Creative Alchemy

MORE PHOTOS COMING VERY SOON. This is a 3-4 week painting unit with three formative lessons and one summative. This lesson challenges how value is placed on art. Students develop their own definition for What is Art? Students will become aware of and be able to engage in multiple aesthetic modalities and will establish their own criteria to value works of art.

Parallel to this learning, students will also be transforming discarded items into artworks, effectively altering their value. Students and teacher discuss and vote on how the artwork will be valued and this then gets written as success criteria or grading criteria. I have included my classes grading criteria as an example. This lesson can be done with any level art students. The photos shown in this lesson are from a Drawing/Painting II class. Your items do not need to be hubcaps (that's just my favorite). You can choose lamp shades, chairs, toasters, any discarded object students can bring from home. This lesson has A LOT of buy in with my culturally diverse students because it values art outside of the typical museum culture. If you decide to purchase this unit, and find that it worked well for you, please leave a review as I am a beginner TPT-er! Thank you in advance.