lesson plan in about 10 minutes that followed the criteria that we were given was fun. Using the paintings of Will Gill as our inspiration, we made a musical lesson plan that involves deeper meaning. 
If one were to do this exact lesson plan, however, I think that there might be some guidelines that needs to be covered first. Otherwise, I feel like some students might come up with some pretty gnarly lyrics to the song that we were creating as a class. 


Anyway, it was interesting to see what all the other groups came up with. My memory is a little foggy soo if you want to leave a quick comment on what your group's lesson plan was, that would be great! If you have already discussed your lesson plan in a blog entry, let me know! Comment away! If you have any questions about the lesson plan that my group did, ask away!

This may be my last post. If it is, I thank you for reading. I hope your holidays are spent with friends and loved ones.

Merry Christmas!

See you next year :D

Alex Stoney

Lights, Camera, Action!

I've been thinking about the different types of art we can create. I mentioned Kid Pix on my last post; today I want to talk about acting.
Waaay back last year in first semester, I observed a class that was doing a short drama activity. The teacher had pairs a students act out the exact same scene, only they were told to play them with different mindsets. There were jocks, teens, and a bunch of other types that I don't remember. The point being! We can do drama in our classrooms. This is a medium of art that I hadn't really thought of doing in the classroom before.
This was probably the simplest of lesson plans that this teacher had taught. I'm not sure what prior lessons took place but basically all she did was provide scripts for every pair of students and tell them how they were to act when it was their turn to present. She gave her class about 5 - 10 minutes to practice around the intermediate area of the school. After the class had come back, the acting began. After every pair of students had finished their scene, the teacher would ask who could guess who those students were acting as. The teacher of this class had me pair up with one of her students; we were supposed to act like teenagers. Basically I acted sarcastic and lazy; the class guess who we were supposed to be right away.

Anyway, this was a fun and engaging lesson that, I'm sure, touched on some PLOs.

Kid Pix!

If you're about my age, you'll remember Kid Pix. Dr. Kitchenham has commented that it is basically a PowerPoint program. I found his comment interesting because I have never thought of it as a PP program. I always thought of it as this cool art program that let you do whatever you can think of, and even more. Seriously, there were things on that program that blew my mind when I was a kid. The marker that changes colour when you use it? Awesome!
It's a program that you can use for serious objective based assignments or for just having fun and fooling around. I had no idea people were still using it until it was brought up in Tech Ed recently.

The biggest upside, in my opinion? You can get as messy as you want and you don't have to worry about cleaning it up. It lets kids experiment with what ever they can think of doing. They can take what they create and really like in Kid Pix and try to create it with materials around the classroom.

I just did a quick search on Google and came up with this site for Kid Pix lesson plans. There are probably quite a few out there...

http://www.bristolvaschools.org/mwarren/KidPixIdeas.htm

Art Inquiry

Hello faithful readers,
I hope you're all being productive on this last work weekend! The end is nigh'! I wanted to journal about my participation in the Art Inquiry that we did on the second last week of school.
We were the ones who inquired about Roy Henry Vickers. To be honest, most of the praise goes to my group member, Amanda, Catherine and Tyler. We came together one day and kind of hashed out how we wanted to present out artist. You'd think this would be a simple process right? Haha, it didn't seem like it. It felt like we were spinning our tires for a little bit. We ended up with what you all saw, obviously. My part was quite simple; I put my input when it was needed and helped out others whenever they needed it.
I reported on who Roy Henry Vickers as an artist.
This was a neat little presentation because I developed a new found respect for Roy. I had no idea he was colour blind. To me, that's almost like being a chef without being able to taste your food. Or like being deaf and producing musical masterpieces like Beethoven.
I knew Roy lived close to my home of Kispiox. I have seen him at feasts now and then. I thought he was a part of my First Nations culture until I found out that we was of multiple First Nations' descent, and none of them being Gitxsan!
Anyway, the art inquiry was fun. I liked a lot of the presentation and how much they all varied. You guys did a great job.
I would definitely use this type of project with my class if they're old enough to should the responsibility!

