Biggby Contest Winners!!

Hi Art Spotters!  This past week I hope you all had a chance to head on over to the Standale Biggby to vote for your favorite pieces of Artwork from Cummings Elementary 3rd and 4th graders. Last night was the final night to vote, and at 7pm we announced the winners!

Take a look at the top 3 as well as the Barista's Choice winners below!


First Place, #57.  Prize: $20 Gift Card to Service Reproduction (Art supply store)

2nd Place: #21. Prize: $15 to Service Reproduction

3rd Place #15. Prize: $10 to Service Reproduction.

And Finally, The Barista's Choice Award: #53. Prize: Biggby Ribbon

Congratulations Winners! Can't wait to see next year's selection for the Biggby Art Contest. 

Check in later for some updates on what my other grades have been making so far this school year!

- Miss O'Donnell

Biggby Art Contest

Hi all you Art Spotters out there! I hope you all had a chance to spot some great art in Downtown Grand Rapids over the past few weeks at ArtPrize! Well, now it's time to spot some amazing artwork made by students from Cummings Elementary. Where can you find this art? Hanging on the walls of the Standale Biggby Coffee (on Wilson Road by the Meijer)!  For the second year in a row, select 3rd and 4th graders from Cummings will have there artwork entered into the Biggby Coffee Contest. Starting today, anyone who enters the coffee shop can vote for their top 3 pieces of artwork.  But you don't just get one chance to vote.....you can vote everyday for the next full week for you favorites!

Then, next Wednesday October 16th, the top 3 pieces of art will be announced after the votes are tallied.  At 7 pm we will announce the winners and award the prizes and certificates at the Biggby shop.  Prizes are gift cards to Service Reproduction which is a fantastic Art Supply store in Grand Rapids!

I hope you can get over to Biggby's this week to vote at least once or twice....but if not, here are some pics of the amazing art!

The two projects you are seeing are the 3rd graders Warm/Cool Cities, and the 4th grades Flower Zentangles!

Have a great week, and go out and Spot some Art!!

-Miss O'Donnell

Summer School Week 1

Hello everyone out there in blogger world! Thanks for checking in on me here at The Art Spot Summer Edition!  Today was an exciting day, as it was the start of our Summer School session at Century Park.  Each week, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll be seeing different grade levels for Art class.

This week was all about 2nd and 3rd Graders!!  I definitely saw some familiar faces in my classes, as well as had the chance to meet some new students which is always fun.  For Summer school this year, its all about focusing on Math and Literacy skills.....YES, even in Art!!  So each grade will be making a project that goes along with a fantastic book, and/or incorporates important Math skills.

Take a look at what the 2nd graders worked on today:

First, after introductions, we all read the great book "The Ice-Cream King".  This story follows a young boy's imagination as he daydreams about an ice-cream land where he is king.  He soon finds out however, that his kingdom has no one else in it!  So instead of having all the ice-cream to himself and being very lonely, it would be MUCH better to share his ice-cream with someone else- His Mom!

Then it was time to begin our project.  Today we created our very own ice-cream flavors! Some were favorites that we've tried before, and others were completely new inventions!  To make our ice-cream, we painted different colors onto paper.  Tomorrow in class when our paintings are dry, we will cut out shapes that look like scoops of ice-cream.  We may even trade ice-cream flavors with each other!!

Here are a few examples of some fantastic and colorful flavors! (Each page has been divided into two different sides so we could make two flavors per paper.)

Take a look at what the 3rd graders worked on today:

First we all read a book called "Where is the Frog".  This book was all about the artist Claude Monet and his beautiful Impressionist paintings. The story followed a small green frog named Antoinette as she tried to pose for one of Monet's paintings. Each page of the book depicted a different Monet inspired illustration, and student's could search for where Antoinette was hidden. 

Our first day of the project began with students painting a beautiful water background in the Impressionist style.  They used dark blue, light blue, purple, and accented this with magenta.  Here are some of the wonderful results!

Tomorrow we will be making lily pads using oil pastels!

Thanks for stopping by to see what the 2nd and 3rd graders have been working on this week so far, make sure to check back tomorrow to see the second day's results!

-Miss O'Donnell

The Art Show!

Hello there Art Spotters! It's been a great few days for spotting art since this past Thursday and Friday we finally had the Art Show!! And I'm proud to say that it was a huge success!  We had a great turnout both nights and we (myself and Mr. Leonard) spotted LOTS of our artistic students and their families there. In case you missed the show (or just want to see it one more time) I'm filling this entire post with pictures from the event.  So sit back, relax, and get ready to spot some fantastic ART!

Before the show:

Welcome sign

Color coded Name Labels by School

 During the Show:

Thanks for checking out the 1st Annual Grandville Elementary Art Show here at The Art Spot! 

- Miss O'Donnell

Prepping for the Art Show

Thanks for joining me here at The Art Spot! It's been a busy few weeks for myself and Mr. Leonard (the other Elementary Art teacher in Grandville) as we prep for the 1st Annual Grandville Elementary Art Show!  Planning for the Art Show began way back at the beginning of the school year, and so I can't believe the show is almost  here! Throughout the entire year we've been choosing artwork from each project our students complete and stashing it away for the show.

Once our location and dates were secured, our next challenge was how we were going to display all of our artwork.  I found a great tutorial on how to build rolling display panels from an Art blog called Deep Space Sparkle.  (you can find the post here).

With help from a Grandville Education Foundation grant, Nick and I were able to purchase all of our materials, and we built 8 two-door panels in about two days.

Rolling Display Panel made out of hinged doors.

Next on the to-do list was creating a flyer to hand out to students announcing the show and all of it's details.  Nick made the flyer and created a great circular logo design.

We thought it would be nice to use the logo in other areas of advertising for the show.  I made us both two t-shirts with the logo design to wear for each night of the show using iron-on transfers.

Next came all of the artwork labeling.  Each piece of artwork needed to have a name tag attached to it for the show.  We also included some additional info on the tags to explain a bit more about the artist and the artwork.  This is what the tags looked like.

 

To help organize the show, we color coded the name labels according to school.  Each school was assigned a different color to help students and their families find their artwork.  This is the sign that I made that explained the colors. 

I also made a sign for the entrance of the Art Show, but you'll have to wait to see that in the next post! Come back soon to see pics from the Show nights!

- Miss O'Donnell