Rain, rain, go away, come again another day… A cold, wet and gloomy day at Artspace couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm: there were more stories to be told, illustrated, and captured on video. Class began with a cut-and-paste session. Remember those painted stories from two classes ago? Tales such as the “Yellow-muscled Alien” and the “Girl Who Made Friends with A Giant” were originally painted as part of a large canvas combining many individual stories. Today students tore into those large canvases with scissors, retrieving bits and pieces of their own stories so they could reconstruct and illustrate them later on.
Second, the students continued illustrating their group-project storyboards. While many of the stories were nearing completion, many of the illustrations still contained a lot of empty white space. When there’s empty space on the paper, the best solution is a box of crayons. Out came the crayons and soon there were broad arrays of blue, orange, green, red, yellow and purple filling the gaps.
While everybody continued drawing, Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt interviewed one group at a time on camera. Students got the chance to film their storytelling efforts by talking, answering questions and pointing out how their artwork was worth a thousand words.
During all of the ArtSpace sessions to date, Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt have been filming students working, playing, creating and telling stories. In the next few days they will be piecing together all of those video clips and setting them to music in order to recount the course of Moya ArtSpace this fall. The result of this video editing effort will be on display at the Moya holiday concert, December 16 @ 6pm.
ArtSpace Moya Fall09 Storyboards from Matthew Mosher on Vimeo.
With a round of individual storytelling under their belts, students got a chance to team up, combine their talents, and tell a much more detailed tale. But before we got down to business today, Mr. Matthew treated us to a rousing, Mad-lib-altered rendition of “Old McDonald Had A Farm” recast as “American McDonald Had a Guy.” And that “guy” made the sound “AHHHHHHHHHHHH, AHHHHHHHHHH….” Evidently, American McDonald’s guy was in pain.
The students’ tables were already covered with fresh sheets of white paper, and the task on hand was somewhat similar to the task we covered on Monday: storytelling through illustration. This time, however, students at each table worked together to create a single story, illustrate it with colored pencils and give a brief written summary. The possibilities, as always, were endless. We only asked that students somehow answer the following questions in the process of illustrating and writing down their tale: where and when is the story happening? Who is in the story? What happens in the story?
One table told the story of a day at the beach: a bunch of boys and girls decided to go to the seaside recently for an afternoon of sun and surf. But low and behold, peaceful surfing soon turned to tragedy as several sharks attacked, biting the legs of those enjoying the waves. Asked if a soundtrack accompanied their story, the students shook their heads “no,” but the presence of the “Jaws” theme was unmistakable. Fortunately, a lifeguard was on hand to warn of the danger and help treat the casualties. It was unclear whether or not the lifeguard looked like David Hasselhof.
One table over, the buildings of Springfield, Illinois were ablaze. Somebody had eliminated all of the fire extinguishers in the town. The situation looked dire: Homer, sitting idly by and eating a hamburger, had no idea what to do, and Maggie sucked on her pacifier while aloofly observing the chaos. Fortunately, Bart came to the rescue: flying down main street in an old, beat-up Ford equipped with fire-extinguishing equipment, he put out the fires and saved the day. The jury is still out as to whether Bart was the one who stole the fire extinguishers in the first place.
The corner of one table told the story of an alien with huge yellow muscles who had flown his spaceship from Mars to Earth in one hour! Asked if he would share his super-speed technology with us earthlings, the alien replied that information about such technology was highly classified.
Right next to the yellow-muscled alien was a very colorful princess whose parents were on vacation at the beach. With no supervision at home, the princess ran into the forest where she met a huge green monster. She quickly ran back into her castle and anxiously awaited the return of the vacationing king and queen.
A couple of tables away there appeared a large picture book. Somehow, a girl had managed to walk directly into the book. On the pages of the book lived a giant whose house was built inside a rainbow. The girl in the book decided to pick some flowers to give to the giant in the rainbow, because the giant in the rainbow was lonely. This act of floral generosity protected a lot of people from being eaten by the now-friendly giant.
Following the free painting session, students headed outside for a very spirited game of “Use or Be.” Gradually, students realized they could team up, with one person “using” the item and the other person “being” the item. As a result one student used a blender and the other student was the blender; one student was a puppet and the other student used a puppet; and one student was a nail while the other student hammered the nail. This emerging ability to act dramatically is very exciting indeed!
The last day of ArtSpace before Thanksgiving greeted students another game of rhythmic call and response. Gradually, students become much more proficient matching the rhythms set by Mr. Ben and Mr. Matt. Continued improvement in this area may allow for an upcoming performance.
Next up were the partially completed story trees, ready to be decorated with story types. The students recalled the story types that we’ve been talking about since our first session, and Mr. Matt and Mr. Ben notated the various categories on the board. Then, armed with markers and colored pencils, students decorated the branches and trunks of their trees with “fiction”, “biography”, “song”, “theater”, “romance” etc.
The individuality of these group projects gives them excellent display potential.
Third up, students were encouraged to write an account of the instrument-building process in which they had participated during the previous three sessions. Descriptions of box-cutting, rubber-band-stretching, hole-poking and color-splashing abounded. The stories, of course, will be ongoing projects, with potential for further decoration and detailed presentation.
Finally, students busted through the doors to the outdoor playground and took part in a rousing game of “huggy-bear,” spreading the love prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.
