Art History - Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly: Coffee Filters in the Rain

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 April would be Dale Chihuly. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Dale Chihuly
1941 -

also

Chihuly the Artist: Breathing Life into Glass

Classroom Chihuly (PDF)
lesson plan from Dick Blick - uses Dura-Lar

Grafix Dura-Lar 8.5 x 11”, Pad of 100 – .007”

Dick Blick carries the .015" width, which is more expensive

Faux Glass Flowers (PDF)
also uses Dura-Lar (.015")

Dale Chihuly Inspired Sculpture blog post
uses Shrinky Dink paper

Shrinky Dinks Creative Pack 10 Sheets Frosted Ruff n' Ready
the Ruff n' Ready is good for colored pencils

I do have an old toaster oven (no longer used for food) that I can use for this... apparently, you can also experiment with a heat gun!

Glass artist Chihuly will bring ‘most ambitious’ exhibition to Missouri Botanical Garden
Jan 25, 2023

I wanted to end each school year with a still-living artist. If you've been following this year -- my first attempt at teaching Art History -- you'll know that I originally planned to end the year with Faith Ringgold. When I heard about the exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Garden, however, I swapped her out for Dale Chihuly. Faith Ringgold is now in our list of artists for next year.

This week I made another change. Because May is a PPI month (Projects of Personal Interest) for my older students, it will already be very busy lesson-planning wise. I don't want to be rushing around trying to jam another artist in there as well. So I moved Claes Oldenburg to my list of artists for a future year, and moved Dale Chihuly to April. This way we can study him in April, go see the exhibit in St. Louis in May, and wrap up the school year in style!

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Special Note:

We will start our study of Dale Chihuly by looking backwards. We've had some nice connections happening here lately between what we are studying now and our work from the beginning of the school year!

Read Aloud: Our current read-aloud story, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham, takes place during and after the Revolutionary War, so many of the professions mentioned in that story are ones we are familiar with from our Colonial America Living History Day in Week 6.

Art History: Another connection, which now comes in handy for Art History, is that we had a Glassblower as a Special Guest. And I'm thrilled that I have several examples of hand-blown glass I can show.

So, this week we will reread The Glassblower. If you're interested in those Week 6 notes, I've put them below.


The Glassblower (Colonial People)
by Christine Petersen


Thursday, Oct 13 - Colonial America Living History Day

Many thanks to our special guest, glass artist Chad Goodpastor, who presented the profession of Glassblower.

The children spent a lot of time on their research, backboards, and notecards. The results were wonderful! The driveway was set up to be a street in a Colonial village, and the professions represented were

Apothecary

Blacksmith

Carpenter

Cook

Dressmaker

Gunsmith

We also had a delicious feast featuring five authentic Colonial America dishes! All of the detailed notes for our planning can be found below:

Living History Day - Colonial America
Sep 11

Colonial Trade/Occupation Research
Sep 16

Colonial Costumes
Sep 23

Colonial America Menu
Oct 10

week of Apr 10:

Thu - read chapters 1 & 2 of The Glassblower

week of Apr 17:

Thu - read chapters 3 & 4 of The Glassblower

this book would have worked out better if we had read one chapter each day, Mon - Thu (the chapters are quite long... but interesting!)

week of Apr 24:

Wed - read prologue and chap 1-3 of


World of Glass: The Art of Dale Chihuly
by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan


Thu - finish up The World of Glass by reading chap 4-8

this book would have worked out better if we had read three chapters each day, Mon - Wed, and then done the Macchia artwork on Thu

other good connections with this book about Dale Chihuly could be

p.7 - looking at my large glass Japanese float

p.7 - playing marbles

p.21 - watching a fox use both ears to judge distance between her and her prey, doing experiments with depth perception

Wild Isles with David Attenborough, episode 1 (24:30 - 26:45)

p.29 - looking at Native American blankets

Coyote Steals the Blanket retold by Janet Stevens


look at examples of artwork in 2023 wall calendar



make Chihuly-inspired Macchia (PDF)
uses basket coffee filters, plastic cups, markers, water, spray starch

Dale Chihuly: Coffee Filters in the Rain post

week of May 1:

field trip to Missouri Botanical Garden to see the amazing art show!

week of May 8:

less Chihuly-inspired and more just for fun... to play around with the Shrinky Dink paper, and to finish up our Mycology lessons in Science Club... we are going to make Shrinky Dink mushrooms! we can trace the mushroom designs from our coloring books (trace on the smooth side with a Sharpie, color on the rough side with colored pencils)

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