High School Studio Art
Instructor: Alison Frey Andersson
Fall semester began at home and the students did an intensive drawing course. Gesture and blind contour drawing, shading and other techniques were explored in exercises and assignments. We sent each other art in the mail and made distance exquisite corpses. We continued to self portraiture- a project of one representational observed portrait and one symbolic or non-repesentational portrait was made. We had a critique of this work over Zoom and it was surprisingly productive and fun. Creating the illusion of space using perspective and other tools was next. Students explored art history with mini artist research homework.
We returned to campus and began work on a paper maché sculpture piece inspired by the work of a contemporary artist with the loose theme of creating an heirloom or artifact. The final assignment was block printing. We were inspired by Edo Japan and German Expressionists and created multiples by carving blocks and printing them on paper. The students were also encouraged to make a stamp to use as a signature. The following are snippets from these projects. The students overcame so many obstacles to make this wonderful work.
Scroll down and click images to enlarge.
Gré
Isis
Lola
Sara
Sienna
Josie
Parker
Julia
Nicola
Lilly
Max
Group Effort
Exquisite Corpse Game
While we were away from each other, the students connected by making exquisite corpses. An exquisite corpse is a game played, most notably by the surrealists in the 1920’s, where a paper is folded numerous times and each person draws on their part of the paper without seeing what the previous artist drew. The challenge is to continue the drawing using only the lines that overlap the fold. We used a figurative suggestion so each student drew part of the body in their turn. The papers were passed among the students at material pick ups (after being held for two weeks quarantine in between).
