Art

Art has been a large part of our homeschooling experience. Initially, before the pandemic hit, we had planned to travel to Canada and spend time in Toronto. My husband's family is from Montreal, but he grew up in Ontario, and always loved visiting Toronto.

We had planned to stay in the Entertainment District, and since I had already planned to homeschool Isabella before we had scheduled the trip, I had looked into the art galleries within walking distance.

Vincent Meessen had an exhibit at the Toronto's Power Plant (art gallery) called Blues Klair, which was based on his previous immersive film installation Ultramarine. He used the color blue to heighten the experience as he delved through the history of self-exiled African-American poet Gylan Kain, whose performances in the late 1960s were a primary influence on the development of rap.

In order to fully understand how the spoken word can be used in art, I had Isabella find an art piece and write a story based on it. First, she had to spend several minutes simply writing details of the piece, such as color, missing parts to it, number of items, etc. Then, she wrote a story based on it. Since the art piece she chose was a golden brooch, she wrote a story of a young boy who was commissioned to create it. Then, we looked back at the brooch and talked about it again, using her story. I think it really helped her understand how art can be multi-modal.

From there, we moved on to colors. How do colors create feelings in the viewer? There are a lot of videos out there that explain how colors are used in the media and art.

Isabella's favorite color is blue. So I decided to have Isabella create an art piece using color to convey a message while also using written language. Initially, Isabella wanted to do a haiku, however after some time studying a variety of different types of poems, she chose to instead to a lyrical piece. Her art project is called "A Battle for Peace." I am really looking forward to her finished piece once it is completed.

Speaking of words, and in the theme of written language, a good friend of mine suggested I write a journal to document this time period of our life.

Here's what I have so far:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
my children decided they hated my cooking and asked to order food daily.
I wanted to kill my husband for breathing.
The dogs were happy.