Artist of the Months of May/June: Eric Carle

From Scholastic.com:

Eric Carle started drawing when he was a little boy and has asserted that he “will never stop being a scribbler.” Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1929, he spent his early childhood in America before moving to Germany at the age of six. Carle learned German and studied at the prestigious Academy of Visual Arts before fulfilling his dream of returning to the U.S. in 1952. After working as a graphic designer and art director of an advertising agency, Carle collaborated with Bill Martin, Jr. on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, launching his remarkable career as a beloved children's book illustrator. Since then Carle has also written and illustrated many well-known titles such as The Grouchy Ladybug and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which has been translated into more than 30 languages.

To create his beautiful pictures, Carle uses the technique of collage. He loves it when students tell him they can make pictures in the same way! Carle first paints over colored tissue paper with acrylic paint sometimes using a wide brush, sometimes a narrow brush, sometimes his fingertips, and often using a sponge, burlap, or other bumpy material like a stamp to create texture. Then he cuts out shapes in the colored papers (which he stores in color-coded drawers after they dry) to make the different parts of his scenes and characters.

Most of Eric Carle's characters are animals, and he thinks this might be his father's influence: when he was growing up, Carle and his dad would go on walks in the forest. They would stop and observe all the little animals and insects living there, and Carle's father would tell him about how they live and grow. Growth and discovery are major themes in Carle's books. He says that moving from home to school was “traumatic” for him, and he hopes that his books, many of which are not only beautifully illustrated but have cutouts, flaps, raised textures, and lights and sound, are “half toy and half book” to show young readers that growth and change can be a lot of fun.

Carle lives with his wife Bobbie and cat Annie in Massachusetts. He has two grown-up children, his daughter Cirsten and son Rolf.  Students will be studying the work of this artist and illustrator during the months of May and June!  Click here for the official Eric Carle Website!  Click here to see a video of The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Artist of the Month of March: Georgia O'Keeffe (VIDEO)

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe in 1918.

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz gave O'Keefe her first gallery show in 1916 and the couple married in 1924. O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico after her husbands death and was inspired by the landscape to create numerous well-known paintings. Georgia O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986.

Painting called "Jimson Weed-3" by Georgia O'Keeffe in 1936.

Artist, painter. Born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Known for her striking flower paintings and other captivating works, Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century. She took to making art at a young age and went to study at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1900s. Later, while living in New York, she studied with such artists as William Merritt Chase as a member of the Art Students League.

Click here for more information about this artist.  Click below to see an 11-minute video about her life!

    

Artist of the Month: Faith Ringgold

Tar Beach Quilt created by author Faith Ringgold.

Artist, Faith Ringgold

During the months of January and February, students will study the artwork of Faith Ringgold who began her artistic career more than 35 years ago as a painte!. Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts -- art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Her first book, Tar Beach was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, among numerous other honors. She has written and illustrated eleven children's books. She has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards and seventeen honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater The City College of New York.

Faith Ringgold is married to Burdette Ringgold and has two daughters, Michele and Barbara Wallace; and three granddaughters, Faith, Theodora and Martha. She is a professor of art at the University of California in San Diego, California.  For more information about Faith Ringgold, click here! To see a video of the author discussing her artwork, click here!

Artist of the Month (September) - Joan Miro

JOAN MiRÓ @ TATE MODERN from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.



Our artist of the month is Joan Miro!  Joan Miro was a world renowned Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist who was born in 1893, in the sea port city of Barcelona.  His works before 1920 (the date of his first trip to Paris) show the influence of different trends in art like the pure and brilliant colors used in Fauvism, shapes taken from cubism, influences from folkloric Catalan art and Roman frescos from the churches. His trip to Paris also introduced him to and developed his trend of surrealist painting (see example, below).  In 1921, he showed his first individual exhibition in Paris, at La Licorne Gallery.  Miro experimented with many other artistic forms, such as engraving, lithography, water colors, pastels, and painting over copper.

For more information on this famous artist, click here!

L'espoir - The Poetess (1940)

Artist of the Month: Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper is our artist of the month!  This American artist was born in Nyack, New York in 1882.  He was a great student and began painting at age 5!  He attended the New York Institute of Art and Design and was inspired by the light and architecture of American cities!  He painted the everyday things that he saw in the places he visited, such as restaurants, offices, gas stations, movie theaters, and hotels. Hopper made sketches of actual sites but most of his compositions were created in the studio. He was less concerned about recording reality exactly as he saw it, than about communicating a mood or feeling. Many of his works create a sense of loneliness and isolation that he felt was part of life in the United States.

