Art Ed Studio

For my student centered problem assignment, the problem I chose to solve is creating a hat for benefit. I chose this for two reasons, 1 I wanted to learn to crochet, and two I wanted to create a hat for my grandmother who very recently got diagnosed with breast cancer. I ended up using a hat loom and the hat came out beautifully, unfortunately I don't like the hat loom method as much as I like crocheting, it takes too long and is very tedious. Once I finished creating the loom hat, I created a pompom for it as well. Below is a picture of my finished piece. The Problem: Creating hats for a benefit Materials: Yarn, Loom (if wanted), yarn needle, and crochet hooks Techniques: One technique I learned, is a simple crochet technique. You just crochet a square, connect two ends of the square using slip stitches. Once the slip stiches are done, you take one end of the hat and use a yarn needle to pull extra yarn through the outside to synch the top part of the hat togeth...

Glass Fusing was one of the assignments for my Art Ed Studio course. For this assignment we first explored working with, cutting, and gluing glass. We were first required to create two different fuses, tac and full fuse. With the tack fusing, you fuse the glass but you don't heat it as long so that the pieces dont fuse completely, creating a textured and layered piece. For the full fuse you heat the glass in a kiln for longer, this fuses the glass together fully, creating a piece with a more even layering. After our first day playing around with all the materials and getting the hang of things, we had a whole other assignment. First we were required to do a piece that was fully fused together, with a layer of clear glass to gloss over it. Another part we were required to create a piece with wire in it, for this we glued two pieces of glass together, with a piece of wire in-between. Lastly, we were required to create a slump dish. This is created by making a full fuse glass design...

For international day, we split off in groups and taught two groups of student our chosen craft. The focus of our international day problem was equal housing opportunity. Because of this issue my group found it smart to have the students finger knit scarves. We first introduced ourselves to the students followed with a short slide show. In the slideshow we introduced the problem of equal housing opportunity and showed the students two different works of art relating to the issue. After the slide show we demonstrated the method of finger knitting. The students had an amazing time, and I think after a few struggled minutes, basically everyone got the hang of it, and ended up enjoying themselves. Below is an image of the start of the method of finger knitting.

For ceramics, we were required to make two pieces, one a figure, and the other a pinch pot. One was also to be burnished. For the figure I chose to do a little fox. this was done simply by using basic handbuilding techniques and slipping and scoring. For the pinch pot, I just rolled a lump of clay into a ball and pushed my thumb into it. I than began squeezing and pinching around the edges to create a finsihed piece. Once the pinch pot was leather hard, I burnished the edge using a spoon. Once everything dried we fired them doing the sawdust method. You take a trashcan fill it with sawdust, put the pieces in, fill it with newspaper, and light it. you leave a lid over the trashcan with a little room for smoke to exit and let it burn for a few days. Below are the finished product.

For printmaking I did two different types. I did Intaglio and relief/block printing. For the Intaglio we etched plexiglass using baren. First we sketched an image we liked, than we laid the plexiglass over the image and traced over the image using the baren. After, we coated the finished etching in ink and put a piece of paper under it and rolled it through a press. This left us with our finished pieces. The requirement was that we make three finished prints of our sketches. Below are pictures of my finished pieces. Next I did the relief block printing. For this method I made a sketch traced it in charcoal and pressed it onto a soft cut printing block. Once the sketch was transferred I went around the image and cut out pieces of the soft cut block. this created layers so I could transfer my image smoothly. Once the block was cut to my liking, I chose the colored inks I wanted and rolled them onto the block using a brayer. Once covered in ink I just flipped it over and transferred...

For the Day of Remembrance, my class went to the University of Iowa Hospital to work with people who have lost loved ones to cancer. We had each family choose a piece of fabric, there were many different colors and patterns for families to choose something that felt right to represent their loved one. Once they had their piece of fabric they wrote something to, for, or about their loved one on the piece of fabric. They than handed them to me and another student to weave into one giant collaborative weaving. The experience was definitely something that will stick with me. It was emotional for everyone involved. I know the effort was minimum on our part, but we were thanked a lot and you could tell it really meant something to each person/family. It definitely showed me the importance of working as a community. Below is a picture of the finished piece.