First Year Kick-Off Project

Wendie Bloxsom, Art Education MAT, Columbia College Chicago

During the New Graduate Student Orientation, students are split into their respective programs and dive into more detail of the individual program.  In the Art Education MAT program, the associate professor of educational studies, Anne Becker, gives an overview of projects. A few examples are creating lesson plans, anticipatory sets, demonstrations of materials/projects in a lesson, and creating/documenting a Teacher Art Work Sample.

Ashley Saunders, Art Education MAT, Columbia College Chicago

In addition to a basic overview of the program and classes, students are given a 9X12 blank canvas to create art as a kick-off project for the first class, Learning and Teaching in, about, and through the Visual Arts. For this particular project there are no guidelines, and its used as a tool to get to know the students’ interests.

Mo Ran Park, Art Education MAT, Columbia College Chicago

All the work from the Art Education MAT students can be viewed at the Graduate Lounge in the 33 E. Congress Parkway Building.

Second Year Kick-Off Project

Lucas Simoes, Cut-out Portrait, Photo: Trendland.net

In another kick-off-the-class project that was done in Anne Becker’s class at the start of the second year of the Art Education MAT program, students were asked to research an unknown artist or art technique and create an art lesson for the secondary level.

For this project I found the Brazilian artist Lucas Simoes. In Simoes’ cut-out portraits, he creates an image that consists of multiple layers of different portraits (up to 10 portraits).  In this particular series of cut-out portraits, Simoes is taking about 10 pictures of close friends. First he asks his friend to pick a song for him to listen to while photographing them.  Then, he asks them to tell him a secret so he can capture their face when they reveal their secret.  Lastly, after each photo shoot, Simoes asks each individual if their secret has a color, and this becomes the color of the portrait.

Sarah McHugh, Art Education MAT, Columbia College Chicago

After observing Lucas Simoes technique, I decided that I wanted to create an art lesson that focuses on the use of layers and creating a portrait that consists of layering different images of my personality.  The element of art that I primarily focused on was line and using different types of line to create the different aspects of my personality. The frosted mylar material allowed me to strategically overlap the multiple self-portrait images to create a multi-layered portrait similair yet different from those of Lucas Simoes.