Wired

First grade began their unit on sculpture by looking at some of Alexander Calder's wire sculptures and noticing how sculptures are 3D which means NOT FLAT.  We started off with a wire exploration with the inspiration of three pipe cleaners stapled to a small black format.  Our young artists focused on all the different ways they could manipulate the wire to make different types of lines.  We discovered how to make wavy, curvy, zig zag, spiral, and curvy lines out of our wire by bending, shaping, connecting, and twisting as we worked.  Next, we examined the wire creations from Japanese artist Masao Seki and could not wait to use what we learned about wire to create our own crowns.  We finished them off with beads and could not take them off our heads!

 

Wire Exploration

Wire Elephant, 1928, Alexander Calder

Goldfish Bowl, 1949 Alexander Calder

 

Masao Seki working on his crowns

 

Masao Seki

Masao Seki