Visitors to the campus of Orland High School (OHS) will never question that they have stepped into a world of the masses: kids, activity, personalities, busyness, and playfulness--a veritable cloud of mild bedlam. The wall of ceramic faces that greets a visitor in the school office is another reminder of the organized chaos that the teachers…

Ed Ruscha's exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco presented a fantastic and challenging teaching approach not just to art creation, but also to the whole definition of art. Ruscha painted with pastels and drew with pencils, but he also made art using Pepto Bismol, carrots, and spinach. In this article, the author describes an art…

In this article, the author describes how she introduced an art project to her students that incorporates balance. She relates that she initially allowed brainstorming before they carried on with the project. She states that many rough sketches were done before students were able to figure out the details needed for the success of their project.…

Teaching high school students the "grammar" of art--the principles and elements of art and design--while also teaching them about creativity and concept can be difficult. This author has found that combining beginning lessons in line, shape, value, texture, form, and color with projects requiring innovation and inspiration, though challenging, is…

The author describes a lesson she did on abstract art with her high school art classes. She passed out a required step-by-step outline of the project process. She asked each of them to look at abstract art. They were to list five or six abstract artists they thought were interesting, narrow their list down to the one most personally intriguing,…