Gift of Caring

Fairview's super art stars are up to the Outpost Natural Foods gift of caring bag designs for the third year in a row. Each K4 through sixth grader has had SNOW much fun with this shared art making experience!

We are decorating 250 bags that Outpost will in-turn "sell" for $20 donations and then double the food donations! Our bags will go home with $40.00 worth of food for families who utilize the Hunger Task force's food pantries.

Our bags will light up the holiday music program before we will finish them off with some LOVE art, following our winter break.

Welcome!

I want to publicly welcome Mrs. Cheryl Wagner, from Mount Mary College, as our Art student teacher for second quarter. You might recognize her, as she comes with experience in teaching at The Milwaukee Public Museum! She is pictured above with some of the sixth graders who are working on cubist inspired portraits.

"Bodies In Motion"

Exciting things have been going on the art room this fall. We had three artworks on display at the first city-wide Student Nutrition and Wellness Walk and Rally. Two of the works won awards! Wow awards and fabulous prizes go out to Katy and Soleil. Congratulations to everyone who worked hard on their artwork for this contest. I hope to have a podcats slide show up and running soon! Mr. B plans to hang your work in the gym too. For more information on the city-wide event check out this site:
http://mpsportal.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_34213_0_0_18/071017wellnessevent.pdf

Fall Is Here!

It's been officially fall for about a week now and Milwaukee's trees are just starting to change color. I was lucky enough to catch the city tree trimmers at work in my neighborhood. I rescued a few beautiful branches for this morning's Kindergarten classes. Today was grandparents’ day; it was nice to share our art time with so many special people. Coincidently it was my grandma's 94th birthday this week. Tonight we are going to celebrate!

This month we have been building new routines in the art room as we study and review the element and principles of design. If you want to play some cool art games to help review and learn the elements and principles of design, try the art glossary and build your creative vocabulary at this newly updated Sanford link. With two new tables and the demonstration projector we all have more room to create. I feel like Martha Stewart sharing skills and techniques under the lights of the camera! The new arrangement has been working very well.

summer wind down...

I t was great to see so many faces at orientation last night. If you missed me, I was helping with the Camp Fairview sign-up in the gym...so many lucky students will be staying at Fairview a little longer than the rest.

Speaking of camping, I'm just back from a great trip to one of my favorite places in the world YELLOWSTONE! My family enjoyed a two week camping trip through the Beartooth Highway, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National parks. Of course my trips always have and artsy edge to them... we took a lot of photographs at sunrise and sunset...stopped to sketch and draw a bit. We visited both of the new park visitors centers, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and my personal favorite the National Museum of Wildlife Art. I would love to take my Fairview Family to Yellowstone someday...perhaps you can click on my links to visit the parks and museums virtually.
The art room looks as if the grizzlies had a big party: they ripped the carpet out and added a few new tables-grizzlies need room to create! I think you will all enjoy the added work space and the new ELMO projector that we can all enjoy right from the tables!

LOOK who I found making art this morning!

Emma and Justine

out on an artsy adventure at Artist and Display this week!

I ran out to pick-up some watercolor supplies this morning and I bumped into two very special Fairview art students! The girls were gearing up for a dog drawing and painting class. I was lucky enough to meet Emma's grandma, who is an artist herself--she pointed me in the direction of a few great sale brushes. I sure hope Emma can bring her in for show and create next school year!

Check out the Artist and Display website for more great classes all summer long or stop in the store for supplies to get you going on your own! Remember to let me know what you art up to in the comments section or email me a photo of your work. If I catch you making art, I'll add you to this blog!

I stopped at Fairview today for a brief moment...your summer art looks great! The art room is under a transformation hopefully we will all have a little more elbow room! I will take pictures and keep everyone updated on the new look soon.

Where in the art world is Ms George?

Happy Summer!

I hope everyone is having a great summer vacation. I've been on the GO:

I have had a few Chicago weekends visiting with my grandmother and must recommend a fabulous Garfield Park Conservatory show sculptures of world renowned Artist Niki de Saint Phalle: Nikki In the Garden in addition to the free evenings at The Art Institute of Chicago!

I spent a week in Atlanta for the National Educational Computing Conference where I joined twenty -five other MPS teachers including our own Mrs. Meyer. My family was able to adventure with me for a few days before the conference. We enjoyed a concert at the historic Chastain Amplitheater. We were wowed by the collection, special exhibits including Annie Leibovitz's photography and fantastic family art making space at the High Museum of Art. We literally sip-sampled the World of Coke in their NEW site next to the Georgia Aquarium-where as you can see in the photo we fit in some much needed rest and relaxation!

After a brief return to Milwaukee we headed to our beloved Door County. Our camp out this summer included afternoon thunder-bursts, beautiful rainbows and plenty of time at Hands On Art --where I had the chance to make glass jewelery, create a mosaic and play with metal in their new welding barn!

Following our Door County adventures it was off-to-camp week! I dropped my daughter of for her scout fashion design destination and drove up to Eagle River's Trees For Tomorrow to brush up on my watercoloring skills in a teacher workshop lead by artist Jan Boelte.

