Art history a la Eric Carle.

I introduced this art history problem by showing my middle school students a number of Eric Carle's books, explaining that the author-illustrator created the papers that formed the pieces of his collage images. I told them that the famous children's book author began with large blank sheets of white paper that he then painted with colors, patterns, and textures. These papers were subsequently cut up to form his collages.

I then informed the students that they would be making their own collage illustrated books about a famous artist. Each student was given the name of an artist to research. It would be their responsibility to recreate the life of their artist through collage and visual textures.

Experimenting with Textures

Each student was required to create a variety of visual textures on fifteen sheets of 8 1/2 x 11" (21 x 28 cm) watercolor paper. Students were provided with watercolor sets, a variety of brushes, toothbrushes, straws, feathers, salt, paper towels, sponges, marbles, strings, and feathers. They experimented with blowing paint through straws, spatter painting with toothbrushes, stippling with dry brush or feathers, and texturing their papers with sprinkles of salt, or dabbing with sponges and crumpled paper towels.

Researching an Artist's Life

With the use of the Internet and good old-fashioned art books, students spent at least one class period researching their assigned arts and getting acquainted with their artwork. They gathered information about the artist's formative years, their educational backgrounds, life experiences, famous obsessions, and significant contributions.

The challenge was to channel all this biographical data into an easy-to-create format that would form the text for their picture books. We decided that an acrostic poem would be the perfect vehicle to provide snappy sentences that could suggest colorful images. The students were free to use either the artist's first name or last name or both. To fit this poetic format, the students could focus on any aspect of the artist's life that would work. I helped students edit their poems and tried to make sure that each student truly understood their artist's work and place in art history.

Computer Processing

When the poems were completed, students went to the Media Center to process them on the computer. Before beginning this task, we discussed various lettering styles, colors, and sizes of type. I wanted the students to think of the placement of words on the pages as part of the design process. Some students designed their title and dedication pages on the computer, while others chose to create these pages from collage papers.

For the background pages, students used 8 1/2 x 11" (21 x 28 cm) heavyweight white drawing paper. I encouraged students to think about their collage illustration and text placement before cutting up their visual texture sheets. I encouraged students to use simple, cut shapes and to think somewhat symbolically about the illustrations for their poems. Traditional perspective and shading techniques had to be abandoned for this assignment. Simple representation of people and things was really all a collaged illustration needed in order to make the text come alive.

Students carefully considered the placement of the cut shapes before gluing them down with white glue. The next step was to add the text to the accompanying page. Sentences, and even words, were cut apart and glued to the page, sometimes to be read horizontally; sometimes vertically, and even diagonally. Enthusiasm mounted as the pictures and poems came together.

Throughout the process, students willingly helped each other and shared their collage papers.

Sharing Books

Once they had the pages of their story in order and had designed both a title page and a dedication page, students used a single hole punch to make three holes on the left-hand side of their pages. Then, using colored yarns, they threaded a strand through the holes and knotted it securely.

Of course the students were eager to share their books. We found an enthusiastic audience in the local pre-school. It was wonderful to observe my seventh graders sitting in big rocking chairs telling three and four year olds the stories of the artists that they had brought to life.

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students use subjects, themes, and symbols that demonstrate knowledge of contexts, values, and aesthetics that communicate intended meaning in artworks.

Jane Sutley is a middle school art teacher in Somerville, New Jersey.