4750 UNIT PLAN GUIDELINES for ART EDUCATION Alison Caselman

1. UNIT TITLE – Discarded Beauty 2. ENDURING IDEAS - Throughout time and across cultures artists have used trash as inspiration and also as subject matter to show its beauty, to rebel against the traditional “fine art” that was being taught in universities and academies. 3. COURSE - Foundations (beginning level) This lesson will take place either in the middle of end of the foundations class. The students will already have lessons gaining their confidence and starting to develop their skills. This lesson will be bringing those aspects together for one piece. 4. ELO - Essential Learning Objectives (list provided) Expressively manipulate the ate elements and principles to create compositions that exhibit a compelling division of space. Work from observation to represent three dimensional form with technical authority, accuracy of proportion, and depicting the illusion of volume in responsive ways. Demonstrate fluency using multiple processes to show the exploration of a variety of two dimensional media, techniques and tools. Demonstrates an understanding of ways to assess development and to defend one’s personal aesthetic. Show the ability to integrate conceptual and technical approaches in choosing appropriate media and techniques. 5. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS - What are students investigating? What will they discover?

• What is beauty? • What is trash? • Can trash be beautiful? • Can trash be “trash” to one and beauty to another? • Can trash be the subject of a traditional, fine art drawing and be more conceptual

than just an academic drawing?

6. EXEMPLAR ARTISTS - • Janet Fish • David Dooley • Lou Haney • Denise Stewart-Sanabria

7. OBJECTIVES - Artists will be able to

• Define what is beautiful • Define what they consider trash • Justify if trash can be beautiful and if there are conditions to trash being beautiful

or not. • Collaborate and discuss differences of opinions with other artist • Defend weather or not they think trash can be more than an academic drawing

and more conceptual

8. MATERIALS - • A selection of trash • Paper • Color pencils

9. PROCEDURES –

• I would ask my students what they Beauty is and give me examples of what they consider to be beautiful. After that I would ask them the other essential questions and we would have a short discussion of what they think about them.

• I would explain that they will be finding a discarded item (NOT a crushed can) that they find interesting and unique.

• I would show the students examples of the exemplar artist and how they depict their content so realistically.

• After the presentation of the exemplar artist the students will have the rest of the time in class to play and discover different types of mark making using cones and sphere.

o During this time the students will get four squares to explore these days of play on. One square will be a black and white drawing of the cones and spheres. One will be a color cross-hatch. One will be one of all of their choice. One will a be a blind draw of paper and handful of color (with one color trade).

o Then these will be displayed together. • I would give them the assignment to find their piece(s) of trash and bring it into the

next class period and that is when we will set up their still life of their item(s) with dramatic lighting and ask for them to draw what they see. (I would prefer that the

students draw from the three dimensional still-life but if room is a problem they can set up their still-life take a photograph of it and then work from that.

• I would clarify in this project the students will be using color pencil and a very academic drawing style. This will give an interesting juxtaposition between the style the trash is being portrayed.

• I would also explain that these still-lives should have interesting composition and background if that goes with the concept.

10. ASSESSMENT/ CULMINATING ACTIVITY -

• All artists will get into groups of four with people who do not sit at their tables. • They will have 4 pieces of work in front of them, none of which belonging to an

artist in that group and for these art pieces to have different looking marking systems.

• Then the group will pick out two aspects of the drawing they enjoy (being technique, craftsmanship, or a certain spot in the drawing that they find attractive)

• Then group will also pick out one thing they wish was different about the drawing that think could have been solved better.

• After the groups have written these three things down, each on a separate piece of paper, they will turn them in to me.

• I will look over the responses to make sure the class took this seriously and then give the give them to the owner of the piece.

• The artist will have one week (of outside class time) to make changes to their work if they want to and then turn them in for their grade.

• In addition for them to turn in the artwork, they will be turning in a short writing on their response to their peers: if they deiced to use the suggestions from their peers, If they did not use the suggestion and why.

13. EVIDENCE of Prior Knowledge - As found in Rethinking Curriculum in Art, written by Stewart and Walker, pages 42-43 gives key questions on what to ask when looking and criticizing art. “The modes of inquiry for art derive from practices of description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment.” They students will be looking at their peers work and giving criticism (positives and improvements) to help push and expand the work further. Another place where I have found evidence of prior knowledge is on page 24 in BraveArt written by Patterson saying that “a brave student offers classmates advice, and asks for their advice in turn.