Adaptive Art is a class that specifically serves students with special needs. Neurotypical students also enroll in the class to be assistants to the SSN students. There were three primary goals of this class:
1. Give students as much exposure to various art materials as possible (drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, fiber arts, paper sculptures, and clay)
2. Teach them about artists with disabilities, some of whom are the same age as the students. This teaches students and parents that artists with disabilities are able to make a sustainable living selling and exhibiting their work.
3. As a team, students will curate, install, and promote a school exhibition of their work. This gives them professional experience that they can put on their resumé.
1. Give students as much exposure to various art materials as possible (drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, fiber arts, paper sculptures, and clay)
2. Teach them about artists with disabilities, some of whom are the same age as the students. This teaches students and parents that artists with disabilities are able to make a sustainable living selling and exhibiting their work.
3. As a team, students will curate, install, and promote a school exhibition of their work. This gives them professional experience that they can put on their resumé.
Lesson 1: Cubist Bear
- Technical Skills: coloring with markers and crayons within intersecting shapes, drawing a bear (TRHS mascot)
- Conceptual Skills: beginning understanding of how to abstract a representational artist
- History and Culture: Grant Maniér (artist with autism that creates portraits of animals with collage materials)
- Learning Benefits: students have a basic understanding of abstraction by breaking up a realistic object into different shapes and colors
Lesson 2: Expressive Landscapes
- Technical Skills: experimentation with materials of choice in either a realistic or abstract manner
- Conceptual Skills: creating an expressive landscape based on abstract colors and marks
- History and Culture: Lucy Jones (artist with cerebral palsy that creates abstract landscapes with mixed media materials)
- Learning Benefits: experimentation with materials of choice in either a realistic or abstract manner. This is used as a pre-assessment of fine motor skills.
Lesson 3: Foreground, Middle Ground, Background Drawing
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: transitioning from creating abstract landscapes, students learn how to create atmospheric perspective with a foreground, middle ground, and background
- History and Culture: Hank Holland (artist with cerebral palsy) and Ping Lian Yeak (artist with autism).Both artists make landscape paintings (Holland with acrylic, Yeak with watercolor).
- Learning Benefits: students have an understanding of perspective using bars for foreground, middle ground, and background
Lesson 4: Marker Monoprint
- Technical Skills: learning how to create a monoprint by drawing with markers on ziploc baggies
- Conceptual Skills: abstract mark-making
- History and Culture: Vincent Jackson (artist with a disability, creates simplified printed African and Oceanic portraits)
- Learning Benefits: students learn about printmaking and an alternative way to make marker art
Lesson 5: Winter Blast Tissue Collage
- Technical Skills: mixed media drawing and collage
- Conceptual Skills: abstract representation of winter
- History and Culture: Ellen Kane (artist with cerebral palsy that creates abstract paintings)
- Learning Benefits: mixed media artwork application, drawing, tearing, and gluing
Lesson 6: Half Self-Portrait
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: Students get portraits taken of themselves, which are folded in half and glued in their sketchbooks. They were asked to draw the other half of their portrait, doing their best to match the picture. The portraits didn't come out realistic, instead representing the essence of their inner selves. Student photos are not included due to parent requests not to have public media coverage.
- History and Culture: Christy Brown and Dorinda Tveit (portrait artists with cerebral palsy)
- Learning Benefits: Students have a basic understanding of how to draw portraits.
Lesson 7: Abstract Watercolor Painting
- Technical Skills: experimenting with watercolor techniques, specifically wet-on-wet.
- Conceptual Skills: draw patterns, outlines, and doodle shapes based on the marks created by the wet-on-wet splotches
- History and Culture: Iris Grace (artist with autism that makes abstract watercolor paintings)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to use watercolor and make an abstract drawing on top of it.
Lesson 8: Watercolor Fish
- Technical Skills: students continue to practice their watercolor skills and learn how to draw a fish
- Conceptual Skills: students get to design their own fish (realistic or imaginative)
- History and Culture: Ashlee Jane Birckhead (artist with Down's Syndrome that makes animal paintings)
- Learning Benefits: student learn about how to use crayons as a form of wax resist when making watercolor paintings
Lesson 9: Scary Monster Paintings
- Technical Skills: tempera paint smushing to create a rorschach painting pattern
- Conceptual Skills: draw scary monster faces and body parts based on the paint smudges
- History and Culture: Niam Jain (artist with autism that makes abstract paintings)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to create a character based on an abstract mark-making base
Lesson 10: Eric Carle Bugs
- Technical Skills: experiment with tempera painting techniques
- Conceptual Skills: cut painted paper to create bug shapes
- History and Culture: Alan Tellez (artist with Down's Syndrome that makes abstract paintings)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to cut painted paper to create collaged characters
Lesson 11: Cyannotype Photography
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students lay objects on cyannotype paper to create white silhouettes. They also use reverse negative photo transparencies of their own portraits and lay them on cyannotype paper to create an image.
- History and Culture: Roland Buhlmann (artist with autism that creates abstract pinhole photography)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to make cyannotypes, which are easy for them to do at home.
Lesson 12: Paper Sculptures
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students fold, tear, and curl strips of colored paper to create a "mouse trap" (board game) paper sculpture
- History and Culture: Alice Schonfield (artist with a disability that creates white marble sculptures)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to manipulate paper to create a sculpture.
Lesson 13: Clay Projects
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students make a pinch pot, a textured tray (using natural and manmade textures) and a tile with their first initial made from a clay coil
- History and Culture: Christian Royal and Shaurya (artists with Down's Syndrome that make ceramic sculptures)
- Learning Benefits: students learn various basic beginning clay making skills
Lesson 14: Tape Resist Name Painting
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students use tape to mask off the letters of their first, middle, and last initials. They apply or mix paint over the tape, then peel the tape to create white shape contrast.
- History and Culture: Kasia Puchiata (artist with Down's Syndrome that makes abstract oil paintings)
- Learning Benefits: students learn how to use tape to mask and create white shapes over paintings
Lesson 15: Food Painting
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students create abstract paintings using expired food items (asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes, celery, and romaine lettuce leaves)
- History and Culture: Kasia Puchiata (artist with Down's Syndrome that makes abstract oil paintings)
- Learning Benefits: students learn that they can use alternative and unusual art supplies to create different marks. with paint
Lesson 16: Shibori Prayer Flags
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Lesson 17: End of the Semester Exhibition
Students selected five projects (three 2-D, two 3-D) to display for a class exhibition. They also wrote their artists' biographies, collaborated with each other to come up with the name of the show, delegated where the projects would be placed, and helped tape colored construction paper mattes onto the projects. Students get professional experience for creating the show and exhibiting their work in it, which is something they can include on a resumé. |