All School
Communal Art: The last project of the year, across all grades, is a communal artwork. Communal works are created by a community of people. Sometimes there is a plan, but sometimes not, allowing the piece to grow and change unpredictably as each person contributes.
Communal works, like this, are great exercises in accepting the variation of ideas of other people.
Students place each piece on the pieces of others knowing that others will likely build on it.
They know their ideas are influencing the final design, even if they can't see their piece at the end.
2010-2011: Students created an abstract sculpture using- triangles folded from construction paper, tape, staples, and some glue for reinforcement. Students from all grades created triangles, the instructor stapled them to preserve their shape, then each student placed their triangle anywhere on the sculpture.
Color was determined by grade level (kindergarten-red, grade 01-orange, grade 02-yellow, grade 03-green, grade 04-blue). The work has a large number of orange pieces, due to the fact that grade 01 had art twice as often as other grades.
The entire sculpture was built by the students. None of the triangles were added by the instructor.
2011-2012: Students imagined an enormous tree (called the World Tree in our imaginary adventure) that held an entire city in its branches. Students looked at and discussed the work of Japanese artist Takanori-Aiba, focusing on detail and scale. The instructor built a large (about 5') tree out of cardboard, and students worked on building a fantastic tree house. The requirements were to include a lot of detail, and to stay in the correct scale. A human adult would have been about .5" compared to this enormous tree model, so all structures, doors, walkways, etc. had to fit that scale.
The instructor added a model of our flying ship as the final detail.
It was great to see the amazing teamwork among classmates and across classes/grades that took place during this project.
2012-2013: Students study sculptures with unusual surfaces, such as found material sculptures. Such sculptures are recognizable by their shape, but their surfaces are covered with images, designs, objects, etc. Together, all grade levels worked to cover the surface of a simple eagle sculpture with unique feathers. These thousands feathers ranged from very abstract designs to meticulously crafted representative images.
2013-2014: After studying many different kinds of mosaic artworks (artworks made from many small pieces), students worked on four long mosaics using small cut pieces of colored paper. The four mosaics were then combined into a hanging sculpture.
2014-2015: After years of traveling on our ship of the imagination, students finally had a chance to work with it. The instructor created a large cardboard model of the ship. Students created a miniature stand-ups of themselves to help crew the ship. The ship has over 400 tiny students on deck watching the imaginary world ass by.
2015-2016: Our school focuses on working together and caring for each other. Using blueprints of the school building and photographs, the instructor created a cardboard model of the school. To represent the teamwork that is emphasized, students created each brick to cover the building. Students were encouraged to include images of things they enjoyed about being at school, like learning, playing, and seeing friends.
2016-2017: Of all projects, the triangle sculpture held up the worst, over time. Because of this, it had to be disposed of. This year, students had a chance to create the abstract triangle sculpture. Even though it was a repeat project, it was new to all students that participated.
2017-2018: The dragons of Chinese and Japanese myths are often beasts of great elemental power and wisdom. The instructor made a simple serpentine dragon body to start with, then students created scales, spines, and fur to complete it. When creating its scales and spines, students were encouraged to think about elemental powers or other powers the dragon might possess. Their scales carry images of nature, weather, and representations of super powers.