Saturday, March 7, 2015

Arcimboldo, Faces iMake, and Kindergarten Art

Arcimboldo; It's just a fun name to say and his art is even more FUN! 

This week's lesson allows kindergarten students to examine Giuseppe Arcimboldo's “Vertumnus” painted in 1590-1591 using Visual Thinking Strategies. One of my goals as an art educator is to get students talking about art and drawing their own conclusions from art finding visual evidence within the work. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) allows each child to share what they see or find in a piece of art and connect their findings to visual evidence within the painting. Through VTS' rigorous group 'problem-solving' process, students cultivate a willingness and ability to present their own ideas, while respecting and learning from the perspectives of their peers.  Common questions asked during a VTS discussion include: 
What's going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can we find?

Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Arcimboldo was best known for his fantastical portrait paintings. These were portraits composed of objects such as vegetables, fruits, flowers, books, or even a plate of meat. The public reacted to his paintings much the way we do today: with admiration, humor, and fascination. Students watched a short video called "Arcimboldo's Feast for the Eyes" at Smithsonian Magazine to see multiple examples of these fantastical portraits. 

After examining his art, students had the opportunity to create their own Arcimboldo inspired works. Using the iPads and the app Faces iMake, students could create their own Arcimboldo inspired faces. With only five iPads available in the art room, students rotated through this center while others worked on cutting out food, flowers and other items to glue down and make faces on 9" x 12" drawing paper.  Look to our Artsonia gallery to see more examples of images created by kindergarten in the Faces iMake app.




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