Gold Paint, Klimt, and Spirals

Collaboration.

We have done Klimt studies before, but only during Art Camp during the Summer. Recently, Kierna Corr from Learning for Life shared her meet-up with the Act-in-Art teachers during an educational conference, etwinning, in Berlin. While each collaborative project between the participating schools is more stunning than the next and the whole idea of collaboration across countries and in different settings is really exciting, the Klimt studies immediately caught my eye because we have been working on spirals and mandala shapes. This was a perfect side project as the children moved forward on their self-portrait backgrounds. I wouldn't have thought of it if Kierna had not shared it with me.

After looking through the Act-in-Art site and others featuring Klimt's work with the children and talking about the colors found in his paintings, the children sat down to paint designs on paper. We called this fabric.

They then cut out their fabric designs in first a mountain shape that would become the body of the portrait and glued these along with smaller left-over fabric pieces onto a slate gray background. I had just the day before this portion of the project picked up a whole back of blue circles. The children used those as another design detail. I also printed out photographs of their faces after adding a sepia tint to the photos.

The third step of the process later in the week was to glue silver glitter onto the collages and using a glue gun, the children attached glass pieces.