End of the Year Circle Mural :: PreK

The PreK students had a fantastic time coloring and decorating their CIRCLE ART MURAL this morning. We made a circle mural to celebrate the end of a wonderful school year and the last day of Art class. We also observed that a circle is infinite, just like our friendship with each other and our love for ART! Check out the cool and creative process that happened this morning!

PreK students: hard at work creating their beautiful CIRCLE ART MURAL ❤

Make a silly face for the camera!! 😀

TA-DA!! Happy Summer! :o)

A proud teacher moment…

In the midst of the craziness of preparing an Art & Music Festival (and having things go wrong at the last minute even though you prepared WAY ahead of time), I wanted to share an artist statement one of my 7th graders wrote on behalf of her class’ Art Show project. The 7th graders were given Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot cameras and asked to go around campus to take pictures that captured the abstractions in life. Here is what Deniz C., an aspiring young photographer, had to say about the meaning of photography as an art form:

“Seeing and looking are two completely different things. So are living and feeling. You can’t just see it when you look and you can’t just feel it when you live. Photography isn’t a simple noun. Taking a photograph isn’t a simple verb. It’s feeling, living the moment by just looking and seeing the image. A camera is like a diary that keeps all the special moments, instead of all the mysterious secrets. I don’t have a diary. I don’t write the moments that I enjoy. Instead, I capture them. I capture them so not only me but others can enjoy them too. It might be a picture of a cute baby I saw, a cat sleeping on a rug or even maybe a delicious meal I ate that day. Photography takes detail. Basically what the 7th graders tried to do here was to capture the details in an ordinary day to show you how “extraordinary” living can get.”

With love,
Deniz C., an aspiring photographer

Please enjoy these two photos by this talented young artist:

Gorgeous spring blossoms!

Ahhh, food photography! A girl after my own heart…

Art Show Preparations…

A behind the scenes look at what happens when creative young minds come together to create order out of chaos! This video, featuring footage from our 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 8th graders, as well as our K-3rd grade art club, was created by 8th Grade student Huseyin P.

Can’t wait to see the outcome of these projects… on display at our exhibition on Friday, May 25th!

Art & Music Festival Preparations are underway…

Less than two weeks until our grand finale of the school year, the 1st – 8th Grade Art & Music Festival on Friday, May 25, 2012! The 8th Grade planning team and I are hard at work to make this event a huge success. We have been designing t-shirts for the festival staff as well…

To get you excited about the event, here are some projects you can expect to see: fun fur Hawaiian leis, mosaic, a magical candy tree house, Surrealistic paintings and collages and abstract digital photography! The best artwork will be hand-picked by the 8th Grade to be included in the Young Artists Marketplace. Also, we will have award ribbons for the following categories: 1st – 3rd, 4th – 6th and 6th – 7th as well as overall category awards. Please remember to join us on the 25th to hear some wonderful musical performances and see how we can take something ordinary and turn it into an extraordinary work of art.

“Ordinary 2 EXTRA-ordinary” to open on May 25th!

PRESS RELEASE:

PINNACLE ACADEMY TO HOLD 3RD ANNUAL ART EXHIBITION, entitled “Ordinary 2 EXTRA-ordinary” in the school’s cafeteria this May!

Written by 8th Grader Kemal T. (PR/Marketing Team Member for the 2012 Art Show)

Pinnacle Academy will be having will be having an Art Show, exhibiting the art of first through eighth graders. This Art show will be held on Friday, May 25, 2012. The Art Show will also be accompanied by musical performances also done by first through eight grade, organized by our fabulous music teacher Ms. Lee. Each grade will have a unique class project along with individual art. For additional questions or suggestions, you can contact the Head Curator, Ms. Laura Kuah at lkuah@pinnacleacademyva.com.

The theme of the art show will be: Ordinary to EXTRA-ordinary. Each piece of art will be distinguished
and crafted in a different way. The idea is to take ordinary, every day objects and turn it into an extraordinary work of art. This includes projects such as making and painting on papyrus paper, fun fur Hawaiian leis and a Roman soldier made out of recycled materials. Students have been working very hard on these art projects and look forward to sharing their creativity with you. This will be our grande finale of the 2011-2012 school year before Memorial Day weekend and the start of testing in June!

Pinnacle Academy is located at: 2854 Hunter Mill Rd. Oakton, VA 22124.

The eight graders will be the planning committee for this Art Show. We hope to see you on the 25th!

SAAM+NPG Recap!

