For the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, artist Stephanie Syjuco created an expansive shop of souvenirs produced in a monochrome palette: the memorable orange hue of the Golden Gate Bridge. Working with the same paint used to keep the bridge looking fresh, Syjuco's installation features all things reddish-orange: teacups, jewelry, postcards and tchotchkes that are surprisingly not for sale, but presented together as a conceptual art installation. This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at Syjuco’s collaborative process.

Art can be found in everything, even ordinary objects. Artist David Huffman finds that abstraction is a great way to delve into the meaning and symbolism of everyday objects, like a basketball or a shoe. Find your own inspiration and create some abstract art -- it might have more meaning than you might think!

Anila Quayyum Agha’s installation Alhambra Nights was selected to be included in the City of Cincinnati’s BLINK festival. The event spanned twenty city blocks and included light, interactive art, and large-scale projection mapping. Inspired by Agha’s visit to the Alhambra and her efforts to connect traditional Islamic art and architecture with contemporary technology and Western audiences.

Apexer is a street artist who creates colorful, spray-painted murals around the world. Using a visual foundation based in graffiti art and Chinese calligraphy, Apexer abstracts letterforms to create complex, dynamic compositions for his street art projects. Often creating artworks that communicate the vibe of the neighborhood where they are on view, Apexer’s painted gestures are accessible to a wide audience, and are constantly expanding upon the core element of his work: the letters of his nickname.

At first glance, Katena might look like an ordinary inflatable with an unusually complex and oversized structure. But when they walk inside, visitors soon realize this is an entirely different experience. They enter a world apart, a world of interconnecting tunnels and domes saturated with light and color, called a luminarium. This video will take your students on a virtual tour of one luminarium that was featured at the Cincinnati BLINK festival. They will learn how the design team of Architects of Air blends geometry, art, and architecture to create a pneumatic, or air-filled, structure in which form must follow function.

Sanaz Mazinani is an artist with a background in political activism who uses art to inspire dialogue about perceptions of cultural identity. In the latest episode of Art School, she describes her current art practice. Using online media focusing on world news and pop culture as her source material, she creates symmetrical photo collages and videos that abstract familiar images and invite viewers to reconsider visual culture and its meaning and influence on public opinion and social justice. In this episode of Art School, she describes her current art practice and the intentions behind her recent installation at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

In the second video Mazinani expands on the intention of traditional of Islamic ornamentation.

This is a popular website/resource that describes itself as "fair use". It has many lists and categories of art and artists with some biographical material and images. It is useful for looking up basic information on a wide variety of artists and subjects. It is not suitable for an entire course.

Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock are artists who focus on character design and development, creating a rotating cast of surreal cartoon figures inspired by visual culture, including fashion, skateboarding, Japanese regalia and folklore. They emphasize organization while maintaining freeform, both of which lead to the consistency in how their art turns out.

Audio is an extremely important part of creating good video, especially when doing interviews. Learn how to avoid making common audio mistakes by following these tips.

The City of Cincinnati, Ohio converted twenty blocks into a festival of art and light, showcasing projection mapping along with a number of other emerging media art forms. The goal was to create a public event celebrating the arts, culture, and creativity of the city in an atmosphere that promoted audience interaction with dynamic art. After watching this video, select one or more videos in the BLINK series for your class to watch to learn more about specific installations and the artists who created them.

San Francisco's Ben Venom creates punk quilts for everyday rockers who want to be cozy, as well as quilts that are a little less functional and sit more comfortably in a framed-art context. Venom takes his inspiration from the historical and social aspect of quilting, and particularly the Gees Bend community of quilters in Alabama, who are highly regarded as some of the most significant contributors to African American art history.

Meet San Francisco artist Sirron Norris, who discusses his public and commercial art projects. Although he works on projects like "Bob's Burgers," he still makes time to teach a cartoon-drawing class for kids every Saturday. He says that the best part about drawing cartoons is that there's no expectations. He teaches the children this, and that as long as they are proud of what they've created, then what they've created is perfect.

Chad Hasegawa paints portraits of bears and notable artists, and his style is influenced heavily by the Abstract Expressionist movement, and a thrifty approach to materials. He has created murals throughout San Francisco and shown his paintings and sculptures in galleries. His work balances between abstract and figurative art, with dense, wild brushstrokes that are often pieced together to create recognizable forms.

Chompers is a trio of abstract coyotes with levers to lift and lower their heads and open their mouths so that they can appear to be howling at the moon. They were built by the artists at Opera-Matic, a neighborhood art group from Chicago that specializes in community engagement. Opera-Matic was invited to bring Chompers to the BLINK festival in Cincinnati. The BLINK festival was a celebration of light and art with a focus on interactivity. The “coyotes” were a big hit with festival-goers, especially children. They are mounted on recycled ice cream bikes for easy mobility in parades.

Hit the streets as your own, custom-made Superhero and work for the common good of your city! Artist Amy Franceschini has fashioned an inspiring lesson that will help guide you through the entire process from brainstorming logos, mottos and costumes to ensuring that your Superhero works to help solve a community's needs. This lesson is part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Open Studio.

Check out the entire Open Studio collection for more activities centered around contemporary art: https://www.sfmoma.org/educators/

Ranu Mukherjee creates "Hybrid films" using layers of video, paintings and collage to create moving images. In the latest episode of Art School, Mukherjee unpacks the narrative and details behind her newest piece, Home and the World, which examines cultural hybridity, the aftermath of colonialism, and feminist questions. Inspired by a scene from a film by Satyajit Ray, as well as the composition of traditional Indian lithographs, Mukherjee combined these influences with her own visual culture to create a subtle but complex moving image.

Johanson reflects on the past decade of his career and shares his philosophies on art making in the first Art School video from KQED. Then, Johanson creates a simple painting based on Venn diagrams, an art lesson developed for students in partnership with SFMOMA for their project, Open Studio: Artist-Designed Classroom Activities.

Reading and creating comic strips and comic books are engaging ways to promote literacy at any grade level and across content areas. The students in this video are members of a high school comic book club and have access to drawing tablets and Adobe Photoshop, so they can achieve sophisticated results. Even without such software, however, teachers can still integrate digital comics into a wide range of teaching situations.

There are a number of comic books, especially contemporary ones, that are not “school appropriate,” so you might want to guide students’ web research on comic books.

Music educator Michelle Lewis teaches her students how to create vodcast music lessons. Lewis hopes that their vodcast YouTube channel will help students in schools without a music program learn music concepts.

Date of this Version
Spring 2019

Document Type
Portfolio

Citation
Chavez, Lizbeth and Martinez, Karen. "Creative He(arts)." After school club lesson plans. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2019.

Comments
Copyright 2019 by Lizbeth Chavez and Karen Martinez under Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. Individuals and organizations may copy, reproduce, distribute, and perform this work and alter or remix this work for non-commercial purposes only.

Abstract
The goal of the club is for students to explore different areas in the visual arts–including drawing, painting, printmaking, and pottery– and gain knowledge about a variety of materials and skills. By the end of club, students will have expanded their knowledge in art history and have learned about the components, elements, and principles of art. At the same time, the projects planned will allow students to apply what they learn to their own creativity and ideas.