CO-CREATING SPACES OF IMAGINATION, CREATIVITY, AND NARRATION: PIRATES
Summer 2013
Continuing Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago
A collaboration with 4-5 year old students, Louis Raymo and Ariel Wolfe
Personal Symbol Flags + Class Flag
Using a Powerpoint presentation to begin discussion, students explored the role of symbols in their lives. Students identified commercial icons, Superhero emblems, functional iconography such as signage, and personal iconography. Students then created their own symbols to represent themselves. Students drew on styrofoam plactes to create relief prints. Students printed onto fabric that was sewn into a personal flag covered with the student’s symbol. Students collectively printed their symbols onto one larger fabric to create a class flag.
Treasure Maps and Island Sculptures
Students created two and three dimensional representations of an imaginary island of their creation. Students were asked to envision a landscape similar or different to their own. After viewing several maps that depicted topography, climate, and navigational patterns, students created their own two-dimensional maps of their imaginary islands. Each map illustrates a route through the island to find treasure.
Students created large scale (over 1'x1') drawings of their islands from a bird's-eye view perspective. Each drawing was stuffed to create a three-dimensional island form that was incoporated into a body of islands on water installation.
Recycled Material Ships
Using scrap wood, students created three-dimensional ships. Using various ship photos as references, students crafted their own unique designs.
Turner Ship and Storm Paintings
Referencing ship and storm paintings from American painter, J.W. Turner, students created paintings of the ships they made in a storm. Students first created abstract watercolor representations of what a storm feels like. To emphasize setting in a narrative story, students then drew with glue, the glitter ships that they made the previous day into the setting of the storm. This painting exercise reinforced ideas of subject and setting, foreground and background.