A Virtual Summer

This year the Decorative and Fine Arts Camp is coming to you… in a box! Your child can create fantastic objects, fossils, miniature clay sculptures, and color wheels on real canvas. Learn fundamentals like color, shape, line and texture! The box will have 5 fantastic projects, that come with five instructional videos, one for every... Continue Reading →

Amy Sherald Inspired Portraits

Amy Sherald is an artist from Baltimore, Maryland (my place of origin, too) and she is known for her achromatic portraits of African-Americans with colorful backgrounds and clothing. I introduced some of her work to my students and then should them her portrait of the former First Lady Michelle Obama. The colors she chooses for... Continue Reading →

Carousel of Animals Camp

For one week every summer I will put a pause on my Decorative and Fine Arts Camp and switch gears. From 6-12 year olds come the 12-18 year olds. We spend an entire week creating large scale carousel animal inspired sculptures. The campers design their animals, I build them wooden armatures, and then they cover... Continue Reading →

Clay Explorations

Every week at the Decorative and Fine Arts Camp we start off the week with painting in the mornings and clay in the afternoon! It's always a big hit. We have a clay tile relief sculpture project with more specific instructions and then campers also have the freedom to do free experimentation and sculpture making.... Continue Reading →

Mushy Maché

We are having so much fun with papier maché and recycled materials this summer at the Decorative and Fine Arts Camp! Students help us amass a selection of cool shaped recyclables like berry containers cans and paper towel rolls and transform them into papier maché sculptures.

Final Exams

As in years past, our final exam for the Foundations of Studio Art class consists of an independent project designed by the students themselves. My goal is that each student sets out to explore their personal art interests. This means they can re-visit any of the materials, techniques, and themes we have explored during the... Continue Reading →

Final Recycled Projects

We finally finished our recycled art projects and what wonderful sculptures they turned out to be! Each group really did a phenomenal job this year finding a unique way to solve a problem: How do you give a second life to an old box? Some transformations were more extreme than others. Some students preserved their... Continue Reading →

New School Year!

I love the beginning of the school year. Not just because I get a fresh order of art supplies, (and who doesn't love that smell!) but because I love the air of optimism. I get so much planning and organizing done. The end of the school year is always a powerful time for reflection, but... Continue Reading →

A Little Cross-Curicular to End The Year

I do not teach print-making to my freshman. I have found that with my ambitious goal of trying to expose my students to everything from ceramics to painting to photography, as well as instilling the elements and principles or art and design, I just run out of time. I might re-evaluate this in years to... Continue Reading →

Four Weeks with Sound

Fall has finally really begun, and the leaves are beginning to change. In Foundations of Studio Art, for the past two weeks, and the next two weeks, we are dedicating our time to creating sound art. We defined sound art as "a term for a diverse set of art practices which utilize sound and listening as the... Continue Reading →

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