Art History - Lita Albuquerque

In my 2025-2026 school year plan, I decided that our March artist would be Lita Albuquerque. (Here is the complete list of all the artists we've learned about so far.) Now on to some resources and my planning notes:

Lita Albuquerque
1946 -

also

Land Art’s Grande Dame Lita Albuquerque Is Still ‘Queen of the Now’
artnet.com

https://www.litaalbuquerque.com

Land Art in Malibu Gets a Second Chance
The New York Times - Jun 19, 2024

Robert Irwin, Artist of Fleeting Light and Space, Is Dead at 95
The New York Times - Oct 25, 2023

I think our best bet for making a large Land Art installation about space and light is to do something outside with a series of handmade candles

trying to choose between some of the candle ideas I've used in the past! here are my notes

Ice Candles
Feb 2019

"The older students also gathered evergreen materials from outside and we packed a Bundt pan full, then filled it with water and set it in the freezer to freeze over the next few days. On Thursday we will unmold the ice ring and place a candle in the center. I can't wait to see it all lit up! This Ice Candle idea was shared with me by a teacher from the Waldorf School of St. Louis."

"Next we enjoyed Snack time, complete with our beautiful Ice Candle centerpiece. The ice ring was sooo lovely (turn upside down and run hot water over the Bundt pan for 15 seconds to release), and we placed it on a silver tray with a golden rolled beeswax pillar candle in the center."

Floating Candles
Feb 2019

"Floating Candles" (walnut shells) from All Year Round, page 28

"Today we made beautiful little floating candles in walnut shell halves and floated them in a large bowl of water in the center of the table at Snack."

Earth Candles
Feb 2018

"Earth Candle" from All Year Round, page 30

"Then the children went back outside and found the perfect spot in the butterfly garden for our Earth Candle. They dug the hole while I watched the pot on the stove, since the golden beeswax still was melting. Natalie and her friend came back in and got a ball of wick, tied a washer on one end, and went back outside with a pair of scissors to look for a long stick. They tied the other end of the wick to the long stick and laid the long stick over the hole with the wick inside it. This stick holds the wick in place while the candle hardens.

When the golden beeswax was melted, we went outside and poured it right into the hole. It was a gorgeous amber color against the rich dark earth. We loved the effect so much that we grabbed a dish filled with earth, brought it indoors, quickly made a hole in it, and put in a wick and poured in a candle. Now we have an Earth Candle inside!"

Dec 2018

"We poured our Earth Candle for the center of the Advent Spiral. Since it was threatening to rain later, I made this in a large flower pot instead of directly into the earth outside. I used both red and golden beeswax, but the candle ended up very red."

Usually we do candlemaking projects for Candlemas but I think this ties in really well with this artist as well... plus the timing is perfect for the Equinox and talking about the rhythms of the cosmos!

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week of Mar 9:

Mon

watch We Are in Space | Artist Lita Albuquerque | Louisiana Channel

follow up ideas to explore:

a Catholic convent

children's play "The Blue Bird"
discussed in chapter 7 of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild,
so we can have this as our lunchtime read aloud this month!



history of Tunisia - Phoenicians, Berbers, Roman Empire

find on a map - Tunisia, Turkey, Paris, London, Los Angeles

"I became an American artist; I became an artist of my time there in Southern California"

the Light & Space Movement

an engagement with nature
"everyone was either a surfer or a swimmer"

slowing down and observing the light
"wanting to represent the feeling and the perception of light in Southern California"

two artists that were really influential to her:
Robert Irwin
Susan Kaiser Vogel - Blue Flame

"now I'm bringing in artificial color into nature"
"everything outside of the artificial color is also part of the palette"

"when I'm out there I am thinking painting.... very much using the elements as if I were painting"

rocks

the wind

working with powdered pigment

Goethe quote

pure color
"it's like rocks in a way for me.... there's so much information, there's so much vibrational quality, there's so much mystery"

how do you respond to colors in your body
"what is it about red?"

"I go after it but I can never reach it so that's my fascination"

"you can change a meaning of something with one word"
"I'm very interested in the ephemeral and how fast anything can change"

astronomy
"I think of our lives and of the earth; I'm always thinking about it from outer space looking back and so when you have that kind of time-space thinking then it shifts you a lot"

"the beauty about art is the subtlety and that anything can change on a dime"

her work is very spiritual
"I'm very interested in how it affects the viewer"
"I do manipulate what I do to get a certain alchemical result when we look at it that triggers something in our perceptual system; I'm interested in changing the individual looking at something into another level of consciousness"

"I'm interested in the human's relation to nature and to the cosmos"

the total solar eclipse

performance piece - 25th century female astronaut

33 vertebrae in our spinal column

"to inspire and to understand that we need to shift"

Thu

read The Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars: A Life of Edwin Hubble by Isabelle Marinov

look at images of outer space (Hubble Space Telescope calendar)



go outside and do a cosmic address meditation as described here

if you were going to make a piece of art that represented how small humans are in relationship to the cosmos, what would you do?

SWI < universe >

week of Mar 16:

Mon

how do you respond to colors in your body?

read Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color by Mary O'Neill



brainstorm a list of emotions

arrange the color tiles in Paint Chip Poetry on the floor in the other room, choose an emotion out of a hat, and have each child one by one go into the room and take the color that most makes them respond with the given feeling (don't show anyone else your color), then compare



play Hues and Cues

Thu

pull out some of the cards from Paint Chip Poetry that match the color story in You and Me by Martine Kindermans

what feeling do you think this book is trying to evoke? read the book



imagine a feeling and make a "color story" painting of it using Gelatos

can other people guess the feeling you were trying to portray?

week of Mar 23:

Mon

experiment with changing the light in a space

cover all the windows of a room with tracing paper... how does that change the light? how does it change your experience of the space?

remove the tracing paper coverings from the windows one portion at a time

Wed

read NYT article: Land Art in Malibu Gets a Second Chance

the closest thing we have to working with pure powdered pigment is charcoal

let the children take sticks of charcoal outside to draw geometric lines and shapes on the trees or rocks

explain the process by which charcoal is made (Charcoal Burners!)

week of Mar 30:

Mon

start candlemaking project (see notes above)

Thu

set up Land Art installation!

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