Kiki Smith~Art is a Way to Think

   

Annunciation

Alice II

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Rationale and Goals

It is important for students to understand that art can tell stories. The goal of this lesson is for elementary students to gain a deeper understanding of between the art they create and the story it tells. They will gain a deeper understanding of body language, and understand the connection between their body language and that of those around them.

Enduring Big Idea

People can make art to share feelings and tell stories. Students will examine selected examples of Kiki Smith’s work and identify the feelings / moods portrayed via the body language of the subjects.

They will create a paper-mache sculpture of a person which expresses a feeling or mood.

Essential Questions

What is body language? How do different emotions look? How does it feel to be happy, sad, afraid, mad, etc.? How does your body language impact the way others feel? How could you express feeling in a sculpture?

Knowledge Base and Key Concepts

Kiki Smith is a contemporary American artist who has created a diversity of narrative subjects. Students will know that art can be made to show feelings and to tell stories. Students will know that, as Smith says, “Art is a way to think.”

Objectives

The student will be able to:

Describe how art communicates thinking. Describe the ways that artists visually convey feelings. Create a figural sculpture, which conveys a feeling or emotion.

Though many of Kiki Smith's images are not appropriate for the bulk of my students, I felt that her history would pique the curiosity of my older students, grade 5-6. Smith describes her family as being like the Adam's Family, that they lived in a huge old house which contained all of the clothing of her deceased grandparents, and family relics such as teeth and a death mask of her grandmother. She says that other children thought that she and her twin sister were odd, that people accused them of being witches. She's a little kooky, a little spooky, and very cool, (What's not to love about that?)

 I liked the idea of exploring body language and felt that it would offer opportunities for the simultaneous development of different representational skills - working from observation, expanding  vocabulary for visual form, tapping the narrative impulse.