First Post!

To kick off this blog about art, art education, and bad-ass women, I thought I would start off with a post about my most favorite bad-ass female artist (well, probably just generally favorite artist) Beatriz Milhazes!

This lovely lady makes circ-tacular art that looks like this: 


                   


Pretty amazing. Ms. Milhazes is from Rio de Janeiro. Her art is
intended to invoke a sense of both extreme beauty and chaos. I used her work for the first time in along time in my classroom (why I haven't been doing it all along - I don't know). The kids love-love-LOVED it. I used it to kick- off a unit on expressionism to 2nd and 3rd graders. I asked them what kind of emotions they felt when they looked at this beautiful art and they were able to tell me "happy", it "makes me nervous" and with some other wonderful adjectives sprinkled in. I know you are thinking -Allison, those little kids were just saying feeling words until you told them they had the right answer. But, I think a much, much more likely explanation is that visual art is truly a universal language that brings us closer together as humans. Obviously!

Anyway, here are some things I have done with her work. Below is a bulletin board where I totally ripped a lesson off of the fabulous Cassie Stephens, and combined the kids work with circle paintings we did at the beginning of the year to encourage team work.

Here is some of my personal art that has been heavily inspired by Ms. Milhazes.

 

In the right one, I took all my physical flaws, multiplied them and them put them on a giant canvas. Its symbolic of letting go of inner insecurities. The on one the left is about anxiety. Why, yes I do work through my issues with art. Why do you ask?

I used Photoshop to take photos and drawings and spiral them into circles. I printed them and collaged them together. The right one is on masonite board on stretchers. I poured resin over it so it is nice and shiny now. The left one is collaged onto canvas and glazed with tinted gel-medium.