Photo by Miko Lee
Why bring Visual Arts
to my classroom?
Students love to explore the rich world of visual arts, with its various natural and man-made materials, tools and techniques. Research shows visual arts learning also helps students by:
* Engaging them in complex mental tasks, such as observing, envisioning, planning and assessing;
* Improving reading readiness in preschoolers;
* Fostering better organization and persistence in writing among older students;
* Revealing unique cultural traditions and history associated with certain art forms.
Click here for pricing
Click here for Mentor Artist Bios
Architecture and Sculpture
Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim, Nadine Gay, or Amanda Lockwood
Grades: 3-8
Students are introduced to the many ways architects transform space and material. After looking at a selection of architects ranging from Shigeru Ban to Zaha Hadid, students will think about what type of structure they would build while sketching and brainstorming. Students will then work with cardboard and masking tape to begin building 3-dimensional architectural forms. Students will be thinking about balance, symmetry/asymmetry, form/function, geometric relationships, and proportion. Once the cardboard forms are create and stable, layers of plaster gauze will be added to create an outer skin that can be painted. Students will then have the opportunity to compare and contrast the different approaches to the same sculptural materials.
Bookmaking
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Julia James, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
Students will learn the elements of bookmaking from binding to illustrating. Students explore the many different ways artists can make a book. Projects could include hand-made paper, drawing, printmaking, pop-up books, lift-the-flap books, baggie books, accordion books with CD case covers and classroom collaborative books.
Cartonería (Mexican Folk Art)
Mentor Artist: Ernesto Olmos or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: 5-12
Mexican cartonería is the creation of painted sculptures from recycled paper or cardboard in a manner similar to papier mâché. This popular Mexican art form combines Spanish art techniques with indigenous motifs and themes and is deeply rooted in ancient traditions and legends from Mexico. Students will learn the basics of sculpture and form as well as elements of traditional design and technique.
Cartooning & Illustration
Mentor Artist: Mark Edwards or Harry Simpson
Grades: 3-12
Students explore the world of cartooning by learning the basics of drawing, portraiture and storyboarding. Projects can include comic strips, books, portraits (self or other), and creation of characters. Students enthusiasm for writing stories and creating characters through cartooning provides a jumping off point for language arts learning.
Ceramics
Mentor Artist: Nadine Gay, Jenna North, Lisa Ouse Hicks, or Kiki Rostad
Grades: 1-12
Cost: This class is highly customized. Please contact AIS staff for pricing.
Students appreciate and learn from the tactile experience of working with clay. Students develop fine motor skills while learning basic hand-building techniques including pinch, coil and slab methods. Projects with clay could include development of basic technique through several small projects or a longer-term project including drawing a design, contemplation of symbolism, measuring for components, making the parts and assembling the final result.
Collograph Printing
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Ascha Drake, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
Building up collograph plates using oak tag and glue is similar to the collage process. Students will use self-portraiture as an inspiration, and look at the many ways visual artists have expressed the self. Students will then work with shape and composition to build up self-portraits, thinking about expression, details, identity, and texture. After arranging and rearranging the oak tag forms, students will assemble and layer the oak tag, developing surfaces called "plates" that will then be printed multiple times. Students will be stunned by the magic of spontaneity of this process, and will gain confidence combining ink colors and printing on different types of paper.
Drawing
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Katy Bernheim, Mark Edwards, Julia James, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
Students will enhance drawing skills by following guided practices in learning to see accurately, proportion, depth, shadow and composition. Students will learn how to draw using basic shapes as fundamental building blocks, utilizing guidelines and reference points. Students will investigate techniques for various drawing media, such as watercolor pencil, pastel, crayon and colored ink. Students will explore how to communicate stories through the creation of their artwork (i.e., facial and body expressions).
Ecological Art
Mentor Artist: Rebecca Burgess
Grades: 3-12
Focusing on the ancient arts of natural dying, weaving, papermaking, and natural building, students design and plant their own native plant dye gardens, creating art mediums in perpetuity. Students can create habitats for native birds, restoring hydrology patterns, and creating carbon sinks. This work gives children the ability to learn how to grow their own art mediums, while supporting the ecosystem.
Environmental Sculpture
Instructor: Amanda Lockwood
Grades: 2-5
Students will learn about contemporary artists who incorporate mixed media materials into their works. Students will then be asked to talk with their families to find materials in their homes that are being thrown away. Each student will bring in a recycled element to add to their own sculptural piece. We will then use wood bases, self- hardening clay, paper-clay, wire, found metal objects, acrylic paint and medium clay to make individual artworks that reflect our relationship with nature. There will be an educational component to this class exploring issues of recycling, landfills and the environment.