This month, tudents will be analyzing his painting entitled 'Nighthawks' (see image below) and looking for shapes (an element of art).  Questions to ask while studying the painting are:

1.  What kind of shapes did the artist use?
2.  How are the shapes used in the painting?  

Students will also be encouraged to draw a picture inspired by the artist's use of shapes.  For more information about Edward Hopper, click here!  To see a video about places in New York City that inspired Hopper's paintings, click here!

Famous Artist of the Month: Romare Bearden

For the months of January and February, students will be studying the work of African-American artist, Romare Bearden. They will focus on one of his pieces called The Piano Lesson and look at how the artist shows texture.

Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City on March 12, 1988, at the age of 76. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, showing a broad range of intelligence and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.



Watch the 1-minute video below to learn more about the life of Romeare Bearden.









Black in Time: Romare Bearden from Rmarkable on Vimeo.

Frida Comes to PS4

Students with actress, Flor Bromley, recreate Frida Kahlo's painting, 'The Bus' (1929)

1st grade students dancing to Mexican folk music with 'Frida'.

Do you know who Frida Kahlo is? She was a Mexican painter known for her self-portraits.  But, what people don't know is that she was a lonely girl who had an imaginary friend.  Click here to find out more about her!

Making Books Sing, an organization devoted to bringing high-quality theater productions and arts-in-education programming to NYC schools, brought Frida to PS4!  In this interactive, bilingual musical, children followed Frida Kahlo on a journey throughout her incredible life.  As a lonely little girl growing up in Mexico, Frida had only her imaginary friend to keep her company, but after discovering her inner artist she went on to become one of the most celebrated women of the 20th century.  The 45-minute performance also included some of our students who acted as passengers on a bus scene painted by Frida Kahlo in 1929!  "I liked the part when she (the actress) pretended the baby cried", said Delila S. from Ms. Pinales's class.

Special thanks to Sara Orr, Education Associate from Making Books Sing, for supporting the arts and bringing our artist of the month to life!  Click here to visit their website.

Famous Artist of the Month: Mary Lovato

November is Native American History Month! Since time memorial, the Santa Domingo Pueblo Native Americans have traded seashells from the gulf of California and the Pacific over regular trade routes. Pendants cut from these glossy shells in various forms were overlaid with designs in abalone, jet, and turquoise. This month students are learning about artist and jeweler, Mary Coriz Lovato.

Mary Lovato is known for her unique mosaic inlay, shell work, cast, and stamp-work jewelry. Her specialty is inlaid shell earrings and pendants. These lovely pieces are a blend of the contemporary and traditional styles, but Mary strives to maintain tradition above all. “My mother and mostly my father were my teachers. I was brought up very traditional,” she recalls. “We have kept traditional jewelry going here because it is worn for our dances,” says Mary, who lives at her Santo Domingo Pueblo home outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.Mary Lovato’s work is so phenomenal that many say it has become a standard by which shell inlaid jewelry is measured. During the months of November and December, students will be learning about this artist and creating masterpieces based on her artwork.

Famous Artist of the Month: Frida Kahlo

Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderón in her parents' house in Coyoacán, which at the time was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father was a painter and photographer of German-Jewish background, whose family originated from Oradea, Romania.

Following a crippling traffic accident in 1925, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to painting. Drawing on her personal experiences, her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain and the harsh lives of women. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits that incorporate personal symbolism complete with graphic anatomical references. Frida especially liked to paint self-portraits, flowers, plants, forests, animals, costumes, jewelry, and ancient gods and idols that were found only in Mexico.

She was also influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, aspects of which she portrayed in bright colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married, divorced, and re-married.

For more information on this famous artist, click here!

Artist of the Month: Grant Wood

Grant Wood (see photo below) is a realist painter who is most famous for his painting of the American Midwest, like in American Gothic (see painting below).  During this month and next, students will study him and his artwork.

American Gothic painting by Grant Wood

Photo of Artist Grant Wood (1891-1942)

 
Wood was born in 1891 in Iowa.  His father was a farmer and his mother was a teacher.  After high school, he moved to Minnesota to learn how to work with wood and metal.  The next year, Wood decided to become a teacher.  He studied for his teaching certificate at the University of Iowa.  He also studied architecture and he painted.  In 1916, Wood went to the Art Institute of Chicago to study art.  He taught middle and high school art for six years.  He set up his own studio in Iowa and began painting scenes of the American Midwest.  Grant Wood died in 1942.

