Lesson 2: Identity Flags
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After studying flag symbology and looking at the work of contemporary artists Cauleen Smith and Christine Wong Yap, students created a personalized flag to convey who they are/ their individuality and celebrate their cultural and personal identities.
Featured Artists: Cauleen Smith and Christine Wong Yap |
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Lesson 3: Community Puzzle
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Similar to the artists we studied this week, our students used their unique identities, qualities, and experiences to inspire their work. Each student made a puzzle piece depicting their favorite person, place, or thing (or combination of all three) in their community. The pieces fit together to create a larger puzzle, which is symbolic of the Stratton-Urbana-Champaign community and our own special place within it.
Students gained a better understanding of their identity, learned the importance of working together, and appreciated the different ways our differences make up and add to the community. Featured Artists: Nick Cave and Azucena Romá |
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Lesson 4: Transforming SpaceS
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This week, we looked at the many buildings artist Theaster Gates reshaped and revitalized, including the Stony Island Bank. We then asked students to consider specific places in their community and how they can be changed for the better.
Students created watercolor posters that depicted a fictional, transformed space in their community. Students learned to recognize their own potential for transformation and their potential for impact within their community. Featured Artists: Theaster Gates and Willie Birch |
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Lesson 5: Performance Art
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Taking inspiration from Merritt Johnson's costumes and Marinella Senatore' parade pieces, our students made creature-themed T-shirts and props that they wore in a live art performance later that week, which was choreographed, video taped, and musically produced by the students themselves.
Students learned to recognize art as something that comes in various forms- including collaboration and performance- and can be used in a celebratory manner, to define/bring together a community, or as a form of protest. Featured Artists: Merritt Johnson and Marinella Senatore 
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Lesson 6: Everyday Arts Lab Mural
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For our final lesson, students collaborated to create a large, multimedia, interactive installation for the Exhibition. The mural incorporated portrait photos of the students, their hand prints, signatures, decorated paper tubes, and handmade postcards that were placed inside the tubes for viewers to reach in and take.
Students learned what a portrait is and decided how they wanted be portrayed in the mural. They also collectively decided how to portray our class' personality best in the mural by coming up with the title themselves. In the making of the postcards, students were introduced to the 'giving away' of work concept as communication, memory, statements, etc. On one side of the postcards, they created drawings with the intention to give to someone else. On the other side, they wrote personalized notes/messages reflecting on what they learned in Every Day Arts Lab. Artists of the Week: Matika Wilbur and Jean-Michel Basquiat |
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Everyday Arts Lab Student Exhibition
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The annual student art exhibition showcasing our theme of Identity and Community.
Teachers and students worked together to label, matte, and assemble the show. |
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