New Ideas and Resources to Teach about Contemporary Art -

In previous blog posts, I talked about contemporary artists you may not have heard about before and I put together a round-up of blog posts about contemporary art projects.

Today I have some more ideas to share.

Don Masse said, “hey marcia! the majority of my lessons are based on living artists. i just did a fun lesson with my kinders inspired by the mosaics of jim bachor http://www.shinebritezamorano.com/2015/05/street-sweets.html
and followed that up with them creating a real mosaic.

Another guy I love is Thom Pastrano. http://www.shinebritezamorano.com/search/label/Thom%20Pastrano

How fun is this?

Ive got a series of articles coming out in the fall that will go into more detail about my use of contemporary artist in the elementary visual art curriculum. If you look at the tags on my blogs, you’ll see a bunch more living artist examples:)”

Stephanie said, “On Red Ted’s art blog she has a post about Andy Goldsworthy. He makes the majority of his art using nothing but his hands, teeth, and any natural tools he finds in nature. She has a really cool project where she has several different colors of leaves, flowers etc and the kids go outside and make temporary artwork like he does. In my class at the Y because we aren’t able to go outside we made sun catchers using cardboard box, contact paper and flowers. I believe this idea came from The Artful Parent blog.”

How Do I Include Contemporary Art in the Classroom?

As art teachers, we are usually pretty good about introducing the masters like Van Gogh, Picasso and Monet. It is important to teach children that there are many artists living and working now in all sorts of art careers. This has been my ongoing goal for the past year or so. I try to incorporate contemporary artists and careers into many of my lessons. Here are just a few examples.

Use current events to inspire critical thinking: Every year our school participates in a local writing/editorial contest and my students are required to make editorial cartoons. We look at lots of current editorial cartoons and one time we even had an editorial cartoonist come visit our school. You could find artists that create art about the important issues of our time and create a lesson around it.

Find contemporary connections to an existing lesson: For the past several years, we have coordinated with the local senior center for a Veteran’s Day ceremony. My students make artworks to honor the veterans using the poppy symbolism, receive a visit from the wife of a veteran, learn about the history of World War I and practice & sing patriotic songs at the ceremony. Last year, the Tower of London had an amazing art installation of 888,246 ceramic poppies which represented each of the British military fatalities during the war. This was a powerful contemporary art tie-in to our annual Veteran’s Day project. If you scroll down to the bottom of the Tower of London page there is a video that shows how they made the installation.

Include examples of contemporary art alongside old masters: I love this article from the Art of Ed which highlights 10 artists to share when you teach about traditional artists.

Themes in Art: When teaching using themes, find a variety of artists who explored that theme. For example, when my first graders created stuffed animal observational drawings, we looked at artists who used stuffed animals in their works.

Similar media and techniques: I’m not big on directly copying famous artworks but I think artists are often inspired by what comes before them. I like to introduce artwork to students to use as a springboard for their own exploration with that media. For example, at the end of the year, my students learned about Shinique Smith (one of my favorite artists!!) and created collaborative abstract paintings incorporating cast-off fabric scraps. Her artwork is influenced by personal narrative and consumer culture. She often includes pieces of fabric from old clothing and textiles.

Additional Resources for Learning about Contemporary Art

Artsy.net is a great resource. Discover new contemporary artists, learn about old masters, read bios and if you have some extra money you can purchase original artwork.

Marky has so many great features on its website. There are oodles of how-to-draw and technique videos, interesting contemporary artists and art history posts. Sign up for the newsletter to receive a daily dose of art.

Art Babble is a website that showcases high quality art-related video content from more than 50 cultural institutions from around the world. ArtBabble is an energetic place to learn for everybody who loves and has an interest in art and particularly for educators who can use it as a way to support their classroom activities.

The Jealous Curator is one of my favorite places to discover new art. I just love everything that is posted here.

Art21 is popular with art teachers. From their website: ART21 is a nonprofit dedicated to engaging audiences with contemporary visual art, to inspiring creative thinking, and to educating a new generation about artists working today. Art 21 has a whole series of videos about many artists.

Contemporary Art Daily is another place I enjoy browsing.