For more information about artist Grant Wood, click here.  To watch this funny video about the artist and his most famous painting, click here!

Artist of the Month: Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 7, 1917.  He is an American painter whose works portray scenes of Black life and history with ivid, stylized realism.  At age 13, Lawrence moved with his family to his family to the Harlem section of New york City.


Gouache and tempera paints were Lawrence's charatcteristic media.  His use of somber browns and black for shadows and outlines in an otherwise vibrant palette lent his worka distinctive overtone.  His best-known works are his series on historical or soceial themes, including  ...And the Migrants Kept Coming (1940), Life in Harlem (1942), and War (1947).   Lawrence taught at various schools and colleges and became a professor of art at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1971;  he retired in 1986.  He died at the age of 83.

Living in Harlem (1943)

For more information about Jacob Lawrence, go to Britannica.com or click here!

Artist of the Month: George Segal

Sculptor, George Segal

"Street Crossing"

George Segal is the artist of the month!  Hewas born in 1924 in New York City. He grew up and lived in New Jersey, where he and his wife, Helen, owned a farm that became an outpost of the New York art world, serving as the set of a Robert Frank film and as the site of the first Fluxus Happening. In 1961, Segal began working with live models -- including himself -- to create the plaster-cast figurative sculptures for which he became best known. 

In 1962, he was included in the seminal exhibition, "New Realism," at the Sidney Janis in 1962. He had retrospectives at the Walker Center for the Arts, Minneapolis (1978) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1997), and exhibited widely around the world.   His sculpture, The Commuters, Next Departure (1981) is on permanent display at the Port Authority Terminal in NYC.   Segal died in 2000.

 For more information on George Segal, speak to any of our 5th grade Art Club members or click here.

The BioBus Visits PS4

Did you notice the 1974 San Francisco Transit Bus parked outside PS4 recently?  Well, that was thanks to Dr. Ben and his team of scientists who brought the BioBus to PS4!  Students from fourth grade and a few parents got on board this high-tech laboratory on wheels!  Each student got a chance to use microscopes, learn about what scientists do and see Daphnia!  Daphnia is a tiny, shrimp-like animal that can be found in rivers around our community.

"The BioBus is a great opportunity for students to get experience magnifying objects under a microscope", says Ms. Baez, our Science Lab teacher.  "Students need more experience using scientific tools and the BioBus allows them to do that!".

Thank you, Dr. Ben, for visiting PS4!  Our students had fun and learned a lot in the process.  For more information about the BioBus, click here and for a game using an online microscope, click here!

Artist of the Month: Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera is our artist of the month!  

Diego Rivera was a painter and muralist born in Guanajuato, Mexico. He is now thought to be one of the leading artists of the twentieth century! Rivera began drawing as a child. He studied art at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts while in his teens and then traveled to Europe to live and work on his art. He had some success as a Cubist painter, but the course of world events would strongly change the style and subject of his work. Inspired by the political ideals of the Mexican Revolution (1914-15) and the Russian Revolution (1917), Rivera wanted to make art that reflected the lives of the working class and native peoples of Mexico.  Rivera painted several murals in the United States. Some of his works created controversy, especially the one he did for the Rockefeller family in the RCA building in New York City.   Rivera died of heart failure on November 24, 1957, in Mexico City, Mexico.

For more information about this famous artist, ask your teacher, visit the library or click here! 

Famous Artist of the Month: Dorothea Lange

The artist of the month is Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). She was born in Hoboken New, Jersey. She has been called the greatest American documentary photographer. She is best known for her photographs taken during the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. Her most famous photograph is of a woman named Florence Owens Thompson and her children, taken in 1936.

Click here to see her famous photo and click here to see a video about the Great Depression.

Ellington Artists Do Some Landscaping

Twelve students from the 5th grade have signed up to be part of a club called the Ellington Artists! With creative direction from Carol Ward, Education Coordinator at Morris-Jumel Mansion, this talented group will learn about styles of art and artistic terms. On Wednesday, October 14th, the group walked over to the mansion to learn about impressionism. They used sponges, paint brushes, paint and a small canvas to create an art piece inspired by the landscape of Washington Heights once enjoyed by our nation's first president, George Washington! They were encouraged to "find a spot that shouts 'paint me, paint me", says Ms. Lennon, librarian and club organizer. "It's realistic!", says Adja C. (student from class 501).

Each week students will meet to develop their artistic skills and learn about famous artists, like Frida Kahlo. To see the artwork created by the Ellington Artists, visit the library on the 4th floor. Their next art lesson at the mansion will be on November 17th.