Art Rocks!: Bear Tavern Earth Day 2013

What a chilly, windy Earth Day! We stayed mostly inside to create art for Earth Day with the exception of some classes drawing on the pavement with sidewalk chalk.

I am a huge fan of green art and using everyday materials to create installations. Our bottlecap mural a few years ago was our first "green" installation at Bear Tavern. We collected caps for 8 months before creating our bottlecap mural.

This year, we created mandalas heavily inspired by artist Virginia Fleck. We aimed to reduce the amount of plastic bags going into the ground by reusing them to create several wonderful mandalas. Our school community brought in an extraordinary amount of beautifully colored plastic bags that were cut up for the kids to use today.

Virginia Fleck is so inspiring. She's such a nice woman and I am looking forward to sending her some pictures of our finished designs.

We also snuck in some large leaf paintings towards the end of the day.
I really love all of the art created today and am glad that I can restore the art room to "normalcy". For the past week I've had plastic bags all over getting them prepped for the kids today.

I felt pretty happy to hear students say things like "I want to be an art teacher when I grow up!" and "This was so much fun!"
Some people wonder why I do so many projects each year and the answer is "because it's my job...and I love art".
Thank you to the parents who volunteered their time today and to the staff who assisted in prepping for the event... I couldn't have managed with out you...thanks for making today a fun one for our kids!