Students create a sculpture for an exhibition which explores the group’s and individual’s culture and identity through symbols, patterns, and colour.

Students use what they have learned in the skills building phase of the unit to create a sculpture using a variety of building, sculpting, and glazing techniques.

NB. This unit offers room for adjustments depending on student inquiry, such as group work or mixed media pieces. Students must always justify their design/inquiry choices.

GRASPS

• GOAL: Present a Collaborative Exhibition of Artefacts that have personal and cultural connections.  
• ROLE: You are a Sculptor
• AUDIENCE: Multicultural Community 
• SCENARIO: You have been asked by your school to create an exhibition that celebrates diversity and helps to promote understanding and respect within our international community. (artists communicate across boundaries, to build relationships with their fellow artists and their audience). 
• PRODUCT: You will create an artefact/sculpture (using personal (identity) and cultural symbols to represent meaning).

Skills Building

Pinch Pots

The first exercise is making simple pinch pots giving the students the change to get familiar with the feel of the clay and some basic principles. We focus on “beating” the clay, how thick clay walls should be, adding textures and patterns.

Coils

The next exercise is to practice making coil vessels. We focus on how to make proper attachments using scoring and slipping. I challenged the students to build as high as they could and some were able to create coil vessels as high as 20 cm! Others tried to use different forms of colds or to use them in imaginative ways.

Slabs

Our final practice piece is with slabs, not an easy technique! What’s more, due to a school trip and a holiday, the slabs sat waiting for three weeks, making them almost bone dry. Despite the difficulty to work with such hard slabs, almost all students were able to attach them together to create their little shelfs and houses.

Just for fun!

And then there are these bits of food! Students often ask if they can make additional pieces. I love seeing some of the things they come up with. This time it looks like food was a running theme.

Cupcakes

Last year we did cupcakes instead of the slabs and I think these worked out better. Here students use several techniques to create cupcakes.

Criteria A: Investigating

At the end of year 1/Novice stage, students should be able to:
i. investigate a movement(s) or genre(s) in their chosen arts discipline, related to the statement of Inquiry
ii. describe an artwork or performance from the chosen movement(s) or genre(s).

Criteria B: Developing

At the end of year 1/Novice stage, students should be able to:
i. practically explore ideas to inform the the development of a final artwork or performance
ii. present a clear artistic intention for the final artwork or performance in line with the statement of inquiry.

Criteria C: Creating

At the end of year 1/Novice stage, students should be able to:
i. create or perform an artwork.

Criteria D: Evaluating

At the end of year 1/Novice stage, students should be     able to:
i. appraise their own artwork or performance
ii. reflect on their development as an artist.