Dale Chihuly 4th Grade

This year I wanted to start the fourth grade classes off with an exciting artist. Dale Chihuly was an obvious choice to get this year going with a bang. We are located near KC, MO so we also have access to see his artwork live at the Kemper Museum located in our downtown area...PERFECT!

I started off this lesson by introducing Dale to the class. We talked about his artwork, style, and impact on the art community. I then was able to show an amazing video (which I will post bellow) of Dale working in his studio creating blown class artwork. The kids LOVED IT!!! They got so excited and wanted to know if they were going to be doing glass sculptures... uh no! I explained that it could be very dangerous to blow glass and that they needed more art classes in order to learn that skill.

We then talked about the art principle pattern and form. I had each student create a repeating pattern on a coffee filter. We then sprayed each filter with laundry starch which ran the colors together and made the coffee filter firm in order to hold an organic form. I had each student fill out their own art label with their name, class, and grade and then we glued those to a black piece of paper. After the projects dried the students pasted their filters onto the black piece of paper. We were able to create our own Chihuly inspired art exhibit.