Grinnell College's Gallery visits with Kara Walker Silhouette explorations!

Tilly Woodward, amazing photo-realist style artist and director of art outreach/community like programs, came with a student from the Grinnell College Falconer gallery to show a 1st grade class and kindergarten class, all about Kara Walker! Kara Walker is famous for her controversial themed  black cut paper silhouettes.

Students really enjoyed a change of pace and what was even better, was that they finally got a chance to talk about their art with the class. I LOVED that part. It's hard to find that time in the classroom to have everyone sit down and share! We need to do that more often.

Students first drew with white chalk a simple drawing. Then cut out and glued the sihoette 'chalk face' down, so you could only see the black paper. They attached it to an interesting background.

students look at a photo copy of a famous Kara Walker

Students got a kick out of talking about their art and what made their 'Kara Walker' unique!

Last year Tilly and her volunteers came in to talk about Japanese woodcut prints with the students and then 4th graders got to work on making their own prints with foam tray print making! The students were so wowed by the ancient book of Japanese woodcut prints and LOVED using all the bright inks, authentic barens, bright tissue papers! Japanese woodblock printing is ancient artform and everything from the inks, to the process, to actually making a registration...is a very respected and intricate, delicate process.