Meet a teacher!

Name: Kristin Joyce Age: 29

Where were you born? Madison, Wisconsin

How long have you been at Grove? Just about 6 years, since Fall 2004

What school did you graduate from? University of WI - Madison

What is your degree? Bachelor of Science in Art Education

What are your specialties in Art? Screen Printing, Art Metals, Crafts, Sewing

What are your favorite classes to teach? Fashion, Video Production, Painting, Drawing, Crafting for Etsy, Art Around the World

Why did you become an Art Teacher? Because I looooove art and I like to see people get inspired by art and creating things.

Why did you decide to move to Grove? It was my first job out of college and I wanted a unique experience!

What is your favorite aspect of Art? Art is everywhere. Learning about art helps you learn about so many other subjects.

Did you space out in class a lot and doodle? Yes - and I was always, ALWAYS the last person to clean up and leave the art room.

Who is/are your favorite artist(s)? Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Art Nouveau Poster Artists

What or who is your greatest influence in art? My dad, my elementary (Mrs Parsen), middle school (Mr. Anderson) and high school art teachers (Monica Urbanik).

What is your favorite thing to do on the weekend? Eat crepes, shop for shoes or fabric, sew, do glamour shots.

Why did you choose art? It chose me!

If you could choose one other career what would it be? Fashion Designer

What is your favorite color? Purple and pistachio green.

Who is your favorite style icon? Milla Jovovich, Drew Barrymore, Flight of the Conchords, and Art Nouveau as a style.

If you could make one crazy fashion choice, what would it be? I'd wear dresses and heels everyday, it's just too bad that I just get tired feet!

Would you rather be a famous artist or an art teacher? Why can't I be both?!

Best piece of advice? Listen to your art teachers (Ashley, Stacey, Embly and me too). We are VERY smart people.

Anything else you want us to know? Everyone should have some type of artistic and creative activity they enjoy doing. If you don't, you should take one of our classes. We'll help you find it.

(Please check out works of art by Kristin's favorite artists below.)

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Picasso - First Steps

Egon Schiele - The Artist's Wife

Spring Leads to More Creativity!

Welcome to the Art Room in the Spring! We are blooming with new projects and bursting at the seams with all of the excitement generating from those projects.

Our newest classes (Fashion Design, Marketing Your Art and Graphic Design) are proving to be not only successful but flourishing. The Fashion students are currently working on designing their own clothing line for a specific target market. Once completed, they will create and sew one of their own garments of design!

In Marketing Your Art (also known as Crafting for Etsy around campus) our students have chosen their product and are working to create tons of pieces to put up for sale on the Etsy Website. Currently, we have not set up the site as it is in construction, but as soon as it is published we will send the word out. Some of the items posted for sale on Etsy will also be available for sale and definitely show at Parent's Day (Memorial Day!)

Graphic Design is on its way to generating some potential magazine designers! These students began by designing a business card, and are now creating two-page magazine layouts about an article that interests them. Next up? Cereal box design!

(One students Two Page Magazine Layout)

As for our returning classes, there is no shortage of creativity and quality product generating. In Painting, students are completing their "Four Rectangle Painting" and moving on to their "Abstract Triangle Painting."

(A student working on the four rectangle painting)

Drawing students are learning about and furthering their learning of perspective, both 1-point and 2-point perspective. The seniors in this class (who have experience with perspective) have developed their own projects and are working individually.

The 3D students are continuing their work with clay and are currently creating abstract sculptures. They are dealing both with a size requirement (at least 8" in every direction) and the abstract requirement. The definition of abstract is: of or pertaining to the formal aspect of art, emphasizing lines, colors, generalized or geometrical forms, etc., esp. with reference to their relationship to one another. In easier terms, student's sculptures cannot realistically represent anything! Below are photos of students "wedging" clay and "throwing slabs". Ask your students to tell you what that means!




Lastly, our ceramics class, headed up by Stacey and Emily, have just finished a four quadrant abstract tile. They are now working on a combined form project. Throughout class they have learned methods including wheel throwing, slab, coil building and pinch pot and must now choose at least two of the methods to combine into one project.

(One student working on glazing their abstract tile)

Please check back often for updates to the blog! Ask your students when their work is posted. And we hope to see you on Parent's Day!

Latest Events in the Art Department

Throughout this spring we've had many different exciting things happening. We had students artwork entered into the Shoreline Arts Show and out of the 18 submitted four works were chosen! We had a mini-art show in the art room to show off our 3D/Sculpture students Recycled CD projects. And we were able to take two classes on a field trip to the Yale Art Gallery! Below you'll find photos of all of the events. Have a great Spring Break!

Shoreline Art Show Submitted Works:



Yale Art Gallery Field Trip:

(One student admiring a Mark Rothko Painting)

(One of our students standing in front of Andy Warhol's work)

(Our students were astounded by the work "Addict." No, the guy sitting down is not real!)

(Some of our students and teacher Bo Burgett checking out a graphic design exhibit of Jane Davis Doggett)

Recycled CD Art Show:



Here is also a picture of our "in-house" ceramics expert Stacey working with a student on the Potter's Wheel.

2.9.10

Wondering what is currently happening in the Art Room? Here's an update. For the first time this week We've provided student examples of work. Curious if its your students work? Call and ask!

Fashion Design:
This week in Fashion our models get hands! Students are learning how to draw hands based on basic shapes which will inevitably create more proportionate hands on their models.
Crafting for Etsy:
In Crafting for Etsy, student's learned how to decoupage this week! Each student was given a packet of recycled paper materials to use in their projects. Tomorrow, students will learn all about card making and creating their own stationary!


