We will Go along with Vincent Van Gogh as he guides us through the colorful fields of art history. We then go on to visit his friends Henri Matisse and Paul Cezanne to create vibrant compositions of unusual forms and perspectives. Each student’s field of dreams will include fantastic flowers by Georgia O’Keeffe, populating still lifes borrowed from the imagination of Nell Blaine, while visualizing this imaginary world from a blanket of collages provided by Faith Ringgold, while the melodic strumming of Picasso’s Blue Guitar rises in the air. With Van Gogh as their driver, students will be On the Go, as they travel along the expressionistic highway of art-making.

India’s wandering nomads will be our guides through valleys and highlands, where art, life and creativity are inseparable. Their hearts and minds are intense with the blazing colors of countless icons born out of dream, fantasy, myth and epic legends. We will visit the remarkable mosaic world of Net Chand, play with shadow puppets, and draw the elaborate designs of Mehendi Hennah. We will experiment with unconventional materials and methods in the production of a portfolio of dazzling creations.

Strange books of different binding styles, sizes, shapes, colors and textures will line the shelves as the pages turn from day to day. This week, students will construct their books from cover to cover using their imagination as an index. With the addition of painting, printing, pencil drawing, collage and stories, these creations will become dazzling hybrids of visual material. The resulting work will be perfect for sketchbooks, journals, dream diaries, and personal mementos, forming an image bank for summer memories.

Autobiographical explorations will be used a springboard to investigate the world of portraiture. You can’t draw a straight line? Don’t worry! We will travel along with Cubists like Picasso, Surrealists Rene Magritte and Man Ray, Pop Artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and Contemporaries Andrew Stevovich and Gregory Grenon. By weeks end, the reflection you see in the mirror will never be the same, as we create an artful array of fanciful faces.

Students will dive into the culture of the turquoise blue Carribean Sea this week. The sizzling cultural heritage, folklore, legends and the Afro-Carribean roots found in the art of Cuba, Haiti, and Central America will enchant each students’ imagination as they create to the pulsating rhythms of Latin sounds. With an emphasis on the Carribean practice of utilizing non-traditional materials, we will find the links to contemporary artists Carlos Estevez, Jose Bedia, Arthur Simms and Carmen Lomas Garza.

Scribbles, loops, jots, dots and doodles are all part of the art of mark making and provide kids the opportunity to discover the fun and magic of drawing. The twisted and curving forms depicted by Terry Winters to the Chinese calligraphy inspired works of Brice Marden will lead students through a labyrinth of line. Leading us through the maze of marks will be Lesley Dill, Julie Mehretu and David Moore as we employ imaginative uses of pencil, pen, ink, charcoal and even wire in the tangled process of making images. After all, when a line bends, it creates a shape.