A Successful Art Auction!

The Art Auction in one of the Classrooms

The Art Auction finished tonight at 8:30 p.m. It was quite a success. I thank the parents for their bids. They did more than just purchase beautiful artwork tonight, they showed their children how valuable the visual arts are in our world.

What a better way to teach a child to become an art patron than through an art auction. The kids were so excited to escort their family members to see their work.

There were 52 pieces in all. The kids were so excited
to take a tour.

Initially the idea was for the event to take place during a fancy dinner, but being so close to the end of the school year made it difficult for many parents to attend. So, at the last minute the venue changed and the event took place in the specials room, ending right here on this blog.

What worked about this change was giving the students a chance to view all of the artwork contributed by each grade. Their enthusiasm and pride was so great, I couldn't help but smile.

Art Auction Items Blog

Kindergarten Collaborative Piece

The art projects are complete. A total of 52 pieces will be on display. The invitations have been sent out and posters are in the school hallways. My checklist is almost full of checks, whew. The last elements on my agenda include: name tags for the auction items; bidding sheets for each auction item; and assembling a team for the auction night to keep track of the bids.

For the parents unable to attend I established a blog, listing each individual auction piece where they can place a bid the night of the event. I'm asking the administration to send an email reminder to the parents the day before and the day of the auction. To bid, parents and family simply leave a comment on the auction item posting. I'll have two people with iPads walking around updating the physical sheets at the auction and then updating, as necessary, the auction item, should the bidding continually change.

The work is almost done but there are factors working against the event that might not make it successful. It is at the end of the school year; parents have an event at the school two days before the auction; and, the cost to attend the dinner auction is high. The lack of success won't be for the lack of beautiful artwork, that is for sure!

Planning the Actual Art Auction Function

This is a reproduction of a Georgia O'Keefe piece.
I created it with oil pastels. My second graders will be
doing this collaborative piece. The final size is 22"x17".

Our art auction will be a silent one. It closes the night of the event, a dinner gala. To entice the families to attend, I'm exhibiting the artwork one month in advance from the actual function to get everyone excited about the event.

For the past two weeks I've been cutting mat board for all of the art work. I'm using glue stick to mount them. I tried the spray mount and it just didn't work as well. I've designed a poster, invitation and postcard, I'm just worried that I'm not getting it out early enough. I know how busy parents are and how fast their calendars fill up.

Matisse inspired Collaborative piece
I created in oil pastel. The kids will be
recreating a rectangle and I'll put them
together into one piece.

I'm creating labels that identify (especially on collaborative pieces) who did what part. I like the kids taking ownership and pride in their art. I'll create a separate page that displays all of the final work somehow. That could be another way to market it to parents. If I make a slide show or a page on Shutterfly that allowed parents to at least purchase a photo of a piece that seems like a good idea. Sometimes, a good writing brainstorm is what's needed.

Bottom line, doing this art auction is for a good cause, but it's a lot of work. I've spent many evening hours watching my favorite Gilmore Girls while I'm mounting artwork.  

Collaboration - Elementary School Art Auction Pieces

This is the Kindergarten Classes Collaborative Piece 22"x17"

On top of the individual and collage art auction pieces I've created a collaboration piece for each individual class. My collaboration pieces are a mosaic puzzle of an image. Here are my steps:

1) I created the piece on an 8.5x11 piece of paper with just the outlines (like a coloring book page.) 
2) I then blew it up on a copier so that it became a 22" by 17" piece.
3) Using oil pastels, I matched the colors to the original inspirational painting.
4) I cut it into squares depending on the number of students in my class. (16 or 24)
5) I laminated the squares individually.
6) In a plastic bag I put the the individual laminated square, and the identical uncolored square, plus the oil pastels used to color in that specific part.
7) I know my students abilities so I made sure to match the artist skill to the complexity of the square.
8) I'll spray a fixitive on top and mount them together to create a single piece. 

This is the first grade collaborative piece 17"x22"

Kindergarten Art Auction Piece

This is a collage piece.
Each student has a flower in this
bouquet. One student is the vase. 

Since my kindergarten class has 22 students I'm going to have four bouquets of flowers to assure each student has a flower in the auction. I chose four student's vases that best fit the flower colors.

I created four different flowers for the kids to watercolor paint. I wanted consistency with the design and have the kids really focus on the painting part and not the drawing part. The first week of painting I had them add some crayon resistance to outline or add design to the flowers. The second week of painting I had them just use watercolor and no crayon. I think they were more successful when they had the crayons.

I gave them outlines for three different vases. This time I brought in acrylic (not tempura) paint for them. They used cotton swabs to mix the paint and apply it. I like using cotton swabs to paint with kindergartners better than paint brushes, they fit their small hands better and don't rely as much on fine motor skills.

I will be assembling the four collages for the art auction and watch the 7-8 families enjoy a healthy battle to win the piece. I'll post all of the final art pieces for the auction after I've mounted them.

Kindergarten Art Auction Project

Stacked tea cups

I created a template for the tea cups and the kindergarten students do their cup design with crayon and complete the piece with water color. The number one challenge  on this project was to remind the students not to color the entire cup in with crayon. 

These were my instructions:
1) Create a pattern or design on your cup with crayon. We spent a few moments reviewing line ( zig zag, circles, stars, swirls, etc.)

2) I gave my students four tea cups on one page to work on. I figured I needed to increase my chances on success.

3) After they colored patterns with crayons, I passed out the palettes of water color paint. I needed to remind them that they could work with multiple colors on their cup, but not to mix their watercolors in the palettes.

I'm not a hundred percent happy with the end results. I'm going to repeat the project this week and eliminate the crayon step and see what the students do with more freedom. This time, I'll ask them to simply explore watercolor and play with the color.

Luckily, I have a couple of months to mount and cut out their cups for the final art auction pieces. Five students will be mounted on each piece. They have three other cups that they completed and can keep those to give to their parents. I recognize the children have a hard giving up their artwork, understandably.

First Grade Art Auction Piece - Mondrian

Inspired by the work of artist Piet Mondrian

Teaching young children that more isn't always best is hard. When they are learning about what they can do in art they want to do it all. Piet Mondrian and his minimalism approach to his art is truly inspiring. Introducing this to my first grade class has been interesting. I used a worksheet I found on Pinterest from a blog called Once Upon an Art Room. It helped the kids think about the shapes in a Mondrian painting.

Last week I had the kids do a practice run using markers and crayons. They drew their lines with rulers and went over them with black and then filled in some of the shapes with primary colored crayons. The biggest thing for a good number of kids to overcome was drawing so many lines on the page that it became similar to a checkerboard. Limiting them to 10 lines would have helped.

This week we will put pre-cut painters tape down on 6"x 6" pieces of tagboard paper. They only have 6 pieces of tape to work with, so that will eliminate their desire to add too many lines. If we have time we will start painting some of the pieces in with acrylic primary colors. I will require them to at least leave two white squares to balance their use of color.

Next week to finish up. We will remove all of the painters tape, color in the white lines left behind with marker and then touching that up with black acrylic paint. 

I will mount three student pieces on one black mounting board, ready for the art auction!