Project: Compare and Contrast

Hefty 2-Ply

Veiled Lady

Take a moment to look at these two images.

Seem pretty different at first glance, don't they? What if I told you these two pieces actually have a lot in common? Don't believe me do you? You're probably thinking, "Elisabeth, what on earth does a trash bag have to do with one of the most beloved sculptures at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts? The one is a beautiful marble carving, and the other is literally full of garbage." 

Appearances can be deceiving: that trash bag is actually carved out of marble too, and is currently on display at the Walker as part of the Lifelike exhibit. They may have been created almost 100 years apart, but both of these sculptures have similar techniques and ideas behind them. I didn't even realize this until a friend of mine pointed it out to me. In both works, the artists are showing off their skill by fooling your eye. They're both pushing the limits of the medium, making your brain think it's another material. The Veiled Lady looks like her head covering might flutter in the slightest breeze; Hefty 2-Ply seems as if it's about to fall over or burst at the seams. They're both very much products of their day, created out of the trends and fads of their respective time periods.

And yet these two pieces are also quite different as well. The Veiled Lady was created around 1860 by an Italian sculptor, Raffaelo Monti, known for his delicately carved work. The Veiled Lady seems like she might float away on a strong breeze. Monti's sculpture is romantic and alluring, showcasing the beauty of a woman with a veil over her face and flowers in her hair. His work is part of the Romanticism movement. 

In 1979, the Walker commissioned the American artist Jud Nelson to create a piece for their permanent collection. He decided to recreate a garbage bag filled with trash and spent the next two years carving it out of marble. Nelson is known for making hyper realistic sculptures of mundane things. He makes people see every day objects in a new light. I think his work relates to the ideas in the Pop Art movement.

At first, these two sculptures might not seem like they have anything in common, being created almost a century apart and as part of different art movements. And yet there are many ways in which they relate to each other, not just because they're made from the same material, but also by playing with viewers' perception of what's real.

Okay, so what I just did is known as Compare and Contrast. It's one of the most basic and commonly assigned essays any art student has to write. I did a very pared down version for you, but it's basically the same format whether someone is writing one page or ten pages:

Introduce the two pieces. 

Say what's different about them. 

Now how are they similar? (or vice versa) 

Conclusion. 

Each of those sentences could be a paragraph or a page, it's really based on how much detail you want/need to go into. And you don't have to get fancy or do a lot of research either. I looked up both of these sculptures starting with Google, then moved on to their respective museum websites. I could have gotten pretty much the same information by partaking in tours at the Walker and Minneapolis Art Institute as well. 

The reason I classified this post under the Project heading is because it's easy to replicate and is just as important to art education as creating work. Doing this exercise helps refine thinking and observation skills. It's also helpful for students to reflect on what they know by not just repeating facts. I always found in school that something stuck better when I wrote or talked about it rather than simply studying for a test. 

And this assignment can be adjusted for any grade level and doesn't have to be about ART per say. A kindergartner can say what the similarities and differences are between oranges and apples. Elementary students can paste images on a poster and write a list. Junior and senior high students can do research and write essays of varying depth. From personal experience, college students write 12 page term papers utilizing this same basic idea. 

Your kids could pick two comic book or video game characters, images from an art history textbook, clothing by two different fashion designers, pieces on display in a museum, etc. I think you get the idea. In a nutshell, it's what two things have in common and what they don't and providing some proof to back it up. 

Lesson Plan: Making Peace

One of the featured works,
The Fighter of the Spirit

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) has a plethora of resources for teachers. I've written about the museum before, but not their online presence. The MIA loves teachers and creates so much content for educators to use for free. Each month, they post a short lesson plan about a particular subject or work of art. The current feature is Making Peace; it highlights five pieces from the MIA's collection, and has a activities to go along with the lesson. It's like getting a one-on-one tour and discussion.

Perfect for your self-motivated, tech savy students. You could go through the whole lesson at once, or look at one piece each day for a themed week. The cool part about this, if you're local to Minnesota, is that your kids can read about the art and then actually go see it in person! You can stand in front of this statue, realizing how huge it is, noticing the little details that you can't see in a small image on a computer screen. You could make a scavenger hunt out of finding all five works in the museum, or call ahead for a tour related to the subject.

If you want to get the MIA's Teaching the Arts e-mail newsletter, you can sign up here. (scroll down a bit and you'll see the different newsletters you can subscribe to)

Resource: Masterpiece Art Instruction

Here's a site I came across today: Masterpiece Art Instruction. It's specifically aimed at homeschoolers, so I think you'll find it particularly useful. There's a monthly newsletter with lesson and project ideas, online classes, free download-able lesson plans and project templates, and also lessons and other products for sale.

Masterpiece Art Instruction is a very well designed site, simple and easily navigable. It's rare to find such a website that's not stuffed to the gills with banner ads or awkwardly designed. Simple and easy to use, with helpful information for your art teaching--it's definitely worth a look.

