It's easy being green!!

 My DragonWing Arts students  have had two weeks with no class, due to the school spring vacation timing.  But at least I can give you another sneak peek of what we were up to before vacation, in preparation for completing the gnome homes they have been making.  Here are my kooky kiddos, making "moss" to place on the ground around and under their gnome homes.

Everyone started with a protective glove and/or a plastic bag, to keep hands clean.  But within a couple of minutes almost everyone decided they should get at least one hand, and maybe two, covered with paint. 

Basically, we used polyester fiberfill and acrylic paint (various greens, and some brown and dark yellow) mushed together.  I've talked about making this stuff before, in this blog post here. 

As I said in that  prior post, it is NOT WOOL and this is NOT FELTING.  I am allergic to wool.  I swear, I get itchy just LOOKING at the pictures people post of their felted creations.  As a matter of fact, I'm about to make what will probably be a very controversial statement.  Please don't be too shocked!  Here it is:

I honestly don't know why so many people love felted stuff, creating it, or wearing it, or making little crafty creations out of it, even if they aren't allergic to the wool like I am!  It even LOOKS itchy!  And mostly it looks like mats of hairy dryer lint to me.  I just don't understand why you all seem to love this stuff.  Just an opinion, I know, but as for me, it's "no thank you" to felted stuff.   Don't hate me!! 

The Fun was in the Process....

Let me say this right up-front.  This post is not about wool, or felting.   I am somewhat allergic/sensitive to wool.  It makes me very very itchy and makes my eyes water.  I can smell it, and I can feel it's nasty little prickly fingers stabbing my skin right through a shirt worn under a wool sweater, so I never ever wear wool, and haven't for decades.  So this post is NOT about wool.

And this post is not about a success story.  It's about a project, an experiment you might say, that was a lot of fun in the early steps, and then got rather challenging.  And the results, were, um, less than spectacular.  (Isn't this pile of fiber, pictured below, pretty?)

This is a tough thing for me, having the results be unsuccessful.  While I'm all about giving kids an exciting exploratory process, I also feel that art is made to be seen, to be experienced visually, just like music is made to be heard, to give the listener a distinct auditory experience.  So making a product that looks good is equally as important to me as the process itself.  I know this can be a controversial topic, but that's been my outlook for a long time, and I don't expect it to change.  Plus, I am teaching in a private business, and my students' parents pay for their children to attend, so I feel an obligation for the kids to produce a product that they can show off at the end of a session. 

Anyhow...  A couple of months back, someone posted a project on Facebook that looked a lot like felting, but without wool, and I was instantly intrigued.  It was based on a project that had been shared in the United Art & Education booth at the NAEA convention in Chicago, but somehow I hadn't seen it there.  It is available on line, and here is a link to the original Project PDF, courtesy of United Art & Education:  Fiber Painting - Project #197.

I looked at the original project, and I looked at the adaptations made by the person who posted on Facebook, and I made some other adjustments to hopefully make it easier for me and my young students to do.  My DragonWing Arts students were doing projects based on the theme of "Scapes" - Landscapes and Seascapes and so on.  I thought this project would fit in perfectly, for layers of mountains and cloudy skies.  The method uses polyester fiberfill, and I have a monstrous 10 pound carton left over from my grand experiment building a duct tape dummy.  (You can read about that crazy misadventure right HERE.)

But back to this project...   I gave my students one rubber glove each, so they would end up with one clean hand to turn on the water at the sink at cleanup time.  I put small amounts of acrylic paints in disposable cups, and put out a big bag full of the fiberfill.  The kids then pulled off small hunks of fiber, dipped it in the color paint of their selection, and then pulled and twisted it in their hands, mixing the color into the fiber.  It was an enormous bunch of fun, and the kids made a huge pile of colored fiberfill, to use in our fiber landscape paintings.  The stuff in this bucket is just a small portion of what the kids created.

