This year I transferred schools again… this time closer to home and from exclusively middle school to a K-8 school! While I miss my NSMS middle school family and students terribly, I’m excited about this new opportunity at Oakboro Choice Stem School!  We’ve worked hard this week getting everything moved in and I think I’m almost ready for open house!  ..read more

 My students and I have been so excited to share this project with you! We created stylized painted portraits of some very special animals.  These pets are with our local humane society and are all in need of a home! They are available for adoption, or at least they were at the time the project began, but of course we hope that some of them have found homes by the time their featured portrait made it to the blog!   We hope you will enjoy our beautiful paintings of these precious animals, and if just one of these pets find a home as a result of our project then we will consi ..read more

 This project took a minute… and you’d think I was asking my students to do the impossible! Haha! But they completely blew me away with their talent and the results are amazing! We used Crayola color sticks for these which were great for blending, although with these you have to layer the colors to “blend” since they don’t smudge or smear, a lot like you would do with colored pencils.  Color sticks are much like the inside of a colored pencil,  without the wood and you don’t have to sharpen them.  They’re awesome for projects like this but maybe not for fine details or supe ..read more

 Check out our pottery from this year’s spring semester!  6th grade created coil pots with their own spin on the attachments and details.  7th grade made whimsical gnomes, and 8th grade made miniature houses. I brought a few stamps, molds and texture tools from my personal ceramic tool collection this year which students really enjoyed using.  I never get tired of these projects each year and it’s always delightful to see what students create beyond the basic instructions for the project!    ..read more

 This is one of those projects I never get tired of doing with students! They always amaze me and this semester’s students did not disappoint.  We spend at least 2 classes learning how to properly measure and draw the grid as well as practicing shading techniques and the value scale. Students were allowed to choose their own image by sending it to me or they could choose a pre-gridded image from my collection of images. We also created “view finders” to block out other areas of the image so they could focus on one square at a time. Check out what a great job they did!  ..read more

We are back at it! Back to school and back to all things art! I like starting the semester with pop art for multiple reasons, but mainly because it gives our hallways a good "pop" of color.  These are some of my notes for students to follow.  At first, they really don't like adding red to their pineapples, but after they do they can see what a difference it makes in creating a range of value on the bottom part ..read more

 Pinatas... In the thick of this project... I told myself this would be the last time I ever attempted this one... but now that they're finished, it's definitely one that's going on repeat!  The colors, the creativity, and the MESS!  Ha ha!  It looked like a party in my room every day for weeks!  I am so proud of how well my students accomplished the challenges that came with creating these! Works in progress... We ran of room to display these in the display case so we had to get creative! This was my example, had to be a paint palette of course!! Have ..read more

Does it get any better than a beautiful glaze kiln opening like this one?!  My students this semester have created some of the most beautiful pieces of pottery that I've ever had the opportunity to fire.  I am so proud of how these turned out!   ..read more

We finished up these amazing succulent paintings this week!  I love these so much I may leave them up for the rest of the semester!  Although the portraits they are working on now will have to replace these soon.  I can't wait to share them!   ..read more

I am so happy to be back in my classroom and creating art!  We started the year with a bang on these POP art inspired projects!  6th grade created the watermelons, 7th grade created avocados, and 8th grade did the pineapples.  Students learned about the pop art movement and a few of the artists responsible for pioneering this amazing art technique. They also practiced creating value and form with color while blending paint.  Some of them even added a little splash of color with some splatter painting at the end. They all turned out so well and I am so glad to have art hangi ..read more