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Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000), an artist with different ideas of architecture, envisioned colorful buildings that incorporate organic shapes and forms, irregular patterns, uneven surfaces, and forests that grow from windows and rooftops. As early as the mid-20th century, Hundertwasser dealt with architecture in ways that offered aesthetic spaces for living and working while honoring the natural environment. With a focus on the aesthetics of unconventional construction processes, Hundertwasser's unique designs are immediately identifiable. This article provides an artist biography, highlights some of his works, and presents activities designed to address the National Core Arts Standards for the visual arts while assisting students with a deeper exploration of the ideas and work of Hundertwasser.

Many of the paintings of 20th-century American artist Philip C. Curtis defy clear classification. Curtis's artworks often show dreamlike and fantastical qualities and are therefore frequently pigeonholed as Surrealistic. While this classification is not completely erroneous, it fails to acknowledge some subtle differences between Curtis's artwork and that of mainstream Surrealist artists such as Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, or Max Ernst. Complicating matters more, Curtis himself freely acknowledged his association with the Surrealist style; however, he was also quick to clarify that his version was less on the "brutal side" and contained a "note of tenderness". Perhaps the most subtle difference between Curtis's work and that of his Surrealist counterparts is that the content of Curtis's paintings seems logically improbable while the content of Surrealism seems logically impossible. This restrained departure from Surrealistic tenets places Curtis's artwork in the genre known as Magical Realism, an illusory art form that is anchored in everyday reality, but with overtones of fantasy or wonder. In this Instructional Resource the authors examine the curious reality in selected paintings by Philip Curtis and present educational activities for both upper elementary (5th-6th grades) and middle to high school students (7th-12th grades). (Contains 5 endnotes.)

Artists have created portraits of people for thousands of years. In sculpture, a portrait of a person's face often includes the neck and part of the shoulders and chest. These artworks are called portrait busts. In this article, the author describes how her fifth-grade students created clay portrait busts on pedestal columns. The objectives are for students to: (1) create a recognizable portrait bust of a famous person, historic or contemporary; and (2) recognize different types of columns used in architecture. (Contains 1 online resource.)

In this article, the author discusses how aesthetics can be thought of as a worldview. She discusses how many non-Western cultures recognize no distinction between fine art and craft, may not even have a word for "art", and may not separate art from everyday life. The Japanese culture is an example of a culture that made no distinction between fine arts and crafts. Here, the author examines the concepts of wabi-sabi, a Japanese aesthetic system. She discusses how a familiarity with the concepts of wabi-sabi is essential for the understanding of the Japanese tea ceremony. (Contains 1 resource and 2 online resources.)

The author's encounter with a live owl and her purchase of a Peruvian folk art gourd inspired a new interdisciplinary experience for the author's fourth grade students. In this article, she describes how her students explored owls through clay sculpture. (Contains 2 resources and 1 online resource.)

In this article, the authors relate how they decided to offer their fifth graders a one-day celebration in honor of Diwali, one of the most popular Hindu festivals in India, enjoyed by people of every religion. They combined learning about the tradition with Indian music and film, art-making, special foods, and dance performances. Their students prepared for the festival by first learning some cultural background information such as traditions, clothing, and Hindi words and phrases. Further preparations included learning a north Indian stick dance called a "Raj," Their students also learned about the Indian festival traditions and made clay "diyas," tiny oil lamps that give their name to the Festival of Lights.

In this article, an art teacher relates how she uses her enthusiasm for collecting aesthetic objects to transform or generate ideas for art problems for her students, in the belief that teachers teach best about that which they are most enthusiastic. In her classes, she introduces the idea of collecting by asking students to discuss what they collect (e.g., baseball cards, state quarters, plastic bracelets) and why. They also considered possible reasons people collect things. As an example of how to generate a lesson using her collection, the author used Mexican coconut masks, a folk art from Guerrero, Mexico. Following this discussion, she shared her collection and talked about where they were from, why she chose them, and how they were made. Then each student made a large pinch pot (a skill they had previously learned), added features, and then dried, fired in a kiln, and glazed to make the masks. The finished pieces were displayed at school and in a community exhibition. This elementary studio lesson meets a national standard in which students explore and understand prospective contents for works of art.

Have you ever thought of using music as a subject for art? When the author discovered that her third graders studied jazz in music class every February, it seemed an opportune time for her to simultaneously focus on music in art, specifically through the work of African-American artist Romare Bearden. To familiarize her third-grade students with various musical instruments and introduce the unit, she borrowed a number of instruments from other teachers and set them up in the middle of the room as a still life. As students drew them, they experimented with the sounds they made and listened to Romare Bearden Revealed, a recording by the Branford Marsalis Quintet inspired by Bearden's artwork and including one of his own jazz compositions, "Seabreeze." They also carefully looked at and discussed a number of Bearden's collages based on musical themes and subjects, comparing and contrasting the elements of music with the elements of art.

The author's school is fortunate to have two therapy dogs, Daisy and Rosie, both West Highland terriers (Westies). Daisy is such a comfort to students when they are sad, scared, or just in need of a quiet friend. She assists students with special needs as well as students whose needs are special. In this article, the author describes how she "borrowed" Daisy to model for her kindergarten students and let the students draw a picture of Daisy using white oil pastels on black paper.

This article briefly discusses a seminar that will focus on the fifth annual Folk Art Festival at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, with additional emphasis on Georgia O'Keeffe's life and art in New Mexico, and Hispanic and Native American cultural traditions. Activities include museum visits, field trips, invited speakers, hands-on experiences, and attendance at the International Folk Art Festival at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. Highlights include visits to Georgia O'Keeffe's home, Ghost Ranch in Albiquiu, and a sister conference center to Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe for photography, sketching, or painting. The seminar will be led by two folk art collectors and educators: Nancy Walkup, art teacher and editor of "SchoolArts" magazine; and Myra Walker, art professor at the University of North Texas. (Contains 3 online resources.)

Students see cartoons and movies all the time, but do not always understand how such images are created to show change or movement. Yet even young students can gain understanding through simple drawings of their own that show figures changing in sequence. In this article, the author presents an art activity wherein students are asked to draw a sequence of four pictures that effectively show change or movement in the same subject. (Contains 1 online resource.)

Even very young children can start observing, thinking about, and talking about elements of the visual culture that surrounds them. A good place to start is right underneath their feet--the designs on the bottoms of their shoes. Students become aware of the designs, compare them with the designs of their neighbors, speculate on the possible reasons for such designs, and press their shoes into a slab of clay to make ceramic tiles.