Weekly Wrap Up 7/25/19-- Chuhily art lesson

We have completed our artist study the end of June.  We studied Chihuly while it was hard to do a glass blowing project I decided to introduce the boys to a few other glass art work.  These projects went over a 2 week period due to how long each one took:)

First we looked at some of his work and watched a video on this artist

We were lucky that a few years ago Chihuly had an exhibition at our local botanical gardens which we saw and the boys still remembered 

 On our first week we worked on 2 projects Glass mosaic and glass etching

I had the boys pick out a Letter (both choose B for their reasons) and painted the background with a thin coat of white gesso.   

 I bought a ton of glass nuggets at the dollar store and the boys glue them down to fill up the Letter.

I tried to get them to think about colors and be unique with their choices but they were more interested in getting it done than being creative:(

Once all the beads were glue down we had to put it aside until the following week when we would add white grout to the  project.

Once that was done we worked on glass etching (I didn't get as many pictures of this for some reason)

I had some old glass Christmas ornaments in my cabinet that I pulled out and found some  old Christmas  etching stencils that we used.  First step was to get the stencil onto the glass.  Then we added the chemical to etch the glass (no picture of that, I am afraid)

We added ribbons and now the boys have a etched glass Christmas ornment to add to their trees this year:)
The boys actually like this project:)

The second week we finished up the mosaic the following way

Adding the tile grout which is a very messy part, neither boy likes getting their hands dirty

wiping away excess grout 

Using a wooden skewer to remove additional grout t o clean up the glass nuggets 

Finished pieces

Then we also headed down into my glass studio where each boy choose their own project to complete.  But first I had them practice how to cut glass

cutting out the pattern they selected.  I gave them a few simple patterns to choose from 

Then they had to select their glass colors 

Learn to cut glass using proper tools.  

Learn to break glass properly and safely.

Learn to grind glass down as needed

Learn to copper foil their projects 

and the scariest part for them was to learn to solder the glass together.  

MarioFan's finished piece

His friend chose to make dragon wings which I added to a premed mold that I had in my studio:)

I don't think I converted anyone to my beloved stained glass hobby as both boys found it a lot of work and overall it took about 3 hours from start to finish which they thought was too long:).

We talked about going to a glass blowing studio as a field trip but decided against it as both boys have done it before on their own and frankly we are worn out and all needed a break.

That is our art finished fort the year for 9th grade.  We covered 16 different artist this year as well as made over 32 art projects investigating different mediums, materials and learning different art terminology.  We are thinking of maybe doing a Jackson Pollock piece just to used up all the paint I have left over in a fun way but that means I got to plan it and I am all out of energy...so we shall see.