As you can see in the following pictures, the kids loved every minute of making the colorful fiber.

 But then, we had this huge bin filled with colored fiberfill, and it was time to make it into pictures.  It sounded like a simple proposition. But it was not.  It was extremely challenging.

The kids drew simple landscape images onto pieces of mat board, and then used pop sticks to spread tacky glue on an area where they wanted to place a certain color of fiber.  The fiber was then pressed into the glue.  And it was NOT EASY.  The most successful piece (or maybe I should say the ONLY successful piece) is the one of a tree (in case you couldn't tell) pictured at the top of this post.  The others... not so much.

The kids tried hard.  One kid tried to do a sky with a sun and clouds, but it just looks like blobs of color.  Another attempted a volcano, but again, it is unrecognizable.  And I don't think I was ever sure of what the 4th student was making.  In the end, you just couldn't tell what the heck the pictures  were.  I even had a hard time being successful.  Below is my unfinished sample.  My sad little lollipop tree looks like it popped its top!

And now, the multi-week session is over, and the kids have taken home all their work.  I can't seem to find a single photo of any of the student pieces besides the one at the top of the post, unless you want to look closely at their mini "art show" pictures, found in this post HERE. The lack of pictures wasn't intentional; we just got so busy I guess I missed taking pictures of them all.

How do you feel when you do an art project with kids where the resulting product is not at all what you intend or expect?  Are you satisfied that the process alone was worthwhile, even if the product is not successful?  And now what in the world do I do with the mountain of leftover colorful fiber that I have, as well as the rest of that 10 pound box, which still seems just as full?

An Art Teacher Vacation Day to Play!

We decided that we needed to get some regional art teachers together over the spring break (this past week).  After considering serious professional development topics, we decided that what we REALLY wanted was a relaxing art-making play-date!

 I suppose I should explain who the "we" are.  It includes me, obviously; I serve as region rep to the state board of our art teacher organization, NYSATA.  And it also includes my "partner-in-crime", our region chairperson Kathleen.  (You can see Kathleen in the photo below with the skeleton apron.)  We enjoy working together as a team to plan for our region.  Kathleen is a newly joined member of the Fiber Guild, and thought it would be fun to use this "play-date" to give folks a chance to try their hand at wet-felting, and spinning, and such.  At this idea, my spirit took a nose dive, because, well, I'm kind of sensitive to wool.  Being around a lot of it makes me itchy, and makes my eyes water.  So would this mean I couldn't participate in the play date?  I didn't want to be left out.  So Kathleen suggested that, in another room, I lead a workshop in embellishing usable/wearable items, with oil-based paint markers, acrylic paints, and more.

So we organized the day, free for our region members, and got the message out.  There was some skepticism among others we work with; they guessed that everyone would be busy starting their vacationing and wouldn't be interested.  But it turned out great!  I think, in the end, 15 people showed up, and all  had a relaxing fun day learning, playing, and creating. You can see some of the items people made, in this picture of the whole group, below.  That's me in the red apron. 

In the "wool room", people were making wet-felted flowers, and learning to spin batting (I think I'm saying that correctly, but I'm really not sure).  And also, dyeing silk scarves!  (I admit to sneaking in for a bit and dyeing a scarf or two...)

 In "my" room, participants were embellishing mostly tote bags, aprons, and shoes. Everyone got to experience everything, switching rooms after lunch.

The photos in this post are all from this fun, relaxing, artsy day!!  We invited our neighboring region as well, and one person drove three hours to come and play with us!!!  She's a blogger too; you can read her blog here.  That's her in the pic below, working on her tote bag.

 Did you get a chance to make anything fun over spring break?  Did you create alone, or did you get to have an art play-date too? It can be inspiring to see what others will create in a group setting!!  By the way, I worked on a couple of things - besides my scarves, I also embellished my Blick tote bag, and also a pair of  old clogs in desparate need of an update! Here they are!