Chicago International Charter School, an A.R.T. residency

A.R.T. Residencies: William Penn CPS, 2008

One of my 6th graders shows off her oil pastel reflective symmetry abstraction. All of the students were given a presentation on abstract artists, in this case they had looked at the works of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely. Given a simple formula of using 5 each - squares, triangles and circles, they were instructed to create an artwork using only half of the paper (they folded the paper to get their "half"). When finished, (and they thought they were ALL finished already), they were instructed to do an exact copy on the other half of the paper.

After about 5 minutes of moaning and groaning how hard it was, the majority realized by using their eyes and spatial intelligence, it's not that hard. The result is a pretty sophisticated piece, and some really proud kids.