While searching the Internet fro fun and informative videos, I recently rediscovered a site that my Professors and fellow peers were using in my undergraduate art classes. PBS hosts a website called art21. This site contains videos, articles. And even artist bios. It pertains to the 21st century and contemporary art. My professors were using this as a tool to guide our thinking about contemporary art and was a good source of knowledge about 21st century artists to balance out the Masters and emphasis of Art History we were all being surrounded by. My peers were using it as inspiration and finding new ideas to explore. I think that this site would be good to use for secondary students. It is a lot of interviews and videos of artists talking about their work. It is not geared towards younger students and would not be applicable in the elementary classroom. I would use it in reference to artists or styles of work to aid myself during instruction, and also have the students use it to gain knowledge and new ideas.
After subbing for a Middle School art class a few weeks ago, I found myself looking for aids to inspire the students to create original works. The eighth graders were about to start a sculpture project involving cones, inspired by the work of Dale Chihuly. Chihuly is a famous glass sculpture. They watched a short video about the artist to gain knowledge and inspiration for their own sculptures. The link that I have provided for you is of another artist, who is also a glass blower Josiah McElheny. This is just a segment from the video entitled “Memory”. He talks about his experiences with the work and his ideas and inspiration. I think this video would be good to piggy back off of the first video or even just to have as homework or reference for students on the class site. Watching this video will help the students understand how young artist use other artist to learn from and be inspired by, whether it be similar styles of works or using different tools and techniques for the same results. Providing students with materials such as these creates wonderful habits for doing their own research and building their own schema and creating new and exciting ideas for them to explore in the art room.
I have attached two links, one being Chihuly’s website and the other is the art21 site. Please click on the links and definitely explore art21. It is a great little site, and don’t feel a little crazy when you find yourself watching hours of these videos.
Dale Chihuly’s Website: http://www.chihuly.com/
Art21 Video link: http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/segment-josiah-mcelheny-in-memory
Brooklyn,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post! I really enjoyed the video by Chihuly and his glass works were remarkable. I am not an artist at all but wlooking at some of this creativity really gets a person's attention and makes them interested. The glass sculptures are brillant and this kind of technology presentation will connect history and art. Students will become motivated to create works that are interesting and compete with the orginal artist(s) to create their own sculptures. I really did not think how much art has changed from just pottery, canvas painting, drawing, and sculptures. The technology that is afforded to our students today can allow them to become a master at anything and everything.
That is a great idea to use videos and bios to inspire students to create their own original work. I am not an artist, but I would think that it would be hard to continuously come up with new, creative ideas for art. We all need a little inspiration! There are so many types of art that others have come up with. This type of web tool allows students to relate to famous artists and add to their repertoire.
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