Saddle Symmetry
After viewing and discussing James Walker’s Cowboys Roping a Bear, students will explore symmetry with their bodies and then create their own symmetrical drawings in pairs.
After viewing and discussing James Walker’s Cowboys Roping a Bear, students will explore symmetry with their bodies and then create their own symmetrical drawings in pairs.
Using Elizabeth Hopkins’s Album Quilt and two stories as inspiration, students will design and create a quilt square that tells a story about their lives. They will present their stories to the class, explaining the significance of the quilt square and the story that inspired it.
Taking inspiration from the printed fabrics used in the Pratt Family Album Quilt, each student will create their own printing block and five prints. They will then swap prints with other students. After swapping prints, each student will assemble a quilt that is unique and personal.
Students will observe Daniel Sprick’s painting Release Your Plans and explore the importance of artistic decisions. They will then work as a team to create their own arrangement of objects in unconventional compositions.
Students will learn the creative processes behind Kelley and Mouse’s poster Skull and Roses/Grateful Dead, Oxford Circle, Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco: inspiration from others in the present, creativity “jams,” and artwork found by “fishing in the past.” They will then use these strategies to work in groups to create their own posters.
Throughout the lesson students will delve into their imaginations using activities and tools designed to explore the Frederic C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum. They will engage in creativity exercises, build their own “buildings,” and compare their experiences with the creative process used by architect Daniel Libeskind and his team when building the Hamilton Building.
Students will examine Remington’s The Cheyenne and identify the challenges he faced in creating a horse that appears to be airborne. They will then work with a partner and go through a similar problem-solving process to create their own airborne sculpture.
In order to understand that letters often communicate more than the words they spell, students will explore how to make letters inspired by different shapes. They will begin with a warm-up activity and then examine lettering in advertisements in Wes Wilson's poster Association, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco. A teacher-led discussion will help students decipher the literal and more abstract meanings of Wilson’s work.
In this “discovery lesson” students will use the Yoruba Door Panels to explore the visual arts concepts of symmetry, repetition, clarity of form and line, conceptual proportion, and high relief. Using some of these ideas, students may then create their own two-dimensional door panels to reflect what they value and their own aesthetic style.
This lesson invites students to learn and apply formal methods of visual arts analysis to investigate and understand Dan Namingha’s Hopi Eagle Dancer. They will then experiment with paints in an effort to get a sense of how the artist used different tools and thicknesses of paints to achieve varying effects in the painting.
Students will collect and transform found materials into a work of art. Through the process they will learn about El Anatsui and his work, as well as explore the difference between two- and three-dimensional art.
After learning about the artistry and cultural importance of the Lakota Tipi, students will use their imaginations and creativity to make tipis that tell stories about their own lives.