Beginning with a Beautiful OOPS!

Towards the end of my first year, I started building a class library of art books. Stories about art, famous artwork, and artist biographies. More about my favorite books later. My family came to visit that summer and brought a treasure---$100 of children's books I had ordered with the next year's budget.

Year two began with a different book for each grade level (Ish, The Dot, and others). At that time, I thought I would continue with those books every year, one permanently assigned to each grade level. I can't remember if I kept the tradition in year three, but year four brought a different idea. I kicked off the year with one book for the entire elementary school. Art is...

This year, year five, I picked a different book. Beautiful Oops. It's part of my new stash. Broke the bank (or should I say, the budget) and brought back nearly $170 of books from my time in the states this summer. Well this book is unlike any I've seen before. If you haven't purchased it yet, rush out to your nearest bookstore and get it! I'd say order it online but amazon is temporarily out of stock. To call it a pop-up book is a gross understatement. Ripped pages, bent corners, flaps and overlays and crumpled up paper. Each "oops" is creatively transformed into something beautiful. Seemed perfect for art class!

While I want my students to practice good craftsmanship, sometimes you just have to make it work! Your neighbor drips paint on your picture--make it work. Don't like the line you drew in pen--make it work. A smudge and a smear--make it work.

Transform oops moments into a wonderful part of your finished work.

To practice, I asked students to pick an "oops" page from the board. (I clipped up scraps of paper with tears, folds, wrinkles, smears, smudges, and drips---most gathered from scrap piles in the teachers' workroom, a few with additional and intentional markings from my hand.) Students then used markers, colored pencils, scissors, and glue to modify and create masterpieces. Some of the students finished early and wanted to do a second piece. Others added lots of details. One particular first grade boy thought the challenge was too easy. After he beautified the smudge on his paper, he took some markers in hand and made some wild dashes along the bottom, chanting something about more mistakes and more oops. He then managed to incorporate those scribblings purposefully into his scene.

All the "oops" art will take over the bulletin boards outside my classroom next week. They are really quite special! I am more than pleased with the results. Some of the students were so engaged they wanted to continue working on their oops project next week!

(The picture above is also a small preview of some new displays in my room. Check back for more info about my word wall, noise chart, color wheel, and other additions in year five!)

Visual Culture and Cultural Misunderstandings

This is my fourth year. Teaching art. In China. But I still make cultural mistakes, almost daily.

My friend blogs about the blending of cultures. He's truly an expert in this thing. Not just an expert--he's a professional. It is his job. For me, I just fumble along as I teach art.

Just this past month, I made two big blunders, both art-related, that continue to humble me on my cross-cultural journey. First I designed an image that some view as Satanic. And then this week...well let's back it up.

For last year's Gala, I did a wall of monochromatic self-portraits down the hallway to our art gallery. I wanted to do something similar this year, but not portraits. I decided to have students create designs with the following parameters:

     The design must be symmetrical.
     The design must include a border.
     The design must only use one color.
     The design must incorporate your first name (English).

The colors were assigned based on my class color coding. Brilliant! Until I told the first graders they could only use red and they had to write their name. BUT THAT MEANS DEATH! Yes, one boy insisted that to write your name in red means death. At which point in time, bits of cultural lessons from the past four years rushed through my brain and I realized the only four stipulations for this project forced the students to walk under a ladder, break a mirror, have a black cat cross their path, and step on a crack to break their mother's back. Except maybe worse. Because I can't think of an American equivalent---something that superstition says if you do this, you will die.

I popped open my door, looked into the Fine Arts office across the hall, and quick consulted with two colleagues, a Hong-Kong-Canadian (secondary art teacher) and Korean-American (elementary band teacher). Yes, writing your name in red is bad. It's an old thing that might mean death for you or death from your mother, depending on your tradition. It is an old thing. But it is still a thing. So what could I do? I'd already done the project in blue and yellow with no cultural faux-pas. I couldn't change it now for first grade!

To appease the kids, I added some brown colored pencils to the mix. If they felt strongly about the red name association, they could write their name in brown but do the rest of the design in red. That seemed to settle the most violent opponents. Now I'm just hoping parents won't be offended when they see the red name designs at next week's Gala...

