Art History - Alexander Calder

Our Specials schedule this year is

Mon - Nature Study & Form Drawing

Tue - Farm Day

Wed - Handwork & Philosophy, Science Club

Thu - Art History & Structured Word Inquiry

Fri - Forest School

In my Art History 2022-2023 blog post, I decided September would be Alexander Calder. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Alexander Calder
1898 - 1976

also

field trip to the University Museum | Southern Illinois University

Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters
by MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga
p.66 - "Standing Mobile" activity
available online as a FREE PDF from Bright Ring Publishing

Using Art to Create Art: Creative Activities Using Masterpieces
by Wendy Libby
p.23 - art movement (Abstract)
p.24 - "Mobile" activity
p.25 - sample piece of art, Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1939)
p.26 - mini biography
p.27 - "Abstract Faces" activity
p.28 - sample piece of art, Slanting Red Nose (1969)

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week of Sep 5:

Sandy's Circus: A Story About Alexander Calder
by Tanya Lee Stone

group project:
start to collect "Beautiful Stuff" & organize it in our Art Room


Beautiful Stuff! Learning with Found Materials
by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini

week of Sep 12:

Alexander Calder: Meet the Artist
by Patricia Geis
this book is AMAZING!


Jazz Age Josephine
by Jonah Winter - for younger children


Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
by Patricia Hruby Powell - for older children

experiment with creating wire figures that have movement
it works well to "rough draft" with pipe cleaners first and then move on to more expensive wire and wire tools

week of Sep 19:

Mon - read The Secret World of Hildegard by Jonah Winter at snack time, listen to music of Ste. Hildergard of Bingen, make wire sculptures of her music (her compositions translated the pictures in her visions into sound; we translated the sound back into pictures)




Tue - design and work on collaborative mobile inspired by the life cycle of the butterfly (using wire, tape, scissors, and cardstock)



Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture review – the master of perpetual motion
The Guardian - Nov 15, 2015

Alexander Calder: Reinstallation of Untitled, 1976
National Gallery of Art (13 photographs)


Thu - make sculptures from Found Objects (Calder-inspired, using an array of colored wire plus items from our Beautiful Stuff boxes)

week of Sep 26:

Mon - field trip to the University Museum to see Balloons




Thu - painting


Alexander Calder and His Magical Mobiles
by Jean Lipman
"Wire," pp.37-43, "Drawings," pp.75-76, "Paintings," pp.77-80


Using Art to Create Art: Creative Activities Using Masterpieces
by Wendy Libby
p.27 - "Abstract Faces" activity
note: this activity uses markers instead of paint

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