Telling Stories

This semester, I was inspired by SchoolArts Magazine's Nov 2011 Article: Looking & Learning Telling Stories. I introduced my 8th grade students to artists, Radcliffe Bailey, Tom Joyce, Charles LaBelle, and Audrey Flack via a power point presentation based on the article.

Looking & learning - telling stories from cdpenamtz

The project; The students were asked to use Audrey Flack's vanitas painting, "Queen," as an inspiration for the project.

Objective; To select a person, place, or event to portray in a still life. Create a three-dimensional still-life arrangement, attending to overall composition, as well as to color, texture, and contrast.  

Once you have an arrangement that suggests a story, photograph it from different view points.  

Audrey Flack, Queen, 1976, Meisel Family Collection, Courtesy Louis K. Meisel Gallery/New York, © Audrey Flack

Student Work: 

Happy Birthday, Roy DeCarava!

Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Roy DeCarava 

Photographer (1919–2009)

Roy DeCarava started off painting but traded in his brushes for a camera. His images of African-American life—scenes in Harlem, the civil rights movement and jazz musicians—are now iconic. In 1952, DeCarava was the first black photographer to receive a Guggenheim grant. In 1996, the Museum of Modern Art put on a retrospective of his work. DeCarava was awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2006. He died in New York City on October 27, 2009.
Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.

Roy DeCarava:  Coltrane and Elvin, New York.  1960.  Smithsonian American Art Musuem.

Roy DeCarava
Billie Holiday
1952/1991
ClampArt