Becoming Kieth Haring

My Second graders started out the year learning about the term “Public Art”. They looked at Kieth Haring and other artists and learned the term “Mural Art” as well. Once we had a good handle on this type of art we started on a journey to create a design with a variety of lines just like Kieth Haring. We kept our line-weight consistent and experimented with how lines can create patterns, shapes, and implied movement. We made wavy smooth lines and sharp bent lines. After coming up with a design they enjoyed, students transferred their images onto a canvas with pencils. Then they filled in some of their shapes with tempera paint and went over the lines with paint pens. It was a complicated process. Finally, we installed our artwork in a hallway of the school that would get a lot of foot traffic, and therefore the art was accessible to the whole school. Good public art is accessible to the community, so it was important for me to involve them in this process. They did a wonderful job making additional decorations for their installation of public art and the end result was fantastic!