Our First Student Art Show

Studio 4 Art is priviledged to work with many local school's offering After School Enrichment Art. We have just finished up our first 8 week course of the 2011-2012 school year and wanted to show off the student art that was created in our new addition, the Annex. We offered live music (compliments to the Magic Flute of Terra Linda for supplying!) and hors' deurves to set the mood for this special night. I love teaching these classes as the energy is always exciting and our usual full classes of 16 always offer a different experience every week! A special shout out too to our after school instructors: Marilyn Burkholder Creamer, Ann Gerard, and Susan Poer. And thank you also to the schools that welcome us in. This show was with 5 Novato California elementary schools; Hamilton Elementary, Pleasant Valley Elementary, Olive Elementary, Loma Verde Elementary and San Ramon!

With over 100 pieces of artwork, it was exciting to see the space come alive with color. The work looks amazing and the students have worked hard learning a lot of techniques while having fun and studying about Mr. Picasso.

Each session Studio 4 Art brings something new and exciting to students in our After School Enrichment programs. This session we studied and looked at Pablo Picasso, learning about his style, technique and what kind of art mediums he liked to experiment in. Students created a print using a foam plate while learning about Picasso's blue and rose period. They studied Picasso's cubist paintings looking at such work as "The Guitar Player". We took this idea and brought it to a new level of cubist painting. Beginning with acrylic painting (encompassing learning about composition and color mixing) student began their adventure with linear angled lines and then painted inside if this design. The next layer of this painting was to have the children fully explore the creative process by dividing their painting into pieces by cutting with scissors, to then put back together creating a completely different cubist type painting. We ended our session with clay and sculpture work. The emphasis in this exercise, continuing with Picasso, was how the artist loved to exaggerate features and figures, sometimes creating a more comic like piece and learning his reasoning for this exaggeration was in part due to perspective. The clay project is using clay that is a porcelain type clay and was fired in Studio 4 Art's kiln.

Studio 4 Art is very excited to have a space where we can let the students see their art work framed, hung and lit up. It gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment when their work is up for all to see. Looking forward to the next show in about 2 1/2 months.