Traveling Exhibits Inspiration Avenue: Teacher's Choice Award

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

More love notes.... This is why we do it!

Last April Lincoln Street Elementary School in Waverly, NY hosted our Spectacular, Teacher's Choice Award Winning Vincent vanGogh Traveling Exhibit. Teacher, Karen Navaie sent me a love note which contained quotes from students. This is what they said, this is how they felt, this is why we do it.
Lisa, the exhibit Vincent vanGogh was awesome. Thank you so much. My students, parents, staff and faculty were so excited about the exhibit. Everyone was talking about vanGogh & Starry Night. One kindergarten student came around the corner after I set up the exhibit. His comment, "WOW!", "That's Starry Night by Vincent vanGogh!". Other comments - "I think that the display was really amazing!" "It was so big that many people can see it at once". "My favorite display was the Night Cafe and the view from his hospital room, because there were very bright colors!" 6th grade student.
"When I first saw the painting it looked alive and I like it ever since." 6th grade student
"Spectacular! Beautiful, Amazing" 5th grade student
"I think I'll never forget that exhibit! Starry Night was beautiful and big, and just like lots of Vincent's wondrous paintings. It really touched you just to look at it, and that exhibit shows you that!" 4th grade student
"I thought is was awesome with all the beautiful colors and the brush strokes. It reminded me of being in a patch of flowers with lots of colors. I learned that Vincent died penniless and that his paintings were worth so much. Starry Night was beautiful!" 4th grade student
Thank you again for the exhibit. I'm already planning to get one for next year.
Thanks, Karen Navaie

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Teacher's Choice Award Winning Vincent van Gogh Traveling Exhibit Visits Kaukauna, WI and Leaves a Post - Impression

As you know I love to use this blog as a venue for you to inspire your peers. So, with that being said, here's Elementary Art Teacher Vicky Siegel .... Hi Lisa- The week with the
van Gogh Traveling Exhibit was a big hit! Only 2 more classes to go and I change my room back to normal! Each class saw the exhibit during their art time, and then there was a parent night on Thurs. It was a big success! I had the students complete a "scavenger hunt" after I talked a little about the exhibit. I added to the show by having 6 large stand up bulletin boards around the room with the info. you sent along with a ton I had found. Students were so insightful! We talked about how van Gogh lost 10 teeth due to his buying paint and not food and not being healthy, and also about how he never smiled in his self-portraits. One first grader added, 'That's probably why he never smiled! Because he was missing his teeth!" All the students were surprised that the "Red Vineyard at Arles" was his only painting that he had sold. Now next week, all students will start a van Gogh project. First graders are painting sunflowers, second graders are creating a "mini-masterpiece" ( a small drawing of a van Gogh painting on a popsicle stick easel), third graders are making a clay "Starry Night", and 4th graders are making a new bedroom with the bed being a yarn weaving! All the students signed their name to a large birthday card, since van Gogh's birthday is on March 30th.
The Mike Venezia "van Gogh" book was a perfect fit to read to all of the classes, too. Thanks for this opportunity. I can't wait to schedule a new exhibit for next school year!! Sincerely. Vicky Siegel.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm.... Did You Know?

Did you know x-ray technology has shown that there are three different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci spent 12 years on Mona Lisa's lips?

Did you ever wonder where Mona Lisa's eyebrows are?

Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is 2'6" x 1'9"?

Did you know that when Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, six replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price in the three years before the original was recovered?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci invented high heels?

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci wrote all of his personal notes from right to left, forcing those who read them to use a mirror?

Did you know in all of Salvador Dali's paintings you can find a self-portrait?

Did you know Salvador Dali designed a chess set for the American Chess Federation? The pieces were modeled after his and his wife Gala's fingers using casts of his molars for crowns.

Did you know Henri Rousseau was a self taught artist? He never took an art class and began painting in his forties.

Did you know although Henri Rousseau was known as a charmingly naive "primitive" artist, his rap sheet included jail time for theft and bank fraud?

Did You know Vincent vanGogh was a missionary before he started painting?

