18 October 2019
Half-term is here again, and the art studio has been decked in black and bright orange to celebrate Halloween upon our return from the half-term break.
Halloween decorations coincide with the beginning of Grade 6’s new unit on Celebration, where we will look at the value in observing special events through ritual with joy and happiness. This is interesting too in the context of Halloween’s origins in the Gaelic Festival of Samhain and the beginning of the Celtic New Year the following day. We’ll finish up our candy houses (post coming soon!) through a celebratory lens before we move on to projects celebrating Divali in India and later Tet here in Vietnam. The last of Grade 7’s totem animal linocut prints are drying on the drying rack, and Grade 8’s pop art transcriptions are now up on the wall.
Grade 8s began their unit on Community last week in a community-building entry point activity and have started beautiful sgraffito studies on Ming vases, which will inform original designs that illustrate the various communities they belong to. After returning from the break, my Grade 7s will look at the optical relationships between colours by studying colour theory and its application in divisionism. Grade 11s will continue developing original pop art-style paintings and can later look forward to constructing a Delft Blue house sculpture like the one sitting behind my desk. In the meantime, the beach calls!
