Community Class
Communing in order to create.
Charles Bessett, Teacher
Jordan Knecht, Teaching Artist
Welcome to your class website!! The purpose of this site is to show CAPE the development of your arts integration partnership, as guided by your big idea and inquiry question.
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Class information: you must fill out the text box below.
Class Content: brief summaries of each semester's activities and findings.
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Class Information
Class Schedule (days/times): T/Th, 9am-11am
Academic content: Absolutely everything
Art form(s): Printmaking, painting, drawing, writing, woodburning, carving
Big Idea: Communing
Inquiry Question: What can we make when we combine our strengths?
Semester 1
Our first semester mainly focused on continuing and completing our tote bags, which we began in the previous year. The bags were collaboratively designed and printed by the entire class, based on conversations and memories of the surrounding neighborhood of South Chicago. In the previous summer, our class walked around the neighborhood and shared stories from their experiences. These stories directly contributed to the content of the bags. One side is the bright present - the beach and prarie, music and flowers. The other side is the more industrial side - the skyway, the old wall separating the neighborhood from the steelyard, which emitted an orange haze. The bag even contains a recreation of the "Bush Nation" graffiti that was on the wall before it was torn down.
Screen Printing
Everyone in class had the opportunity to contribute designs and take turns printing on bags. Some parents helped each other print when assistance was needed. Everyone made sure that everyone else got a chance to try whatever they wanted.
Printing Ingenuity
One of our parents had a cricut machine at home. We experimented with cutting adhesive stencils and using them for screen printing. This was something none of us had tried before. We had great success! The new technology allowed us to print more complicated stencils on our bags.
Block Printing
For some elements of our bag, we realized it would be more efficient to switch printing methods. Parents designed, cut and printed rubber stamps to quickly add more designs. In this image, a parent is testing a water block print on a bag.
Semester 2
In our second semester, we wrapped up our bags. We printed an edition of 40 total. The project was very ambitious. Each side was 7-8 colors and contained a wide breadth of history of the neighborhood. After the bags were completed, our class switched gears, exploring wood burning. We decided to make 12x12" recreations of musical album covers from our memories. The uniformity of these size of our works allowed us to easily tile each individual piece together, creating a collective mosaic, continuing our tradition of working communally.
Wood Burning
We set up a wood burning station, complete with ventilation. We experimented with different tips and techniques on a variety of scrap wood before using our 12x12" pieces.
Painting and Carving
Some of our wood burning projects evolved to include painting and carving. We tried different combinations of techniques and explored what could happen when we implemented different techniques in different orders.
More Wood Burning Tests
Our experiments became some of our favorite elements. As we kept working, we intuitively discovered more and more ways to use our tools.
Other notable activities throughout the year!
Our work was shown at the CAPE headquarters for an exhibition!
We shared ideas and inspiration with another of Jordan's classes at Waters Elementary, which also happened to be screen printing.
We used clear tape to protect our screens when printing. When we removed the tape at the end of a printing session, we found that we enjoyed the remnants, so we created a tradition of sticking our tape leftovers onto the window, continuing a tradition of augmenting the room to make it our own.
Here's another tape remnant.