Glass Art
Mentor Artist: Marty Meade
Grades: 5-12
Cost: This class is highly customized. Please contact AIS staff for pricing.
This is a rare opportunity for students to create beautiful works of art from glass. Students learn to create Fused Glass art, designing, cutting and assembling glass pieces with other decorative materials, creating individual plates, jewelry and other fine art. On-going, process-oriented projects will enable students to explore a wide range of warm glass applications as well as pre and post firing techniques using a variety of studio tools. Safety, process, design, texture, color and functionality will be emphasized. Basic tools and supplies are included.
Glass Tile Mural
Mentor Artist: Nadine Gay
Grades: K-12
Cost: This class is highly customized. Please contact AIS staff for pricing.
Creating a Glass Tile Mural is a collaborative project, which can be created by a classroom, grade level or entire school, working together. Students learn basic art skills in order to create images around their chosen theme. Once students have created their artwork, they learn the process of creating glass tiles that are pieced together and mounted as part of the final mural.
Illuminated Manuscripts
Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim
Grades: 6-8
Students learn about the history of illuminated manuscripts and the methods and materials for producing unique and beautiful documents like those created before the invention of the printing press. Students view and compare historic manuscript pages and discuss how ancient scribes effectively used the principles of design and elements of art. Students use mixed media skills—ink pen calligraphy, gold leaf application and water-based paint— to create an artwork inspired by these designs and materials. Each student will create a unique design based on their monogram, using calligraphic letters gilded with gold leaf and illuminated with a painted design. Complexity will vary with grade level and total number of sessions. This course is directly linked to California seventh grade History-Social Science standards (Medieval and Renaissance Europe).
Maskmaking
Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim, Frank Gonzalez, Ernesto Olmos, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
This class focuses on the ancient art of mask-making. Students will focus on one or two specific types of masks working with materials such as plaster, paper, paper maché, clay, recycled or found materials. The projects can be related to a traditional form of mask from a specific culture or a unique, modern creation.
Mixed Media Unleashed
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Katy Bernheim, Nadine Gay, Julia James, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-8
In a relaxed, playful environment, develop technique in various media through non-traditional and traditional means--media such as designs and textures (use tools like scrapers or pipteetes, apply gesso, gel medium or spackle and a range of "paints" or dyes_ on different surfaces, abstract painting, handmade stamps and graphic design. Children will learn new skills and creatively express themselves as they work in a variety of forms including: painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and mixed media. Children will explore basic art fundamentals such as line, shape, color and texture. Course theme can be aligned with academic curriculum (i.e. an ocean theme could include creating animals of the sea, painting seascapes, making sponge prints and creating a 3-D ocean diorama).
Mosaics
Mentor Artist: Marty Meade, or Nadine Gay
Grades: 3-12
Students explore how to transform geometric shapes into intricate patterns using various textured surfaces of stone, glass, tile, shells, and other found objects. Students develop their own design, transfer it to plywood, and learn a variety of mosaic techniques including glass cutting, classic mosaic laying, and grouting. Older students explore Pique Assiette (“stolen plate”) mosaics made from broken plates, china, and ceramics. Students learn how to safely and precisely cut a plate, bowl, figurine, cup, etc., and then design a mosaic mirror and art panel.
Mural Design and Creation
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Evan Bissell, Louis Chinn, Nadine Gay, Frank Gonzalez, Laurie Marshall, or Keith "K-Dub" Williams
Grades: 3-12
Cost: This class is highly customized. Please contact AIS staff for pricing.
Children explore the basics of drawing, collage and assemblage, as well as the important skill of artistic collaboration. Mural creation evolves through a process of individual work, small group compositions, evaluation of the collective body of drawings and, finally, the design and creation of a mural on a wall selected with school site leaders.
Paper Exploration
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Nadine Gay, Julia James, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
By layering cut paper designs, students explore concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, abstraction, patterns and negative vs. positive space. Students look at cut paper art from the past—sometimes used to create stencils for patterns on textiles—and discover contemporary artists using cut paper techniques. Students create their own cut paper stencils, which will become beautiful layered paintings. Students can then use the resulting artwork to create mixed-media projects such as frames, sculptures, collages, and bound books. A possible option is for students to create handmade papers using recycled scraps and inclusions of their own choosing (i.e. twigs, dried flowers, fabric and string).
Painting
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Katy Bernheim, Louis Chinn, Mark Edwards, Julia James, Jenna North, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: PreK-12
Students explore the world of painting, experimenting with a variety of media including water-color, tempera and acrylic. This course focuses on learning specific techniques such as color-mixing, creating shades and tints, composition and perspective. Students may receive an introduction into various painting styles (i.e. impressionistic, abstract, realistic). Students may create a final painting beginning with the inception of the idea and proceeding through sequential planning and selection of techniques and media through the completion of the work.
