Who's coming to our Artist Dinner Party?

I love this art lesson and so easy to do, fairly inexpensive, and goes with our Claes Oldenburg clay food! It does take a bit of patience and prep tacking the plastic silverware and plate down to a sheet of 12x18 drawing paper. I don't glue the fork's handle down, just the prong part, so that the students can sneak the folded paper napkin square under the fork and glue it with Elmers glue to the paper! This is a great lesson for the end of year to review famous art and artists. I put up visuals using my projector and students got to pick which masterpiece and artist they wanted to have at our artist dinner party! I put up about 6 different artists and kept other posters out as well- but nothing way too complex to try to make your own. I told students to write the artist's name in the bottom corner so they would 'know where to sit'!

Our Claes Oldenburg food on our famous artists' place setting for our Artist Dinner Party!

Claes Oldenburg Clay Food Sculpture!

Miss Oetken's blueberry pie, cheeseburger with the works and a club sandwich with olive (modeled the sandwich
after Claes Oldenburg soft sculpture of a sandwich very much like this)

2nd grade reviewed the large scale food sculptures of Claes Oldenburg. We compared and discussed which ones were soft sculptures and which ones were hard sculptures of the different food sculptures. We also reviewed that all were very large scale sculptures. Then we brainstormed what kinds of food we could make. We went through clay techniques and procedure. Next time after they're fired, we're going to paint them and then glue them to a small white paper plate to display our yummy foods! Here are a few examples from last year!


cheeseburger



sausage and pepperoni pizza slice




cupcake with sprinkles





bowl of cherries, bananas and ice cream, fruit bowl:grapesw, strawberries and a banana





Eggs, bacon and sausage





ice cream cone





Here's a hotdog with ketchup and mustard





birthday cake with cherry





taco with all kinds of fixins



Claes Oldenburg Large Scale City Sculptures

student work

2nd grade has been busy learning about scale and proportion by studying Claes Oldenburg and his larger than life food sculptures! We talked about some of his sculptures are soft like an inflatable bed and some are large and hard to withstand outside weather.



student work...yum, cupcake sculpture!

 We mainly focused on his food sculptures and wanted to show scale of sculptures in a city. First we got a sheet of white paper for the background. Then used scrap paper to cut buildings out of to glue down for a city. Then we used lots of shape & color to create windows and repetition. We used Crayola construction paper crayons to make the windows. Then we talked about the background for the sky. What time of day is it? Is the sun setting? Rainy? Clear blue sky? Night? Color in the background accordingly.

Lastly, find your large scale food sculpture by scowering through Women's Day or other food magazines. Cut it out and glue it and anchor it to the 'ground'. Voila! Food sculpture in the city!

Claes Oldenburg Spoon Bridges

Kindergarten learned about large scale sculpture from one of the masters, Claes Oldenberg! I first started off showing a picture of the famous spoon bridge using my projector and asked if anyone had actually seen it before. Surprisingly, lots of students raised their hands! Many had traveled to Minneapolis or actually saw the sculpture in person. I explained that this sculpture formed a 'bridge' over a small pond and when it was warm outside, it became a sprinkler (sprays from the stem) for a fountain!

Each student, was given a piece of green paper for the 'grassy area' of the sculpture garden. We talked about that a scuplture garden, is a grassy area, sometimes in the back of a museum, that contains many large scale sculptures on display so you can walk around and get an upclose look. Then students were given a piece of blue construction paper to cut out a 'pond' like that of the original sculpture & for the spoon to cross. Then we used different shades of green oil pastels to make little lines for grass. Then Model Magic clay came into play (only the best stuff on earth!) for the round cherry. Model magic is great because it's light, no mess involved, soft, and you can color on it! So if you don't want to have to fire it and have something heavy, this is fast and easy! We rolled it into a ball, then used red washable crayola markers coloring it in!  

Then they were ready to come to my station where put a dot of hot glue to secure our 'bridge' and then another dot of hot glue on the end of the spoon to secure the cherry. I had already cut a bunch of brown pipecleaners to add the finishing touch, the stem, which I let them add, for their final touch as the artist!