Did you know that when you look at a bright color (like red) and then look at a piece of white paper: You briefly see its opposite (pale blue)? Try it, it works!

Did you know that Michelangelo was 26 when he started his statue of David? He finished it 17 months later.

Did you know that Frederic-August Bartholdi sculpted The Statue of Liberty?

Did you know that Pablo Picasso's career lasted seventy-eight years? From 1895 until his death in 1973.

Did you know that the only sculpture that Michelangelo signed was The Pieta, completed in 1500?

Did you know that Mary Cassatt was the only American to exhibit with the Impressionists?

Did you know that Vincent vanGogh completed over 800 paintings and 850 drawings in the decade before his death?

Did you know that Jackson Pollock studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York?

Did You Know? Picasso's Girl with a Ponytail Sylvette David is an artisit

Lydia Sylvette David began her artistic life not as a painter, but as a model for Pablo Picasso. When she was seventeen years old, she was living in the south of France with her English-born mother who was an artist, her brother, and her boyfriend, Toby Jellinek, a maker of avant-garde metal chairs. Picasso had set up a studio nearby and noticed Jellinek’s unusual pieces. He asked him to deliver a couple of the chairs to his studio, and with him went Sylvette David. Shortly after, Picasso presented a picture of her, drawn from memory, and convinced David to model for him.

A shy girl, David was tall and had striking looks. She wore her hair in a long, blond ponytail, a style like that which Brigitte Bardot would later adopt. It was her hair and face that captivated Picasso, but unlike many of his other models, their relationship was purely platonic. In the months she sat for him in 1954, Picasso produced over forty pieces based on her likeness. Photos of Picasso and his model also appeared in an issue of the widely read magazine Paris-Match.

David would relate that she began drawing to pass the time while she sat for Picasso, often posed in a rocking chair. She later married and moved to England with her husband, and not wanting to capitalize on her fame as a painter’s muse, signed her work with her married name, Lydia Corbett. Eventually, she added a second signature to her paintings and watercolors, that of Sylvette David. As her reputation as an artist grew, she exhibited her work in England and France, including several London exhibitions.

I was inspired to contact Lydia Sylvette after reading Laurence Anholt's book
"Picasso and the girl with the ponytail". She's a lovely woman. She sent me images of her artwork in hopes of developing curriculum and getting more recognition in the states. What do you think? Would you like to know more about Lydia Sylvette?

Diego Rivera helps celebrate Mexican art, music and language in Bannockburn, IL

Art Instructor Shawn Le Gloanec had this to say.... Hi Lisa! the murals were the connecting link for our cross-curricular study of mexican art, music and language. Our Spanish teacher ,music teacher and I each created lessons in our respective areas. The students listened to and performed music from mexico .The spanish classes identified many of the important Mexicans portrayed on the mural and researched their lives. In my art classes, we watched an excellent video about Rivera and other mexican mural artists such as orozco and siqueiros. We also designed and painted cloth tote bags using many of the colors and objects inspired by the mural. All of this culminated in a marvelous field trip to our Mexican Fine Arts Center in Chicago. We are looking forward to our next opportunity to bring a new mural to our school. Thank you for making yourself so available by phone,

Escher Visits Bartlesville, OK This Is What Their Daily Paper The Examiner-Enterprise had to say

Satin prints of the works of famed artist Maurits Cornelis Escher are on display this week in the library of the Bartlesville Mid-High School. Pictured along with some information about Escher are Mid-High art students (from left) Nicole Caster, Luke Libby, Blaize Kissell, Ashley Ryel and Matthew Reeder. The exhibit features some information about the artist himself, whose works have been well-received over the years by math scholars and scientists, who enjoy his use of geometric distortions. The Escher exhibit was made possible after a grant proposal by Mid-High art teacher Lea Burke was accepted by the Bartlesville Public School Foundation. The grant will result in four more exhibits being displayed in the Mid-High library during the second semester of the 2008-09 academic year.

Traveling Exhibits Meets Viktor Schreckengost