I plan to get some more painting in and then get caught-up on my laundry and gardening the next few weeks....because in August we head for Yellowstone and the Tetons!

Feel free to add to your artsy adventures to my comments-they work when you are logged in at home or a public library!

Go See Art!

Our first week of art field trips was fantastic!

I'm looking forward to the next two weeks continuing

to share some of my favorite nearby places to
GO SEE ART!

I know the students enjoy the chance to explore actual paintings and sculptures. In art class we are continually motivated through great works of art... posters, postcards, books, PowerPoints, movies can help build our visual thinking; however, seeing the real thing is so much more powerful.


Hopefully your Fairview student will share their experience with you and take your family on a tour to go see art this summer. Stay tuned to this blog for more pictures!

Links to the places on the '07 tours:

The Milwaukee Art Museum

FREE to Milwaukee County Residence every Wednesday!

Haggerty Museum of Art

Located on the Marquette campus no admission fees.

The Eisner American Museum of Advertising and Design

In Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward children under 12 are free.

Aztalan State Park

A national landmark, this park contains one of Wisconsin's most important archaeological sites!

April Showers Bring May Flowers...AWARDS...and Field Trips!

The kindergarten through fourth grades have been studying great artists in the garden. Initially we looked at Vincent Van Gogh's iris' and sunflowers. Then students made comparisons to Georgia O'Keeffe's abstractions and gave her style a whirl. The second and fourth graders also took a peak into Claude Monet's garden--just wait until our ceramic lily pads come out of the kiln! We decorated the gym for the Spring dance and now the bulletin board outside the office is in full bloom. Many mom's will be delighted to receive flora that will never wilt this weekend!

FIVE award winning artists from Fairview have their posters on display at the Wisconsin Humane Society! We celebrated last Sunday afternoon at a wonderful ceremony.
CONGRATULATIONS TO:

Sarah, Autumn, Amanda, Quianna and Ryan

High Paws to the nearly 500 students who donated their posters for

Be Kind To Animals!

Click here for the link WHS link to see them all!

The art room has been going non-stop since spring break....new electives this quarter for the 7th and 8th graders are nearly half over! Photoshop is a hit with our new Dell Lab; I can't wait to post some of the work! Art Foundations and the 5/6 classes have some acrylic collage self portrait masterpieces that need a few finishing touches before I post them.

Permission slips went out for a variety of FREE Art Field Trips this week!

Please continue to support Market Days so we can continue to

GO SEE ART!
More on our trips as they happen!

Spring is in the air...or at least it is in the art room!

Kindergartners have been bringing their creations to life. Paper bag puppet shows were enjoyed by all. The students created special voices and did shows with their table groups-something I will be pod-casting the next time around! The following week a whole flock of feathered friends were born! Kindergartners know how to: roll out eggs, squeeze necks, pull wings, pinch and snip beaks, pattern with markers and push in a few feather. I can hear spring songs from their creations!

More than 500 of our students created posters for the annual Be Kind to Animals poster contest. Keep your paws crossed for a Fairview winner! Everyone is a winner for putting such great efforts into such an important community message. I dropped a big box of fabulous entries of at the Wisconsin Humane Society today! Here's a sampling of Fairview's finest:

I hope everyone has a great spring break. If your in staying in town, don't forget that the Milwaukee Art Museum is FREE on Wednesday all day. As for me, I'm off to Chicago for a few days. I can't wait to travel a little further along the Silk Road at the Art Institute of Chicago and I will be re-visiting Wicked to celebrate my daughter's 12 birthday.

I'm planning some great field trips for late May and June...stay tuned for the plan of action!

7/8 Electives ROCK!

Here's a look at some of third quarter's Advanced Ceramics!

The seventh and eighth graders at Fairview have a great start to their school day--ELECTIVES!

A little background...each June the sixth and seventh graders fill out elective surveys making tiered choices for their art and music classes for the following school year. The art options are currently: Art Foundations, which is a little bit of every-art-thing; Drawing and Painting, an obviously two dimensional course where students fine tune drawing what the see and painting what they feel; Art 3D, which is all about sculpture-relief in the round and assemblage using many mediums; Advanced Ceramics, open to those who have taken either Art 3d or Art Foundations and really love clay; Cartooning, where the students develop personal characters and dabble in animation; and/or Photography, where we explore composition, lighting, point of view and the digital world with Adobe Photoshop.

Students can take up to three quarters of Art per year. In addition to class assignments all middle school students need to complete an Artist Investigation for each quarterly class. Their Investigations are very open ended. Students choose their artist based on course subject, they research an artist's profile and come up with three questions to explore. They use at least three sources to begin their research and check for their answers. Then they create an inspiration artwork based on the artists' style, palette, technique or subject matter. Students choose how they present their investigations during the last few weeks of class in PowerPoint or poster formats with a speech or written report. I learn so much from them during their presentations!

Thanks for all of your great efforts!