The term "knolling" was first used in 1987 by Andrew Kromelow, then a janitor at Frank Gehry's Santa Monica studio (Heathcote, n.d.). At the time, Gehry, an architect, was designing furniture for Knoll. While cleaning the studio, Kromelow would arrange displaced tools at 90° angles to create an organized surface. Perhaps done out of…

Teaching artists often find themselves working in schools and communities that are new to them, whether these are situations close to home or farther afield. This issue of Four Questions highlights teaching artists who travel extensively as part of their teaching and artistic practices and bring their expertise, energy, and creativity to…

Targeting students in grades K-8, Art in Action's program consists of 12 age-appropriate lessons per year led by parent and teacher volunteers. The curriculum is based on historically significant artists and their works of art. Through semi-structured discussions, students examine a variety of masterpieces, learning about the artist as well as…

Louise Nevelson's circular assemblage, "Collegiate School" (1972), was the inspiration for an art class with the preschoolers at the Kent Children's Center. Nevelson (1899-1988) was the ultimate "found art" artist. Finding interesting throwaway objects, in and out of trash bins, she constructed assemblages that completely changed their former use.…

Popular culture is a relatively new area of study in the artroom, and combining it with the demands of a rigorous curriculum requires some thought. Combining threads from several sources was the key to an exciting exploration of pattern inspired by a newspaper headline. In 2006, a landmark case was settled in Austria, which repatriated five famous…

In this article, the author describes an art project inspired by the wearable sculpture art created by artist Marjorie Schick. Students used wallpaper paste and newspapers to create papier-mache for a mountain hat, a cherry-pie mask/hat, a "dress" shoe and a Cubistic mask. Cardboard was used in many of these things, in addition to being used as…

Best known for his monumental abstract sculptures of reclining figures, Henry Moore's forms are generally pierced or have a hollow space within them. Some say that these "organic undulating forms" are reminiscent of the landscape of his home in Yorkshire, England. Moore was a giant in the world of sculpture and his large cast bronzes and marble…

Oil pastels offer many advantages. They come in a large range of hues, intensities and values, and they lend themselves to blending and shading in a unique way that no other art medium offers. They can be worked and reworked from day to day by the students without the large mess and cleanup time that oil paints require. An artist whose works are a…

In this article, the author describes how his first-grade students made their own compositions based on James Rosenquist's collage series in which long shards of faces were painted over a background that appeared to be abstract. The background was made up of enlarged details of things such as flowers, leaves, fire, and water. The students'…

Louise Nevelson, who is called the "architect of shadow," was a "dumpster diver" of her time, collecting found objects in the wee hours of the morning before trash pickup. Recognition evaded Nevelson until she created "Mood Garden + One" (1958), when she was almost 60 years old. In this article, students create their own assemblage using…

Long before children enter school, it is their imagination that informs their play. Their drawing, too, relies heavily on their natural, unfettered ability to portray both the world around them and their own experiences within that world, without the conventional boundaries between "real" and "imaginary." Surrealism then, is an art movement and…

Artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) created wonderful environments inside boxes using mostly found objects. They were often Surrealistic in nature. Some boxes were designed with glass fronts, and others were meant to be interactive with the viewer, wherein the objects could be handled. With Joseph Cornell in mind, the author introduces an art…

For centuries people from around the world have celebrated storytelling and puppetry for their educational and social functions. In the comprehensive curriculum, storytelling combined with puppet performances enriches the classroom experience by providing students with opportunities to engage in open dialogue, creativity, and structured play.…

As art teachers, it is in their nature to collect everything they get their hands on. They teach their students how to find beauty in the resources they have. Students can improve their portfolios by using innovative materials that allow them to tell a story that is also beneficial to the planet. Most art teachers are experienced in scavenging,…

In order to inspire her students to work in mixed media, the author chose to highlight the art of Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana, both of whom used numbers and letters as a main focus in their art. In this article, the author describes a mixed-media printmaking project. (Contains 2 online resources.)