PreKinder Louise Nevelson Sculptures

 My PreK classes just finished working on our version of Louise Nevelson sculptures.

We started out by talking about recycling and what it is.

I had pre-strung old record albums with a piece of yarn, so that I would be able to hang the artwork up when they were finished. (There were many interesting conversations with my students who come into the art room before school about what records are. They were fascinated and I felt OLD!

Each table was given a basket full of random odds and ends that I was able to collect: wood scraps, puzzle pieces, plastic ware, unifix cubes, plastic
Easter eggs, etc. Pretty much anything that I could find free or extremely cheap, worked for me!

I gave each student a piece of scrap paper with craft glue on it. I showed them how to dip each piece into the glue and then place it onto the album.

I also showed them how they could build up, placing items on top of one another.

 I thought about painting them in the style of Louise Nevelson, but I thought they looked so great as is, that I left them alone.

I have hung them up in the PreKinder hallway and they look amazing!!!

As a side note, living in Houston, I am lucky enough to have a couple of great resources for finding inexpensive materials to use in recycled art. We have the Center for Recycled Art, which is open 1 day a month- only to teachers. You can fill a brown grocery bag with ANYTHING and pay only $5.

I was able to purchase all of the albums for this project for $5, because they fit into a brown paper bag!

We also have Texas Art Asylum. You can donate your old materials to them and they will resell them or do as I do, and pick up whatever extra items I need for a very low price.

If you live in the area and haven't visited these ladies, I highly recommend it!!!

Pin It

Salvador Dali Clocks

Our district's art museum (Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum http://cms.springbranchisd.com/Default.aspx?alias=cms.springbranchisd.com/ayam) has begun their annual First Saturday's Art Programs. The theme this year is "From Rembrandt to Warhol, Great Artist and Their Art". For the month of October, the focus was on "Modern Masters"-  Picasso, Dali, Matisse, Van Gogh etc.

My sessions were based on Salvador Dali and his painting "The Persistence of Memory".

I found this great video (http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-a-salvador-dali-clock) on how to make a clock out of an old record album. The video used an oven at 200 degrees. Since we were doing this activity in a classroom, I pulled out all of my old electric skillets (used for melting crayons to batik) and filled them with water. I set them at about 200-250 degrees it worked just as well as heating the albums in the oven.

I had a friend who donated all of her old 80's albums for this project, so I didn't need to worry about that expense. The one thing that I did have difficulty with was finding inexpensive clocks! I hit up every resale shop, Salvation Army and dollar store in my area and found that clocks are not cheap. I did have a few clock donated, which helped out a lot.

The clocks were taken apart ahead of time, but for an older group of students, I don't see why they couldn't learn  how to take them apart themselves. You will need to have some screwdrivers and pliers handy.

Probably the most difficult thing was choosing which album to use. Many of the adults went with the nostalgia factor and there were others who chose their album by the artwork on the album. The children didn't really have difficulty, except for the fact that many of them didn't know what an album was- oh, it makes me feel so old!! When I told them that this is how we listened to music before we had CDs, I even had a couple ask me what a CD was! That gave me a good laugh- I hadn't even thought of how some children have only ever listened to music on their iPods and MP3 players. Wow!

In class, I showed the students (for out 1st Saturdays program, many of the students are adults, which is a nice change for me) how to melt the clock and form it with their hands while it was still malleable. They could always put it back into the water to reheat it if they didn't get the desired bend.

Then I had metallic markers out for them to decorate. The metallic looked really nice against the black vinyl.

Our last step was adding the clock mechanism. Once they were put together, they used a glue gun and attached the battery compartment to the back of the album. Pin It