Painting:
Painting students are continuing their work on color theory and understanding color mixing. Eventually students will complete a 4-rectangle painting using oil pastel, acrylic paint, oil paint, and watercolor paints with each rectangle a different medium. The painting they do is a copy of a master artwork. Below is a students work from last semester.

Graphic Design:
Students continue to work on their business cards. Below is one student's in progress work on the front of her business card. The second image is another student's work on the backside of his business card. Students are also required to create a hard-copy of their business card on paper.


Drawing:
Students are continuing their work on color theory and understanding color mixing. This will continue for at least another week.


3D/Sculpture:
Right now, students are beginning work on sculptures using clear plastic CD dividers. Students are required to use at least 50 CD's, and no more than 100. To teach our students that art projects can be made from many different materials this project was developed out of many boxes of CD's that were donated to the art room.

Ceramics:
In ceramics, students are continuing learning the basics of hand-building. They are each creating a mug that they will glaze to complete. Two student's examples are pictured below before glazing.

Semester Under Way

Fashion Design-
We are beginning with learning the proportions for drawing fashion models. Typically we draw humans in "8-head" proportion, but in fashion models are drawn in "9-head" proportion.


Crafting for Etsy:
In this class students are beginning to learn many different types of crafting, jewelry making, embroidery, and photography. These first few weeks are devoted to learning jewelry including beaded earrings and necklaces.


Painting-
Color theory is the name of the game! Students are learning all about the color wheel, tint, tone and shade, and how to mix every color in the world.


Graphic Design-
First up, students are creating business cards. These will be used as our measuring point to assess their progress at the end of the semester when they will create another one.


Drawing-
In drawing students are learning the elements of art including line, value, shade, shape, form, color and texture.


3D-
Students are beginning by creating self-portraits in a very roundabout way. Students first create a line drawing self-portrait, and then trace over those lines with wire to create the self-portrait with wire.


Ceramics-
Pinch pots are the jumping off point for students in this class. Pinch pots are made by beginning with a ball of clay, and using your fingers to work the clay away from center to create bowls, mugs and dishes.

Welcome to Spring Semester

Students, Staff and Families - Spring Semester begins soon which brings all new classes to the Art Room! With the addition of a new staff (Welcome Stacey!) we are able to bring more specific classes which are developed to attract and challenge students farther and introduce them to new art methods they may not have used before. Our new classes will be....

Crafting for Etsy-
Etsy is a website for Artist's to sell their works of art anywhere in the world. Products for sale range from jewelry and knittings to paintings and photography. Kristin and Ashley will spend the first half of the class teaching students about different types of art they can create to post on Etsy. The second half of class students will photograph, market and post their work for sale. The hope is that students will walk away from this class with the knowledge and expertise of how to run their own Etsy webpage after the class is over.


Fashion Design-
This class, taught by Kristin and Ashley will teach students the basics of designing clothes from concept to finished garment. Students will learn how to draw models in Fashion proportions, draw and design a line of clothing, create and cut patterns and sew a completed garment.


3D/Sculpture-
Stacey, Emily and Ashley will be teaching this class and focusing on sculptures that can be made out of any material. Some materials that may be used include clay, cardboard, paper mache, recycled materials...etc.


Ceramics-
This class will focus solely on clay work and will range from coil and slab building to hand building and potter's wheel work. Again this will be taught by Stacey and Emily and students will walk away with all of the basics of working with clay


Graphic Design-
Magazines, business cards, advertisements, cereal boxes, billboards... all are examples of works of Graphic Design. Ashley and Stacey will work with students in this class to learn the essential knowledge of Graphic Design which includes Color Theory, Composition, and text to name a few.


Painting-
Much like fall semester, Kristin and Emily will work through this class to teach students about many different types of painting. Projects will range from watercolor painting, to acrylic to oil while allowing students to figure out which medium they prefer to work with the most. Students will also learn about important historical landmarks in the world of painting including cubism and surrealism.


Drawing-
Students in this class will learn various drawing techniques demonstrated by Kristin and Stacey and will work with colored pencils, pastels, graphite and of course regular drawing pencils.




The teachers of the art department are very excited for our upcoming classes and we hope this excitement will filter into our students as well. Stay tuned to begin learning about projects in each individual class!

-Kristin, Emily, Stacey and Ashley

Current Projects

Curious what your student is doing right now in Art?! Take a look below!! (Each class currently has an image posted to help explain the project. No actual student work is posted yet.)

Painting: Just finished a unit on Color Theory and moving into experimenting with all different types of paint. Their project is currently to create a reproduction of a master work of art by splitting it into fourths and painting each fourth with a different type of paint (watercolor, acrylic, oil and gouche). Student work coming soon!


Drawing/2D: Students are currently working on grid drawings. They created a collage with different elements in it (human face, animal, achitecture...) and using a grid have to transfer the collage square by square into a drawing twice the size of the original collage. Student work coming soon!


Video: We are learning Final Cut Pro Software bit by bit and are working on improvisational techniques.


3D: In 3D we are working on examining Abstract sculpture and how a sculpture can have meaning when it looks like nothing realistic. Students created a wire sculpture and are painting it to tie the color scheme and sculpture together for a common theme. Student work coming soon!


FUNdamentals in Art: This class is all about students learning the basics of art and touching on as many mediums as possible. They just finished work on color theory and are moving into watercolor. First they will learn many different techniques they can use when painting watercolor and will then use those techniques to create a silhouette cityscape using their watercolors. Student work coming soon!


Art Around the World: Mexico is the topic at hand! We have just fininshed working on Amate paintings which are made from recycled tree bark and are painted with very bright colors. Students created ASAP (Actual Simulation Amate Paper!) and made their own paintings involving birds, fish, flowers and other items. Next we will be examining Day of the Dead in Mexico and the traditions that go along with celebrating the dead. Student work coming soon!