Hey guys, I hope everyone is having a great summer! It's been way too long since I've touched this blog, but I'm hoping to share a few new event themes from this year and art projects I enjoyed making with my students this past semester. Today I'm sharing an art theme inspired by the Light and Space Movement, an art movement I was actually newly introduced to. I discovered it when my art appreciation class was learning about modern art movements and we had covered all of the main art movements from prehistoric to contemporary art, and I was researching lesser known but impactful movements. Basically, these artists considered light and space their art 'mediums' and made works that simply focused on and sometimes changed our interactions with light and space, making viewers consider them in a new way (or should I say in a new light). My students love Van Gogh, but I already themed art class parties on Van Gogh/Starry Night, so I wanted a new theme. One of my three students in that class expressed special interest in James Turrell, an artist who made light installations, and they all appreciated his works, so that was my theme. The student who enjoyed his work most made the one-pager poster on the whiteboard, shown below.
For supplies I ran to Walmart the night before and found blue tie-dye balloons for around $1.50, bought white balloons, and made a balloon arch the morning of. I printed some of his works to stick on the board. I had some transparent plastic paper on hand and cut out a '2023' with that, layered construction paper ovals behind it, and at the back I attached a dollar tree button light that I had on hand to make it glow. I cut out geometric shapes used in his works to place below with the extra plastic paper. The best part was a light I found at Walmart for $10. It was pricey, but I thought it could be used as a gift or something after and I loved it so much that I ended up keeping it. My students loved it too, so I am going to use it in my classroom for future occasions. It was a small, plug-in light that moves the light in water-like motions at various speed settings, can change colors, and is super relaxing, so I had that lighting up the ceiling and walls during the class parties.
For my end-of-the-year gifts this year, I ordered photos of individual students and class photos to send home, wrote letters on the back and made an acronym of positive adjectives for each student. I order bulk large stickers (the kind for laptops, water bottles and such) of animals and Bible verses to put inside, but the acronyms took so long, I ended up having students pick out their own three stickers.
I hope this party theme and these class gift ideas are helpful for other art teachers and art enthusiasts. Thank you for visiting!
-Lauryn