Class Pets?

With each class period, my love for Dumpling grew and grew.

     He won't hurt you.
     He's been here since Christmas vacation.
     He stays up by the lights and never even comes down by people.

You can only repeat those phrases so many times before that little (nasty) moth endears himself to your heart.

It wasn't just me. Even one fifth grader remarked "I normally don't like bugs but I love Dumpling!"

And then we found out Dumpling had a love of his own, Honey Drop. Yes, one of my students noticed that there were TWO moths. Which only brought more questions. How do you know it is a boy? Which one is Dumpling? How do you know that's Dumpling and not Honey Drop? The simple solutions---"Miss Brown told me" and "Dumpling is the one that flies around. Honey Drop likes to sit and rest."

What happened next was magical. I had just told a room of crazy first graders that Dumpling had never touched anyone and then he landed right on me!

The students decided that he landed on me because he loved me. We did spend lots of time together. And amazingly, having preached a message of moth love to students for a few weeks, I didn't freak out at all. There was a moth on my shoulder and I was still as can be, trying to keep him there as long as possible so my TA could grab a camera and document this!






Me and Dumpling!

(Obviously this is Dumpling, not Honey Drop, because he landed on me. Honey Drop likes to sit and rest.)




The first graders couldn't stop talking about our mothy friends for the rest of class.

     I wish I had a moth as a pet.
     I think he eats the m&ms you give him.
     I want to name him Bumpling.
     I want to name him Shine because he likes the light.
     If you say the moth's name, will it come to you?

Then the weather got warm. Just as my Chinese friend suggested, Dumpling only liked me for my warm classroom. Spring break came and went, and there went Dumpling and Honey Drop.

I miss the buzzing of their wings in the lights. The craziness that ensued every time they made an appearance. The fact that I had a class pet--me, the one who has a strong aversion to animals.

Our classroom gave our mothy friends a warm and welcoming place to spend the winter, and they gave us many smiles, a few shreaks, and lots of laughs on cold winter days.

Weaving a Bulletin Board Backdrop

A weaving bulletin board from my first year teaching gained new attention this year when bulletin board blogs and pinterest pins brought viewers to the display.

Last week, I decided to revamp the concept for a display of 5th grade reused bag weavings.




I like the bold graphic look of the black and white checkerboard on the exposed cork.
I also love how the board is a 3-dimensional demonstration of weaving.

On the opposite board, I simply displayed some of the weavings in a staggered arrangement.

a year

It’s been a year.
A year of transition.
A year of goodbyes, of hellos, of tears and laughter and hugs.
But mostly just a year.

     A year since the day I never could have anticipated.

I find myself back in the role of graphic designer, but it’s different this time. This time, the clients are my friends, my coworkers, my student’s parents. And the product—a shirt to honor his life.

It’s his year. The year of the dragon. He would have been twelve this June. This year would have been goodbye in a different way. Goodbye from elementary school. On to middle school with the secondary art teacher. But he’s not there eating in the cafeteria when I walk past the sixth grade boys.

So I sit at the lightbox in my classroom and trace elements from a dragon design we found online. Then I find fonts to match. Architect’s Daughter, based on the handwriting of another one in our community. And the appropriate Chinese characters to relate. A border finishes it off, to mimic an artist’s seal, a rounded square chop.

It’s a sobering project. One I never wish to repeat. To be asked to use my skills to celebrate his life is an honor. That we are celebrating his life, not living it with him now, brings fresh tears.

As a community, we gathered today and watched an hour of home videos.
Tomorrow is a school baseball game. He loved baseball.
And the shirts will be a continual reminder of our friend, our student, our brother, our son.

Tim, we love and remember you.

The red design will be printed on a yellow shirt, with the dragon on the front and the words on the back. The proceeds from the sales will be added to the fund that honors his memory and his love for music and the arts. This fund will be used to purchase things that touched his life and that he loved, such as major instruments for the band program, special afterschool programs in music and the arts, etc.