Tim Needles blog for art & media art classes at Smithtown H.S. East
Here's two examples from one of our cultural assignments from this quarter's AP Art class, creating a personal mandala. Mandala is Sanskrit for the word circle and has a religious and spiritual significance in the Buddhist and Hindu religions but for our assignment I asked students to create a mandala that is meaningful to them personally and the results were varied and really interesting. For more information on mandalas check out the Mandala Project.
This weekend I visited the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens, a museum I've been wanting to see for quite a while. If your are unfamiliar with Noguchi, he's a Japanese-American sculptor and artist who is also know for his set design, furniture design, and paper la terns which have become immensely popular.
Having studied Japanese art and culture as well as American art his work has interesting aspects of both but his later work which is the majority of the collection at the museum has a intensely Japanese feel due to it imperfections and connection to nature, especially thanks to how it is displayed in open air rooms and gardens.
Now that our photography class is over anyone who's interested in continuing with the creativity might want to join me on Instagram, a free app for digital devices and smart phones which has a number of filters and effects available (such as the image above which was taken on the walk into school this week). My user name is "Tim Needles" so add me as a contact and sharing some cool new pictures! Also if you want to see the images and you don't have a device or phone around try Webstagram.
Here's a student example of our most recent assignment in computer art and design class which had students working with the Wacom stylus and tablets digitally drawing selective self portraits of themselves.
Wednesday was Ally's senior show which was a great success incorperating various media such as photography, drawing, painting, and mixed media work.
As of this week we now have SKYPE available in our classroom so we will finally have a chance to speak with some of the students that we have been working with all semester from Japan and Pakistan through the Japan Society's Going Global social networking program! All of our sessions will be early in the morning due to the time difference so if you are in later classes you'll get a pass to come by earlier in the day, don't forget, it should be fun!
This week we collected our first assignment of 2012 in photography which was to document your first 10 days of the year on film. There were some really great results and if you continue to the end of class it'll also count as extra credit.
The Art Honor Society has begun a series of new mural throughout the school beginning in the art wing and branching out to other parts of the school and community.
Here are some of the results from our project on remaking a famous photograph that was due today concluding our photography history unit. There were some really fun remakes, great job!
Our last assignment before the holiday is an indoor & outdoor panoramic photograph. The term panorama comes from the Greek words for "all" and "sight" and there are a number of ways to create them both in the camera or later in Adobe Photoshop. Above is a very cool and festive example from class, enjoy and have a fantastic break, see you next year!
This semester's edition of The Matador featured an article about Mr. Needles class and their participation in the Inside Out Project from the French photographer JR. After the winter break we will be working on expanding the project outside of the art wing and into the rest of the school and larger community so if you are interested come by art room 161 in January! If you haven't seen JR's acceptance speech at TED last make sure you check it out here: TEDprize
To follow up on our photography history unit I'm going to ask each photo student to choose a well image from any of the photographers we discussed in class (I included the list below) and remake one of their photographs. You can use people, toys, or nature but be creative and have fun! The example above referencing Cindy Sheman's famous "untitled film still #21" is from a great article on the DIY (Do It Yourself) project from Flavorwire by Adda Birnir and Tom Starkweather.
This week in Computer Art class we will learn how to use Adobe Illustrator to create an original t-shirt design which can be printed online using companies such as MySoti. Above is the example that Mr. Needles did is class using a drawing from his sketchbook which was then scanned, vectorized it in Illustrator, cleaned up, made transparent, then uploaded online.
Here's the results from last week's assignment which was to "photograph the alphabet" by finding things in nature that resembled letters and edit them together (an example from class is pictured above). After the alphabet was finished students had the option to add one or two additional symbols such as an asterisk, exclamation point, ect. to finish out the image grid and add balance. Finally we took the letters that were created and put together an inspiring word that which we'll print out and post up in the gallery(an example from class is pictured below).
Friday's Art & Media Art Honor Society field trip to the Museum of the Moving Image and 5 Pointz art space in Queens was a great time. We had a chance to see the museum along with the fantastic Jim Henson exhibit and some amazing urban art!
Here's an awewsome video on The Fundamental Elements of Design from Erica Gorochow which covers all of the things we went over in class visually.
The 3rd Annual Northport One-Act Play Festival is March 30-April 1, 2012 just announced their call for entries and this year's theme for student submissions is "Bullying." The works are due by Jan 7th. Take a look at Rich Vernillo's award-winning PSA about bullying Stop Bullying Now Public Service Announcement from last year for some great content and visuals created here in the hallways.
Here are some highlights of Chuck Close's recent opening at Blum & Poe gallery in California from the Arrested Motion blog. We just learned about Close, who lives locally in the Hampton's and NYC, in our AP art class and the photography class, he's one of those few artists who are equally important in the painting and photography world. 
Next week the Art & Media Art Honor Societies will be on a trip to visit The Museum of The Moving Image for the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibit, MOMA's PS1, and 5Pointz exhibit space in Queens. 
