Art Lesson Plan: Personal Identity Sculpture

Submitted by: Lotte Petricone
UNIT: Personal Identity - Sculpture - Cultural Awareness
Lesson: Relief Cast Arm and Face with Cultural Symbols
Grade Level: Middle School (adaptable to high school)

Name:_____________________
Period: _________

Before Art: Brainstorm!

Things to think about in your past, present and future: Major events in your life, interests and hobbies, hopes and dreams. In each section below, list as much as possible about yourself in these three categories:

Past:

________________________

________________________

________________________

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Present:

________________________

________________________

________________________

________________________

Future:

________________________

________________________

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Web Quest submitted by Lotte Petricone

Who Am I?

Personal Identity

in a Sculpture

This is a Web Quest for Eighth Grade Art Students.

Introduction:

You are an artist, and have been lucky enough to win a commission from a rich patron to create a plaster relief sculpture showing your personal identity - past, present and future. The painted designs for your sculpture require some visual references, so you will begin with research!

See Relief Cast Sculpture by Ben Jones
Black Face and Arm Unit, 1971

The Task:

An artist uses reference material when creating art, rather than just drawing from his or her head. You are here as an artist to gather as many images you can to use as visual reference for your sculpture, which will depict your personal identity: past, present and future. Using your brainstorming sheet, you will be searching for images to use as visual reference. Your goal is to collect 10-15 images of high resolution, and put them into a Word document to print out for use in the Art Room.

The Process:
(Click on underlined words to go to the Internet sites)

1.	Use the Brainstorm sheet! On it you should have listed as much as you can about the major events in your life, interests and hobbies, and hopes and dreams in past, present and future.
2.	Use the internet sites below as a start for your image search. Given that we are a diverse group of people, everyone’s interests may not be found in these sites. In that case, use a search engine like Google to find your images.
	Don’t be satisfied with only one image! Find different photos or pictures with different angles or sizes! The images should be as high resolution as possible.	You may change your mind about things once you get drawing, so you are trying to get as much as possible so you have CHOICES as an artist! Remember you have a lot of sculpture to paint.
	Internet Sites: Country / Culture: Flags of the World Index Countries and everything about them! Cyberschoolbus: From the United Nations - Many aspects of many countries Kidspace from the Internet Public Library on different cultures & countries Say it in your language! Translator to some languages Current Events: Voices of Youth on Current Events Time For Kids - News from Time Magazine Sports Skateboarding Snowboarding Tennis.com Major League Lacrosse ESPN.com Baseball Almanac – Lots of info, not many images MLB.com Sporting News Sports Illustrated Dance Voice of Dance Alvin Ailey Website Music You are on your own! Use Google to search your favorite musicians. Art Find an Artist on artcyclopedia.com Graffiti Images Create your own Graffiti Books Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com Movies Got a favorite movie? Find it on movies.com Can’t find what you want? Use Google to search by writing in what you are looking for and clicking on Images.
3.	As you choose images from the Internet that represent the three categories about you, follow these directions to save your work: Save images to your H:// drive as you find them by right clicking on the image and changing the drive to your H://--save as JPEG file. DO NOT SAVE IT ON THE DESKTOP! (alternate - save on to floppy in A:/) Once you have everything you need open Word, and insert pictures from file. Once they are in, click on the image to bring up the picture toolbar. Click on the small picture of the DOG, and choose TIGHT for layout. This will give you an opportunity to arrange the pictures on the page. Try to fit at least 3 per page! YOU SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST 10-15 IMAGES OF VARYING SIZES. Last Step! Save the Word Document on the E:/ on server (I:) in the (teacher) Folder, then in the Personal Identity Folder. (Alternate - save onto floppy in A:/)

The Product:

Your final product will be a plaster relief sculpture of a face and arm, which uses symbolic images to represent who you are: past, present and future.

Evaluation:

The art will be evaluated using the project rubric developed in class.

NOTE TO TEACHERS: These links were active at time this lesson was published. Links are not updated on lesson plans as that would be very time consuming. If you would like to use this Web quest with your students from this location, please contact Judy Decker at least one week in advance so links can be verified. Web Quest was written by Lotte Petricone and used with the Personal Identity Relief Sculpture Art and Face lesson plan. This collection of images falls under the Fair Use guidelines as they are being used for research.

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