What Lifts You? - Collaborative Art

This term I wanted to get all my students working in unison on one big collaborative piece. I took some time to decide what it should be and I came across a project that was originally done by a graffiti street artist which was a huge presentation of wings with a space in the middle for people to insert themselves and 'take part' in the art piece. I thought this was a lovely concept and it was also a positive theme that could spawn lots of great conversation about the things that motivate or make my kiddos feel good about themselves :) Of course working together also encourages cooperation and the recognition that pooling your efforts can make a huge task seem a lot more manageable and all that good stuff! 

The picture below is the work of the original Nashville artist which is painted on the side of a building for folks on the street to use for their keepsake snapshots! 

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But of course I couldn't leave it at that... noooooooooo. I tweaked it so there were some of those trusty 'elements of art' concepts that we're always going on about. The element we'll focus on here is VALUE, which basically speaks to the extent of lightness or darkness in a colour or hue. 

So for our version of these wings each child created a personalized feather by painting a gradation (moving from dark to light) using the colours found on the colour wheel. Then they added lines and pattern on top of that in white for even more pizzazz! 

Take a look at what we've done so far :) Next week the whole project will come together as all the classes have an opportunity to make a feather and we mount them in the hall! 

Our wings are finally complete and they are certainly a hit! Can't help but think they kinda look like a Carnival wing/backpack thingy :) Notice that our feathers are laid out in the order of the colour wheel! So now we have a giant colour theory reference right outside our door... a neat side effect of this gorgeous project. Even some of parents had to take a pic with the wings and that's what it's all about!