Now I leave you with some art from Mr. Roy Henry Vickers. Enjoy.







source:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=roy+henry+vickers&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=3umaUv3YPKPiiwLZ7YGwBg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=642

Crayola Lesson Plans

I was Googling Fine Art lesson ideas recently (5 minutes ago) and came across the Crayola site for educators. They actually have some really cool stuff on their site. They offer cross curricular lesson plans like Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and, of course, Visual Arts.
The site has lesson plans for grades pre-K to 12! That's pretty impressive. They have one more option of course, which product of theirs you would like to use. e.g., chalk, clay, crayons, dry-erase, oil pastel, silly putty, etc...

One example lesson is the Black Bat Silhouette:

The website has a step by step lesson plan that is easy to follow and fun to do!

It is an American site, so they have American "standards" (our PLOs). They are similar and easy to find in our PLO system.

They also provide you adaptations and related lesson plans.

Bye for now :)

Here is the site for this particular lesson (you can reach the main site from this link):
http://www.crayola.com/lesson-plans/black-bat-silhouette-lesson-plan/

Ornament Art!

My aunt just messaged me this cool art idea that could be done (slowly) in a primary (or even intermediate, I guess?) class.

You start out with normal glass ball ornaments. You can get them pretty much anywhere (Costco, Walmart, Target...).

Now, this part would take a long time because you'll probably want to do this step one student at a time. You paint a student's entire hand (left or right) with white finger paint and have them grip the glass ornament from the bottom. It HAS to be from the bottom in order to achieve the desired effect for the end product. Also, make sure your students' fingers are spaced out appropriately, not too far but not too close either. Tell students to wash their hands ASAP.

     Once you've completed this step with all your students, wait a day for the paint to dry. Don't forget to put their names on them when they dry.

     On the next day, have your students draw faces on the tips of their painted ornaments and make little scarves to put around their necks. Encourage your students to add any other decorations that can think of for their snowmen ornaments. E.g: dots of white paint for snow, something for arms and their noses, etc...

     The end product is an awesome little art activity that your students can bring home and hang and show their parents!






Resource and Photos:
http://www.megduerksen.com/2010/12/17/christmas-craft-1-2/

Art Show Participation

Wow, it's been awhile. I'll have to step it up in the coming days...
Anyway! We had the art show to display our students' art last week. Even though none of my students showed up, while I was/am a little disappointed by that, I thought it was a great event.

I took a small amount of joy from creating the program for the art show. It was simple, yes. It wasn't the way I'd pictured it exactly, but it was mine. It turned out to be a serviceable program in the end, which is all that matters really (in my opinion)! Although, it was missing one person's class' art (sorry Heather!). Anyway, I was pleased with the end result. Thanks to those that helped to fold the things! We ended up printing way too many, but you know what? Hindsight is 20/20.

I also actually enjoyed helping to set up some of the displays and conversing with everyone who was there to help set up.
I hope those photos behind the banner turned out all right!

To end this entry, here is a photo of my little display. It's cedar bark that's been woven into little mats. My original idea was to create a larger mat out of the smaller mats but that did not pan out the way I'd have liked. This wind chime type of display turned out just as good or better, I think!

Back!

Hi! I'm back.
Nature is amazing. I took these, over edited perhaps, shots during the last week of summer. I went to Alberta to visit with my in-laws. The first photo is of Mt. Robson. The second and third photos were taken at Waterton National Park. Even though I like how these photos look, there is nothing like seeing it with your own eyes. I don't have much to contribute in the way of making you think today; I just wanted to share these photos with you.
Honestly, I can't think of anything more to type. These photos and the memory of being at these locations bring up a fondness that can't be described. Nature is amazing.

Identity

My last two posts were about admiring art. This is a piece that I drew this summer. Can you tell what it is? It's a combination of two images.

One image is of an eagle. I'm Gitxsan; I belong to the frog clan. In every clan, there are houses (wilps) and every wilp has a crest. My house's crest is the eagle. I'm in Wilps Delgamuukw.

The other image might be a little harder to see. It's a maple leaf; because, I am Canadian!

I've never been big on drawing (this is the first real piece of Native Art that I've done) but this one small project appealed to me.

I had a difficult time figuring out what I wanted to draw in my art elective during one of our summer camps.

But once I figured it out, you couldn't stop me until I was satisfied of the work I had put into it. You see, sometimes, SOMETIMES, I'm a perfectionist. I'm not saying this drawing is perfect but I'm proud of it. I feel that it represents a large part of me quite well.

Art is a fantastic way to express yourself; that's obvious. You can lose yourself in what you're doing because you just want to see that image in your head come to fruition.

Anyway, this is how I identify myself; and, it's great to share my identity with you in a different way.

