Student Artwork

During my fieldwork experiences, I have interacted with many students. Together, we work through ideas, and I offer them new ways to think and to execute their art projects. Every day after leaving the classroom, I feel super fulfilled because the students are always so creative and are constantly expressing their excitement to learn more.  

During NPCC, a weekly event at the community center in New Paltz, I developed and delivered a lesson on mosaics to a group of middle school-aged children. We began by experimenting with the medium, creating pompom pieces on 4x4-inch pieces of cardboard. We then discussed community and its meaning to us in a group discussion. Since we are all in the New Paltz area, we discussed what makes our community special and how we would like to convey that in our mosaic. Everyone made individual drawings, and then we looked at each other's work. We had another discussion about the elements in the drawings we wanted to include in our final collaborative mosaic, and we recorded them and created a reference drawing. We then got to work on our collaborative pom-pom mosaic. All of the kids worked really well together, sharing supplies, ideas, and workload. 

In my Contemporary Approaches to Art Education class, we hosted a family eARTh day where we taught students of various ages about the importance of taking care of our planet. We accomplished this through our different lessons by making art using found objects and recycled materials. My group helped students to create their own terrariums to take home with them, where the seeds they planted would come to life and continue growing. Students got to design the inside of their terrarium and decorate the outside of it. They were also able to decorate the rock they put inside using chalk. We explained that the purpose of using chalk was that as they water their terrarium, the chalk would wash away. Though it is sad their designs will be lost, when we go into our environments, we don't want to cause harm, and we do that by leaving no trace. 

In my photomontage lesson, students practiced creating photomontages several times before producing their own. First, we made one as a group, and then the class broke up into pairs to make another. Students enjoyed this, as many of the pre-printed images featured people, objects, and imagery they recognized and could relate to. It was a simple yet effective warm-up to prompt them to reflect on what matters to them and on how to communicate an idea by combining pre-made images.