Hello students, families, and friends of the AIS Art Department! I plan to post more regularly this upcoming school year - look for updates to come on Thursday or Friday morning of each week . This fall, the Grade 7 & 8 students will be starting their rotation in Visual Art from August-December 2018. The Grade 5 and 6 students will be switching their schedules and joining me in the art room from January- June 2019.
You can also expect updates regarding after school Art Club and Open Studio hours, tentatively planned for Wednesday afternoons from 3:15-4:15. Both are open to all grade levels, 5-8. I'm looking forward to another exciting year in the art room at AIS!! See you next week! - Ms. Long
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Two weeks in and we've already busted out the glitter and the hot glue gun. I consider that a success in my book. I've loved meeting all of the new 5/6's and seeing what they're capable of. Everyone jumped into our first collaborative project with so much enthusiasm and creativity! We explored the question, "What do artists do?" Each student created a small piece that represented what they think artists do with a statement: "Artists _______!" We added all of the pieces to large cardboard collage which is super colorful and held together with nothing but love and tape at this point!
As I prepare for another school year, I've been reflecting on my practice as an art educator. I ask a lot of my students - I ask that they experiment and make mistakes. I ask them to explore their interests and develop a unique, artistic style. I ask them to draw inspiration from their peers, their surroundings, and their other classes. It is crucial to remember as an educator to ask the same of ourselves. This year I know I will experiment - the opportunity to teach Grades 5/6 as a mixed level is a new and exciting challenge. These students are going to bring so many new ideas, skills, and personalities to the 125 Art studio and to our middle school community. There are some changes coming to the visual arts curriculum as well. I spent the summer training with Ms. Chiu (HS Art) at the Teaching Artistic Behavior (TAB) Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. This summer we learned how to redesign our curriculums to create more space for student choice and voice. This year 125 Art room will truly be a "TAB studio" where students will be able to more fully explore their interests and passions in their art making. As with any good experiment, there are likely to be a few "mistakes" along the way. Bob Ross would say, "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents." Especially in art making, mistakes can lead to some of the most beautiful learning experiences! I'm sure we will all learn a lot this year as the middle school continues to grow and progress.
I look forward to meeting all of my new students and drawing inspiration from them as we work together this year! The art studio is ready - are YOU? Ms. Long It's been a while! I am new to this blogging business, and we have been crazy busy over here in MS. The Grade 7's are wrapping up their What is Art? unit I wrote about in the last post. Our first studio component illustrated the concept that "Art follows tradition." We created studies in photorealism that were very labor-intensive. I like to include a technique/skills-based component, and this wasn't particularly time-consuming since we focused on simply the objects and left out a background entirely. Then we started our second studio component, Guerrilla Art. We started by going on a field trip to Sheung Wan, to explore some local street art and even make a little bit of guerrilla art of our own. We got to visit Bibo Restaurant, which boasts an incredible collection of works from street artists like Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Space Invader, and more.
One of my favorite studio classes in college was Conceptual Art; it was the first time I experimented with making artworks that weren't "traditional" drawings or paintings. Most of the art I produced that semester was not very good. I distinctly remember spending hours lining up hundreds of thumbtacks across the hallway to create some sort of barrier. I probably called it "Untitled (War)" or something equally edgy to a nineteen year-old art major. I loved it because it was about ideas; I wasn't restricted by technical ability or expensive supplies. It was about making, communicating and questioning. Those are the things that stuck with me. This class is the inspiration for my current (and favorite) unit with my Grade 7's. I remember my instructor starting class by showing us dozens of controversial images and asking, "Is this art?" Last year I followed a similar format but this year I've been able to dig a little deeper. I've been collaborating with Zander Lyvers, the Humanities teacher, and it's really broadened the scope and impact of this project for our students. We studied a variety of different art pieces and writings by famous artists and critics to determine a set of 'objective' criteria on which to judge art. The class favorite was naturally, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917).
Teaching the Renaissance period of art history can often be a snooze, for me and my students. The artists are old white men who my students can't relate to. The paintings are of rich people, landscapes, or decaying fruit. The names of people, places, and things are long and hard to remember.
For our first project of the year, I always like to do a small, quick project that gets everyone making art on the first day AND gets something up on the walls. Last year, students created blind contour line portraits of themselves and we hung them on the glass walls of the principal's office. It's a great way to get to know new students and it also works as a formative assessment. I loved last year's project but we spent two whole class periods on it, so I wanted to do something quicker this year.
We've been using Post-it's a lot for brainstorming and idea development in the new 125 space and in our pre-school year PD, so I thought it would be interesting to use Post-it's for art making instead. Inspired by this Post-it art show by Giant Robot, AIS middle school students created a mural of their own. We learned about doodling, identified some common characteristics of doodles, and spent a relaxing first art period catching up and making art together. TA-DA!! One of the biggest changes you'll notice this year is that the middle school art studio has moved! We are now located in the new 125 space, which is an open-plan, shared area for students and faculty in the middle school.
Welcome to our shiny, new art blog. I'm hoping this will be a space for us to share not only pictures but stories of the creative, messy, day-to-day process that is so important in a contemporary art classroom. To parents and other new readers, here's a bit of background info about who we are and what we do. My name is Kelsey Long, I am the middle school art teacher at AIS Hong Kong and a Grade 8 advisor. I'm originally from New Jersey, where I previously taught art in a K-8 Title I charter school in Jersey City. This is my first international posting and (now) my second year at AIS Hong Kong. I graduated summa cum laude from the College of New Jersey in 2012 with a BA in Art Education. I mostly trained in Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) but have been transitioning to choice-based over the past two years. I love to travel and I'm thrilled to be in Hong Kong, even if it seems to rain every single day without fail! |
AboutMy name is Ms. Long and I teach Gr. 5-8 visual art at American International School, Hong Kong in Kowloon Tong. Archives
August 2018
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