I don't know exactly what the criteria for these blogs is but I wanted to share this with you anyhow.

If you have any questions, ask them in the comments section!

Thanks for reading.

"Meet Me in the Basement"

Like my friend Jana-Rae, I want to talk about music today. About one song I should say (there may be many more songs in the coming weeks).

Music is important to me. I love listening to it, singing to it; I only wish that I had the time and patience to create it!

This instrumental means a lot to me. I only heard it this summer but I know it's going to be one of those songs that I'll turn up when it comes on through my car stereo/headphones/computer speaker/you get the idea... 

I'll tell you the story of when I first heard this song.

The camp staff that I had the privilege to work with this summer, as well as myself, had decided to take a weekend retreat to Gitwinksihlkw (an hour North-ish of Terrace) one weekend. The trip started terribly; we didn't leave the camp until late. Everyone was suffering from a severe lack of sleep, and I had to drive the whole five hours. One of my supervisors, who was riding shotgun (she's an '07 B.Ed grad from our program!) had to stop 5 minutes away from our destination to throw up (the road to Gitwinksihlkw is really curvy). We ended of arriving at our destination at 3 AM. After settling in, I finally got to go to sleep at 3:30. Well, we all had to wake up 5 hours later because a few of my friends were playing in a brass band in the River Boat Days parade (fun fact: their entry won 1st place). 

This trip sounds really really bad so far... It gets better! Of course, I wake up still tired BUT shortly after I wake up, Nick (the guy who lives at the house the guys were staying in) turns on his PS3 and begins to blast this song on the TV's stereo. 

Immediately I was like "whoa" this song is awesome! My spirits were lifted and I had a feeling that that day was going to be a great one. I knew that I had just created a lasting memory. This song will be forever associated with standing in that living room and thinking how good I've got it. 

Play the song again, or for the first time. Turn it up! 

It's awesome how music affects us. It's awesome how much influence art has on our thoughts and feelings, be them positive or negative. 

Where would we be without it?

Warmth

Good morning/afternoon/evening! Thus begins my first official post about art and what it means to me! This piece here was created by my sister Michelle Stoney. She is a recent graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Make the image on this post as big as you can. Click on it or something.
Take some time and just look at it.
What do you feel?
What do you think it's supposed to represent?

When I look at this painting, I feel safe. I feel warmth wash over me. I feel content and comfortable.

Taking from my Fine Arts course, I think these feelings can stem from the lines in the painting. There aren't any straight lines (besides the border but whatever). Another thing I like about this painting are the colours. Red is my favourite colour, so it's obvious that I would find this painting attractive. The different shades are neat because the painting is essentially one type of colour. I like that it's not as busy as most other paintings. It's definitely something you don't see very often...

After a short discussion about her painting, Michelle told me that she felt the same way while and after she was done painting it. We both have the same favourite colour by the way.
She told me that this painting represented a fish egg waiting to be spawned. The circle on the bottom left is the egg. The "s" shapes on the top reminded us of the fish's ribs.
Do you see it? Pretty cool hey?

Does the image of this fish egg change the way you feel at all?
It didn't for me. I still feel warmth because this fish egg is being cared for; it's so vulnerable yet it's so protected. You may feel different (and that's great!) but that protection equates to warmth and comfort to me.

You could feel something TOTALLY different. If you do, tell me what you feel! There are no wrong answers when it comes to the interpretation of art (as long as you take a respectable approach to it!)

Until next time!

Hello and Welcome!

Hi, thanks for stumbling upon my art blog! Or, you might be here on purpose because you're in my EY 2014 cohort; in which case, don't judge me too harshly! I just wanted to start this first entry off with a short little welcome. No, I didn't want to dive right in to the artsy stuff... So, hello and welcome to the very first blogging journey of one Mr. Stoney AKA Alex/Sharkbait (Short Cake, Sharky, any other variant you can think off)/AStone/Al/Lex/A.

I'll try not to bore you too much with my entries. 

Key word here is "try." 

That's worst case scenario though.

Best case scenario, you'll enjoy the photos I post and maybe, just MAYBE, I`ll have something thought provoking to contribute to your day. In the words of Plate (probably): "Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something." I place myself in the latter of this quote for this particular post. However, I hope not to waste your time in the future!

Anyway, if you`re still reading, I hope you have a pleasant rest of your day.

Alex, out.