Richard Serra is an American installation artist who uses large sheets of steel to create warped walls. As a steel mill worker in college, he was influenced by the material and began to incorporate it into his work. His large walls slant at different angles with some angling over you while others angle away from you. Some walls are also close together and other areas are more open. His walls are meant to challenge a person's sense of personal space. We have talked about space as something being close or far away from us throughout this school year. This project however, we talked more about our own personal space and how those walls might change our perceptions of space.

Because I didn't have this grade when they were in kindergarten and first grade, I haven't done any solid line projects with them. I like how when you can see Serra's work from above, it looks like a line design. I used this as influence to teach our artists about some different kinds of lines.

After learning about Richard Serra, students created two sketches of line designs. After settling on their stronger design and getting it okay'd by me, they transferred it to a large sheet of grey paper.

Ted Harrison was a British-Canadian artist who is well-known for his bright, stylized landscapes of the Yukon. Although I told my artists that we would be learning about living artists this year, I made the exception with Ted because he passed away this past January. I thought Mr. Harrison's work would be a good chance for us to study space and warm/cool colors.

Lately, I have been stressing the importance of sketching out ideas and designs before diving into projects. After we took a look at Ted's work, we did two landscape sketches. Students decided on their stronger design and got it okay'd with me. Then they transferred that sketch to a large black sheet of paper. Lastly, they used a glue bottle to carefully trace over their lines.

The second day and final day of the project was spent adding color to our landscapes with chalk. We emphasized using cool colors on the ground and warm colors in the sky. Because we used glue to draw last class, the now dry glue creates strong black lines to divide up the sections of background. Our chalk colors are pretty limited so students had to mix a lot of their chalks to create new colors. It was good to see them take advantage of their color mixing knowledge.