Only Just the Beginning...

On WEEK 1 Students in my art class walked into a room FULL of sneakers I've collected over the past 5 years working at The Tannery/Concepts (a local Boston shoe store) and the sound of Janelle Monae's- "Tightrope" blasting through my ipod in the back of the room. This kicked off the beginning of our "WALKIN' THE TIGHTROPE" project...

I began our discussion by directing students attention to the shoes on their feet. "Everybody take a minute to check out your own shoes, take a good look at them. Now I'm going to tell you a secret. Before your shoes were born, before they were ever sent to the factory to be built, an ARTIST had to sit down and make every decision about the COLORS, PATTERNS, STYLES, IMAGES, WORDS, TEXTURES, AND LACES on that shoe!" Then the task of SHOE DESIGNING was turned on my students....."TODAY- YOU ARE SHOE DESIGNERS" and they took off running....

I encouraged students to think about WHO they were designing for, is this a shoe for YOU? Your mother? Your sister? Your neighbor? How will you represent whoever you are designing for? What is this shoe telling me about this person? These questions challenged students to come up with ways to represent human qualities through VISUAL ART, on a shoe.


Key words for this week:
SYMBOLISM
REPRESENTATION
DESIGN 
STYLE
FUNKY-NESS (very technical term)