If all goes according to plan, this will be the first (hopefully! time and energy permitting!) in a series of retroactive posts, sharing some of the work we did last term.

So, about 5000 years ago, we started an Art/Career/ADST project inspired by the work of writer/illustrator Todd Parr, specifically by his book It’s Okay to Be Different:

There were many tie-ins here: to the work we have done in experimenting with a certain kind of mindset conducive to the creative process; to our year-long focus in Career Ed, actively trying to create a respectful, inclusive, and positive work environment; and to dig into the slow-down process of the Curricular Competencies of the Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies curriculum.   This was also the first in a series of activities experimenting with reaching out to the Suncrest community, as leaders within the school, to do our part to help extend that sense of positive inclusion outside of the walls of our portable.

By reading the book and looking at other samples of Todd Parr’s work, the class generated criteria for successfully creating art in his style.  

From there, we did a lot of practicing, both in copying various pieces of Todd Parr’s art, and in applying the criteria to other activities, such as our morning index card art work:

Once we had the style firmly in hand (which is a great expressive alternative to stick people for those who feel less than confident in their artistic abilities), students generated ideas of what messages might be good for either themselves to say out loud to the world or for others to see and find solace and a sense of belonging in.

The project outline for this work can be found here: Todd Parr Art Criteria

A big part of this project was the drafting stage, coming up with a prototype of each work of art and then adjusting that prototype in response to further exploration; sketching the various aspects of each part of the design, trying each out several different ways until the right combinations were found, and color-testing each aspect as well. The basic idea here was attempting to honor what Bruce Lee taught us about finding the proper balance between inspiration and technique, how too much of either can distort your approach and the end result, and, in the words of the enchanter Dallben from The Book of Three, how “[in] some cases, we find more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”  This has been and will continue to be our approach to all types of work, not only art, but across the curriculum, trying to focus less on the end result and more on exploration. 

Eventually, though, drafts in hand, we did get to work on the final products:

 

The results (which I am going to have a veeeeeeeery hard time giving back) were displayed in the hall, across from the gym:

(I won’t tell you how long it took me to do the math to get those all up in an aesthetically pleasing and balanced array.  It’s okay to be slightly obsessive compulsive…)

 

The rubric used for assessment can be found here: Todd Parr Art rubric

One of the best parts, for me, has been seeing students of all ages standing in the hallway in front of the display, carefully reading all of the speaking and thinking bubbles that you all took such care in drafting, and hearing them point at different works of art that they found themselves in – “Oh, that one is so me…”  MACC-sters: it worked!  It worked because you dared to take some risks, and because you dared to take pride in your work.  Keep it up!