ARTicles The Newsletter of the Art Department of the Phoenix Elementary School District

January 2016 Established August 2003 Issue #169

“An elementary school that treats the arts as the province of a few gifted children, or views them only as recreation and entertainment, is a school

that needs an infusion of soul. The arts are an essential element of education, just alike reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

William Bennett, former US secretary of Education

Happy New Year What is it about a new year? We feel that our batteries have

been re-charged. After the holidays, during which we ate and

spent too much, it is now time to begin to get back to business

and try to at least get through the month of January before we

forget about those resolutions. So, Happy New Year it is. We

should all try to make it the best year ever. Make life better for

someone else and you will make life better for yourself. Pay it

forward. Visit someone you haven’t seen for a long time. Smile

and say “hello” to a stranger. Buy a homeless person a meal.

Over tip a good waitress. Think about what you have learned in

life and pass it along. You will make someone’s day better, and

you will make your year one to remember.

Happy New Year from John, Rudy, Nancy, Abby, Crystal,

Carrie, Lauren, Kyle, Stacy, Leah, Vicky, Alisa, Deb, and Janet

MLK at the State Capitol

Our wonderful students will again participate in the annual

Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Art Exhibition at the Arizona

State Capitol. The show will open Thursday, January 21 from

4:30-6:00. This event was once open to other school districts but

for the past 12 years, PESD is the only one invited to exhibit.

Everyone is invited to this event in which more than 100 pieces

of student art will be featured.

Portrait of

Martin Luther King Jr. by Heard art student, Ariel Chavez

Our Qwn Jackson Pollock Month

The cover of Life Magazine in 1949 asked, “Is Jackson Pollock

America’s Greatest Painter?”

Our most famous alumnus,

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

changed the direction of world

art by creating the Abstract

Expressionist movement.

Pollock attended Monroe School

in the 1920s. This is now the

Phoenix Children’s Museum.

He is best known for his huge

non-objective paintings that had

no center of focus. They were

meant to create an environment in which the viewer felt

surrounded and able to enter into another realm. We celebrate

Pollock in January by having our students study his life and

work. Watch for an exhibition at the Burton Barr Library this

spring.

Blue Poles – 1952

Pollock at Herrera Ms. Vicky Ross’s Herrera students created paintings ala

Pollock using a Christmas theme. The paintings will grace

the hallways of the school and the door to her art room.

It Looks Great On Papier

Whittier art teacher, Ms Leah Mitchell, works with a student on a

papier mache squid. Students were up to their eyeballs in a messy

flour and water paste, but the results were fantastic, and the

students had a great time.

Calamari anyone???

Tearing it up at Garfield

Ms. Nancy Caternolo’s younger Garfield art students created

shapes by tearing construction paper to aid in identifying

organic shapes as well as strengthening fine motor skills.

All Roads Lead to Edison Some of Ms. Abby Christensen’s Edison art students worked on the

mathematics of perspective. They did one point perspectives in

which a road going to the horizon line disappeared at a

vanishing point. Notice that even the broken lines in the

road are in perspective.

Avian Abodes

Ms. Crystal Conover’s 5th

grade art classes made bird

houses which are now hanging around the Shaw campus.

They constructed the ornothoid apartments from wood

and then painted them bright colors hoping to attract

young feathered couples wishing to start families. These

birdie bungalows should egg them on. The wrent is low

and it is a gated community near good schools. Arborial

Abodes Abound.

How they see us Students always have a great time drawing their art teachers.

Ms. Janet Tucker (Heard) Ms. Abby Christensen (Edison)

Mr. John Avedisian (formerly of MTS)

Ms. Stacy Hedrick (Bethune)

Ms. Nancy Caternolo (Garfield)

Capitol under Siege by Dragons Mr. Rudy Begay’s team of Dragon slayers at Capitol have been

hard at work creating textures, both implied and real in their

images of dragon eyes.

7th and 8th graders at Capitol are also using a grid to make the

full dragon bodies. They began by drawing a grid on their

paper, then mating the lines in their drawings to the spaces.

Even 2nd graders got into the act. Mr. Begay demonstrated how

to draw the different body parts of dragons and the kids took it

from there. All of the dragon artists at Capitol did a super job.

ARTifacts: What’s in a 20th Century name?

Surrealism- Ideas taken from dreams and the subconscious. Often

images were realistic, but set in unusual circumstances.

Fluxus – A blend of media including painting, film, architecture,

etc.

Dadaism – An absurdist art

movement in which the artist uses

non-conventional art materials.

Impressionism – Light, color in an

instance of time were studied to

create paintings using minimal

detail.

Pop Art – Art depicting

everyday objects. The best

known is Andy Warhol’s

lithograph of a stack of

Campbell’s Soup cans.

Op Art – Art that employs

optical illusions.

Abstract Expressionism –

Artwork with no reference

to the physical world.

Paintings made from pure emotion.

Non-Objective – Coined by Vassily Kandinsky, it is a term

describing a painting that has no reference to any real life objects.

Suprematism – The movement was based upon artistic feeling and

emotion rather than specific references to physical reality.

Cubism – The reduction of all objects to very simple planes and

colors. Background and foreground are often on the same plane.

Der Blaue Reiter – Started in

Germany by Russian

immigrant artists and native

Germans it is a movement

that pushed the boundaries of

current rules and

sensibilities. It had no

specific identifying imagery.

Futurism – Begun in Italy the movement was meant to suggest

abstraction and speed, youth and energy. The ideas spread to other

parts of Europe and many of the artists and their work became

synonymous with Fascism.

De Stijl – Very simplified minimal images. Other things like

furniture design and architecture were also reduced to simple forms

and colors.

Social Realism – Depictions of stylized and heroic working class

people and events. It was the main art thrust in the early days of the

Soviet Union and other Socialist/Communist countries.

Art Deco – The origins are from

1920s France and spread to the rest

of Europe and the US. It is a style

of art, architecture and design

using the simplicity of line as its

main theme.

Art Nouveau –Art Nouveau was

mostly a stately architectural style

which used nature as its base.

Simple elegance was the

philosophy.

Fauvism – Fauve is a

French word that literally

means Wild Beast. When

we look at the work of

artists like Henri Matisse

now, we do not think it is

very outrageous, but it

certainly offended the

sensibilities of the art

world in the early 20th

century.

American Regionalism – Artist who painted realistic landscapes

throughout the US and celebrated the beauty of America.

The Ash Can School-early 20th century movement in which the

artist painted the working class of NY and even some of the seedier

parts of the city.

Art among us

Shaw

Ms. Crystal Conover’s art super stars at Shaw have created a four

foot by eight foot mural that is hanging in the gymnasium. The

handprints of many Shaw students will be a permanent part of the

Shaw landscape.

Garfield

Garfield school just got a fresh new mural designed by artist, Edgar

Fernandez who also designed the fabulous mural at Shaw. Mr.

Fernandez was aided in this project by Garfield 6th grade students.