Portraiture
Mentor Artist: Angela Baker, Katy Bernheim, Julia James, Laurie Marshall, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: K-12
Students view various styles of famous portraiture and learn how to draw their own image, experimenting with proportion and composition while studying the basic elements of portraiture art. Students will use pastels, watercolors, tempera, and mixed media to produce portraits that are full of life! Projects may include a framed portrait, comic book or illustrated storybook.
Printmaking
Mentor Artist: Asual Aswad, Katy Bernheim, or Julia James
Grades: PreK-12
Students are introduced to the ancient art-form of printmaking without a press. Students learn stamping and rubbing techniques, mono printing, relief techniques (foamplate), stenciling techniques, and how to transfer an image from a drawing to the printing block, experimenting with a variety of different papers and ink combinations. Students create their own unique image, learn to tell stories through a sequence of images and use stamps to create a variety of printed artworks such as pillows, lanterns, sculptures, collages, and bound books.
Puppetry
Mentor Artist: Frank Gonzalez, Kiki Rostad, or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: 3-12
Students discover that they can create a puppet out of ordinary found and recycled materials such as paper bags, socks, manila envelopes and boxes. Students design and assemble puppets, then learn to animate them. Students can make individual hand puppets, marionettes, or larger collaborative mechanical puppets, learning to develop characters and maneuver the puppets as a tem. The puppets can be used towards a performance, school play or for community display.
Scientific Illustration
Mentor Artist: Victoria Saxe or Lynn Zamarra
Grades: 3-8
Students learn about the career possibilities in the field of scientific illustration then practice the skill of creating accurate drawings and paintings of living organisms. Students observe and record the structures of organisms, learning observational drawing skills, including depicting shape, form and texture; as well as watercolor painting skills, with a focus on mixing colors to match realistic hues found in nature. Themes can be aligned with science curriculum subjects, such as the biology and anatomy of plants, insects, birds, mammals, etc.
Sculpture
Mentor Artist: Nadine Gay, Amanda Lockwood, or Lisa Ouse Hicks
Grades: 3-12
Students will explore height, width, and depth while discovering new ways to use sculptural materials and techniques. Students will use found objects to create fun and useful sculptures. Materials can include plaster, air-dry clay including wood, wire, old toys and costume jewelry. Thumbnail drawing, brainstorming, painting, decorating techniques, and group collaboration skills will be developed in this class. Students can create individual or collaborative sculpture projects.
Italian Street Painting
Mentor Artist: Genna Panzarella, Lisa Jones, or Evan Bissell
Grades: 3-12
Students learn about the unique art of Italian Street Painting, Youth in Arts’ specality! Students learn basic composition, framing, color and technique as they begin with pastels on paper. They learn from a master madonnari (street painter) how to transfer their image onto the street through gridding and stenciling. Students then learn how to blend, shape and contour images. Curriculum connections to math (gridding) and European history.
Arts Learning Link: Italian Street Painting Festival Student Artist Program
Video Production
Mentor Artist: Jeff Moore or Sophia Cooper
Grades: 3-12
Video Production takes students through the three phases of making a movie: Preproduction, Production and Postproduction. Students begin by learning video-making games and media literacy, and looking at how the movies they like are constructed to create feelings of emotion. Next, we begin planning our project: story development, script-writing and storyboarding. The classroom is transformed into a movie production studio as students play the role of actors, directors, assistant directors, cinematographers and camera operators. In the editing stages, students learn how to take their raw footage and create a movie - this is where "movie magic" comes in and the video comes to life! The final class meeting is a screening of all that was created. This residency is a great match with Language Arts classes, where classwork can give a focus to the movie production.
Weaving
Mentor Artist: Rebecca Burgess
Grades: 3-12
Stepping out of the classroom into nature, students will gather natural materials to be used in the creating of unique one of a kind weavings. Students will learn how to create primitive looms from simple available materials. Projects will include wall reliefs, placemats, and small wearable objects. Great social studies connections.
World Folk Art
Mentor Artist: Katy Bernheim, Ernesto Olmos or Ernesto Olmos
Grades: 3-12
Students learn about traditional art forms from a variety of cultures and countries. The course will focus on three to four forms from different cultures with emphasis on process. Students use traditional media such as charcoal, pen and ink, paint and block printing, as well as collage, paper maché and other mixed media techniques to explore their interpretations of each culture’s arts. Possible projects include Western and non-Western art, like African masks or rangoli designs from India, mask-making, weaving, Huichol yarn painting, Mexican cartoneria and Adrinka printmaking.