Resources: Kinder Art

Here's another website filled with a breathtaking amount of resources for all your art needs! Kinder Art is definitely for those of you, especially with young children, who want to do art projects but don't where to start or are trying to break through a creative block. There is a huge amount of information available here. Kinder Art has been around for over 13 years, so there's a lot of content to browse. They've got craft ideas, coloring pages, a newsletter, a section specifically for preschoolers, art history lessons, ideas for the performing arts, projects broken down into a variety of mediums. There's the Teacher's Toolbox, which is aimed at those of you just starting out with teaching art and needing some direction. The name of the game here is simplicity in your art education--you don't need over the top projects to teach your kid something.
I've only browsed a small fraction of Kinder Art, but I like what I've seen so far. The only quibble I have with the site, is there's a lot of ads and advertisement links all over. It's a little distracting because there's not enough distinction between the site's content and the ads at times. I do like the face that Kinder Art has a pretty simple page design--this is not a Flash based web site, which takes forever to load on some Internet connections.

Lesson plan: Comics, their history, and making one

Reading list:
-Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
-Bone vol. 1: Out of Boneville by Jeff Smith
-How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee

Materials:
-Pencil
-Eraser
-Drawing paper (11in x 14in or bigger)
-Ruler
-Pen or extra fine tip marker

Comics are an increasingly popular form of storytelling these days. I'm sure your kids have their favorite comic strip to read in the paper. Maybe, like me, they check out comics from the library (it's easy to read them when they're free!), or they request graphic novels for Christmas.
Some popular books even get the comic treatment, bringing the story to new audiences in a different form (for example, James Patterson's children series Maximum Ride is being serialized in graphic novels).
More and more movies are based on comics these days, from Spider-Man to 300 to Batman to Watchmen to the recent release Scott Pilgrim (not endorsing these by the way, just using them as well known examples). Some filmmakers even re-create frames from the original comic--they use it like a storyboard, to plot out scenes. I've heard that a movie is in the works for the Bone series by Jeff Smith.

So, comics. I know a lot of people tend to look down on them, putting "comics" in two categories: what you read in the Sunday paper--something silly and light-hearted, told in three or four frames. And the actual comic books, those serialized stories that come out every month, are considered a waste of time, not worth reading, inappropriate or just plain stupid. Like any art form, comics are not inherently good or bad. It's the artists who use that medium that create either good or bad stories. Yes, there is a lot of dreck out there. I'm in charge of the comics section at my bookstore. and I see the mass amount of garbage and downright disgusting stuff that's out there. But comics can also be used to tell moving, insightful stories, like Maus by Art Spiegelman, which tells his father's story of enduring the horrors of the Holocaust, or Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which shows what life was like as a child growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. These are award winning tales told in the form of comics (and not stories I would suggest for children). Sometimes the old adage is true--pictures can say so much more than words.

Reading Scott McCloud's classic book is a must for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of comics. It's a graphic novel, and he uses the medium simply yet powerfully to walk the reader through the world of comics. McCloud discusses art history, the meanings of symbols and language, the types of visual representation, different kinds of comics, and more. It's a great introduction and can be a springboard into other subjects, such as modern art, art history, creative writing and storytelling.

(As always, parents, please peruse anything I mention for yourself first before assigning it to your child--I know that different kids have varying levels of maturity. I don't want to get angry e-mails that something I suggested was inappropriate for your children--please review it first.)

After reading Understanding Comics and Bone: Out of Boneville (if your kids like the first volume, there's eight more in the series), take a look at How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. This is a classic book by Stan Lee, the creator of some of the most beloved comic characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-Man and the Avengers (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor,etc). It will take you step by step through the comic making process. The book gives you a list of more materials you can use; what I've listed cover the basics.

Here's a video that walks you through a simple comic (I suggest sketching out your comic in pencil first then going over it in ink):


This is just a brief introduction to the vast world of comics. I hope that your kids will enjoy learning about this art form, and maybe discover a new passion in the process.

Resources: Object in Focus

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a great section on their website devoted to teachers and education resources. They also have an educator's newsletter,Teaching the Arts, you can sign up for that contains helpful articles and ideas.

One of their ongoing features is called Object in Focus. It showcases one piece from the MIA's collection that's currently on display in the museum. Each Object in Focus gives you some information about the art work, its history, meaning, and includes ideas for lesson plans and activities based off of it.

This month's featured item is the Bella Coola Frontlet, a headpiece designed for a dancer from the Bella Coola tribe in the Pacific Northwest. There's enough activities given to take up several weeks worth of study, if you're so inclined. A list of books is listed for further study, from a kids' story to a travel guide about the Pacific Northwest. You can teach your children about this specific piece, then take a field trip to see it and other related items in the museum's collection. There's just no replacement for actually seeing the art in person. Or you can incorporate the related Native American history into your current curriculum. Object in Focus is a great springboard into new subjects and projects.

Register to receive the Teaching the Arts e-mail newsletter as well as others from the MIA. It's a truly helpful resource, from giving you new ideas to try to expanding on knowledge you might already have.

Resources: Incredible Art Department

An artist I know from MNartists suggested I pass this website onto you. The Incredible Art Department http://www.incredibleart.org is a sprawling site chock full of art lesson and project ideas for preschoolers all the way to college level, links to other art related sites, newsletters and much, much more. It's a large site with A LOT of content, so there's a bit of informational overload. It can be a bit overwhelming to figure out what to look at first. I suggest setting aside some time to explore it, because there's definitely a lot of good stuff there. For such a large website I found it easy to navigate--the design is simple, there are tabs at the top of the page with drop down menus to choose from, and if you want to go back to the main page you just click on the picture of mona lisa at the top of the screen. It's aimed at school teachers, so the lessons would need to be modified to your smaller groups/individual students.