A LIVE blog of the goings on at Art All State 23! As one of the artist/mentors involved in the event I'll be blogging from one of the actual studios while we transform it into a unique piece of installation art!
If you can't make it to Art All State-- held annually at the Worcester Art Museum- this is your chance to see what it's like to participate!
You can check out the student blog and the teacher blog too!
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The Ice Breaker is possibly the most important part of the first day of Art All State— you’ve got 16 high school juniors who don’t know each other— as someone who works with this age group a lot I can tell you they are not always instantly social.
Here’s ‘ow it woiks:
The image above has been divided and cut into 16 pieces. Each kid is given a square from the image above and a piece of blank paper which is MUCH larger. They must draw the image on their square in essentially the same way on their big piece of paper. As we do this process, we are sitting in a circle around the room. We start the name game— each person must introduce themselves, something they like about art and then say the name of the person(s) who said it before them (sucks to be the 16th person to play— that’s why I make sure I’m second). Usually we’re just about done with the images by the time we get to the last person.
The students then take all the pieces and using pins they assemble the image on the wall— like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
The Ice Breaker I like to use accomplishes three things;
1. It allows them to work individually for the first portion and then as a group to put the image together. Something that will be critical for the next two days.
2. It gives them the opportunity to draw. As an accomplished doodler I can tell you I need to draw everyday— a lot of them come to this thinking they will be painting and drawing and that’s not the case— so this lets them work that particular demon out.
3. The name game portion is fun, it gets everyone to (kinda) remember everyone else’s name and this together ‘breaks the ice’ and creates a friendlier environment.
Otherwise, you spend too much time getting them to interact with each other.
(I’ll post the actual image later today along with how it went.)