On Thursday, April 26, 2012, students in 1st – 4th grades attended their long anticipated art field trip to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in downtown Washington DC. Students got to experience the benefits of two great museums in just one visit!

We had two docent led tours: one at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the other at the National Portrait Gallery. During both of these tours, our students learned how to utilize their observation skills and play art detective while trying to find clues that tell us the story behind each painting, sculpture and drawing viewed. The docents were very impressed with our students’ knowledge of the elements of art and their keen observation skills.

After lunch in the museum’s indoor courtyard, students visited the gift shops and went to another exhibit with their homeroom teachers. They enjoyed viewing exhibitions such as “The Art of Video Games”, the Presidents’ Gallery, Contemporary Americans gallery and the infamous license plate painting entitled “Preamble”. Though this was primarily an art museum visit, students quickly learned that Americans from all walks of life and ethnicities contributed great things to help our country get to where it is today.

All in all, we had a great museum visit and are looking forward to going back with our family and friends to see some amazing artwork by famous Americans!

Success! PreS, PreK & K Art Show Recap 2012

The PreS, PreK and K Art Show was a huge success! Thanks to all the students who participated, volunteers who helped with the set-up and the parents for bringing in snacks for the reception! We had a great time and enjoyed a delicious afternoon treat while looking at an extraordinary art exhibition! Want to see ALL the pictures from opening day? Check out the slideshow above… —| and check out the pictures below… yes, this is a picture-heavy post! 

Students from the other grades had an opportunity to leave notes to our youngest artists and hanging them on a tree! This was a modern twist to the traditional guestbook…

Special thanks to our friends in 7th Grade who helped with the installation and deinstallation process!

Kindergarten’s BATIK ART T-shirt display!

Check out the resist details!

A talented PreK students’ artwork, “drawing” with tempera and fabric paint on burlap!

Some of PreK’s Indigo booklets that shows what they learned from making this project…

Meet the artists from PreK!

and our Kindergarten friends who made lovely batik art…

and last, but certainly not least… our friends from PreSchool who got to experiment with painting on burlap!

one of the “oh so true” comments from the Art Show!

Inside one of the PreK booklets…

and finally, a book from Kindergarten about Batik!

Thanks for joining us for the PreS, PreK and K Art Show on Thursday, April 12, 2012!! The artwork will be up in the PA cafeteria until lunchtime on Friday, April 27, 2012! Feel free to stop by and check out the artwork until the show ends. This event was a huge success and we appreciate your presence. Hope to see everyone at our next Art Show for 1st – 8th Grade at the end of May  (date TBD!!).

Textiles from around the World… “in process”

It’s well past midnight, and I’m awake taking care of last minute details for the PreS, PreK and K Art Show tomorrow, April 12, 2012 at 2:30PM. Preview for Grades 1-8 goes from 9:00 – 11:00AM. Before I hit the sack (and hit the snooze button many times a mere 6 hours from now), I wanted to share the short video above, made especially for the Art Show. This showcases the process of all 3 projects: painting on burlap by PreS, indigo tie dye by PreK and finally, batik resist shirts by Kindergarten. Special thanks goes out to my other students in Grades 3 and 6 for helping out with the final touches!

Stay tuned for pictures from our opening day!

Batik with Blue Gel Glue

While the PreK class learned about the ancient art of indigo dye, the Kindergarten class learned about a very similar way to make clothes: Batik, which comes from Indonesia. No hot glue or wax is needed in this project. Based off of my favorite lesson plan from The Artist Woman, the K students brought in white t-shirts to embark on this two week studio adventure. This is a favorite lesson of mine from previous summer camps and school projects!

  So far, we have made our designs (which will create the resist effect when peeled off after painting) using Elmer’s Blue Gel Glue and will be painting the shirts with diluted acrylic paint after we get back from Spring Break!

Stay tuned for “scenes from our next episode”… 

Indigo Madness!

The PreK class will be showcasing their indigo dyed t-shirts for the PreS, PreK and K Art Show on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 2:30PM. We have been learning about indigo in Art class, and how our blue jeans (a favorite to wear on dress down day) can be made with indigo blue dye. The most interesting thing is that indigo dye has been used by people of all ages in many places in the world.

We were so excited to tie on the rubber bands and (with the help of the art teacher) *dunk* our t-shirts into the dye. The colors were yellow-green and blue at first, but after the shirts were exposed to fresh air and sunshine, they turned blue. Be careful not to stick your hand too far down, because you might end up with a blue “gloved” arm!

Check out the cool designs we came up with for this project:

Art is full of surprises! See you on April 12th!