Week 2at the Art Centre

Two weeks have gone by - and I've been so busy getting into the swing of my new teaching and learning schedule that I didn't post a blog at the end of Week 2 of Art School. So now, at the end of Week 3 - I’ll do a quick review of last week first. It was the first week that we had every class and every instructor and it was the first week that I was also teaching two courses at OISE, one F2F on Monday evening - a very large group. The class is supposed to be 20 but I allowed those who were on the waiting list to join as I was able to get a very large new classroom. The group agreed to deal with large teams as a consequence of my soft heart so I have 28 students to divide up amongst 6 teams. Or - aha - I can suggest to them that we start a week early with teams if they want to have 4 to a team on 7 teams - wow - what math! And the online course has taken until today to get sorted out - endless revisions and finally I have 17 students in that one, not all officially registered but most of them participating in WebKF in any event. It's a double life.

In art classes last week:

Monday in Printmaking we were given a triptych to develop featuring 3 of 8 pattern choices repeating imagery as in wallpaper, and each small section needing to alternate and be identical - it's fairly tricky and painstaking - and it is preparation for the first lino block project. I did lots of little sketches and took numerous photos around the house as I gathered inspiration for the assignment.

Tuesday in Painting Class, we got a fairly lengthy lecture on the fundamentals of drawing which we will be doing for some time to get the basics under control. We started with gestural and moved to construction and contour drawings. I felt I did fairly well, better in gestural than the other two.

Wednesday was away from art classes - it's great to have a day in which to schedule laundry, housework, plant tending, etc.

Thursday in Art History, we were given all of the assignments for the semester and each one was discussed in detail. They include projects on Appropriation (finding a modern piece of art or architecture that borrows from the ancient past), Legal and Socio-cultural issues in art, a Gallery review and creating an artist statement. We were shown a series of posters on the Elements and Principles of Design, a slide show on post Modernist principles and finally a film on the Group of Seven.

Thursday in Sculpting class, we began creating maquettes for the carving we'll be doing - 2 realistic maquettes and 2 abstract. We'll choose one of these on which to base our carving, the size of a 2 liter milk carton. We were given the recipe for make the plaster form from which we'll carve.

Friday, the entire class period was spent discussing the subject outline for the course - the various projects, and not least, evaluation and assessment for the projects. I couldn't help piping up about using criteria rather than rubrics - and I promoted the value of self and peer evaluation. Sometimes my teacher self comes through and I aim to do it diplomatically each time and not irritate my teachers. Next class she plans to critique those 20 minute figure drawings we did in the first class.

And that was the week of classes. On the side, I did quite a bit of research online and with a stack of books ordered from the library to prepare my presentation on Primitivism for sculpting class to have ready to show the teacher on Monday. My presentation is on Thursday and I want time to revise and for him to make copies of the two sided handout - a page of text and a page of images.