Louise Nevelson Textures

Louise Nevelson was an American (after immigrating from Russia as a child) sculptor most well-known for her monochromatic (all one color) assemblages. Her assemblages usually featured various sized wooden boxes with random objects such as chair legs, tools, car wheels, etc placed within the boxes Everything was then painted the same color. Mrs. Nevelson helped to pave the way for female artists around the world.

This was a project that I did with 3rd grade last year but I wanted to give it a shot this year with our 2nd graders. I saw the idea on Pinterest and decided to tie in Louise Nevelson as an art history reference. We started out by folding a sheet of printer paper into quarters. Those quarters were cut apart and then glued onto a larger sheet of white paper. For this project, I required that everyone use white paper. From there, I demoed how to manipulate paper in different ways by folding it, crumpling it, bending it, curling it, etc. We talked about how doing these different processes to the paper created different textures. Texture is how something feels. We briefly talked about how texture can be broken down into two categories: actual and implied. Implied texture is when an artwork conveys how something might feel such as a lamb LOOKING like it is soft. Actual texture is how something ACTUALLY feels. So for our project, we focused on actual texture.

​The students spent two or three days manipulating paper. It was pretty open-ended and allowed for students to experiment with the paper to create new textures that I hadn't thought of.

Throughout this project, I also began to stress being thoughtful with their texture placement. This is really one of the first times that we have considered composition when making art.