Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: summer camp

My camp kids this week thought they were free from school.  Ha!
That summer camp was just going to be a bunch of fun – and no learning. Ha!
Well, they were wrong. And what could be more fun for a bunch of 8-12 year olds
than some Art History?!

After they finished glazing their clay pieces on Tuesday, we shifted our focus to some
famous master artists. Some of the biggest names, some of the biggest masterpieces!
Flash cards and a little friendly competition always gets the kids excited about
memorizing some names, artworks and tidbits about each artist.

After learning about some of the top artists, we had then do a little still life of their own.
They sketched them, then they painted them. We helped teach them some basic skills to
help create their own masterpieces. Then today, we shifted once again… and they had to
re-create the same still life image “in the style” of the famous artists. Which included
using different materials and techniques to best “mimic”  the famous artist’s style.
Some were painted, some were pastels… some were stippled, some were splattered!
Markers, crayons, paints, colored pencils, pastels, ink pens and more to make their art.
Each kid had the chance to tackle five different artists… randomly drawn of course.


Ask the kids, and they all now know the following sixteen famous artists!
Salvador Dali                  M.C. Escher
Frida Kahlo                     Paul Gaugin
Georgia O’Keefe             Al Hirschfeld
Roy Lichtenstein             Henri Magritte
Piet Mondrian                 Claude Monet
Pablo Picasso                 George Seurat
Toulouse Lautrec            Vincent VanGogh
Wasily Kandinsky           Jackson Pollack

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