Finally getting around to writing this looooong overdue post about our beginning of the year school-wide collaborative project.

I always start off the school year with a school-wide collaborative project. I took the opportunity to talk about how we as a school are united and a team yet there is still variety amongst us. We talked about how unity and variety could be seen in each classroom and how this would happen with each quilt piece. Although 20+ students from each class used the same colors, no two quilt-squares turned out exactly the same.

Then we took a look at Corinne Sovey's quilts. I was introduced to her work by Don Masse over at shinebritezamorano and he did an awesome collab project based on her work as well! When looking at her work, students noticed that she often limited herself to a particular color palette and often repeated the same shapes over and over. Corinne is also a graphic designer who creates all of her own patterns that are then printed on to fabric to be used in her quilts.

I gave each class three different colored sheets of paper to choose from. The markers and crayons that they could use was also limited to those colors. After each class, I would remove one color and put in another color. This makes for a gradation across the finished work.

This was by far our longest collaborative project at about 40 feet long!

Congratulations to Harmony's December Artists of the Month, Rachel and Ella!
Rachel was inspired by the abstract work of Reggie Laurent. She did a fantastic job incorporating both organic AND geometric shapes while also using her scissors and glue well. I was particularly impressed by the variety and thoughtfulness she showed when creating the patterns to go on top of her shapes. Nice work, Rachel!
Ella's work was inspired by the work of Jeff Koons who makes large balloon animal sculptures. Ella showed a delicate touch when using her chalk to create a sense of form (3D) on her balloon dog. Chalk is a tricky medium to use and she showed great skill with it! Her use of highlights and shadows makes that dog seem like it's real! Great job, Ella!