Middle-Schoolers Get Artsy With Adjectives

The Sam Francis Gallery appeared chaotic earlier this week, with strips of cardboard and bright scraps of construction paper scattered about, but underneath the surface, beautiful, creative things were taking shape.

 

As part of the “Animated Adjectives, Language Into Form” artist residency with Los Angeles-based artist Kiel Johnson, Middle School students picked a word or phrase that best describes them and then made a 3D sculpture of the adjective using an array of materials. They were given complete creative control over their word and enjoyed the two-part process of designing and ultimately animating it.

 

“We’re having a great time. I think the kids are learning something. I’m learning something. I’m learning a lot more Latin than I thought I’d learn,” Kiel said with a chuckle.

 

Throughout the past few weeks, students from across disciplines—Latin, Core, Studio Art, Sculpture and Art and Culture—have collaborated on words. Some students studying Latin chose to use words from the classical language as their descriptive word. These included “amicus” (friend), “tenax” (tough), “beatus” (happy), “dingus” (worthy), “laetus” (delighted) and “gratus” (welcome), among others.

 

“This was really fun. I chose ‘amazing’ because I liked how the letters looked next to each other, and I liked the length of it,” said seventh-grader Izzy Massin. “I liked decorating the letters because you could put your own spin on it.” 

 

Moments prior, Izzy finished animating her word—made of multiple colors, patterns and textures—using stop-animation methods captured with a camera hanging above a table, where she positioned her letters, snapped an image, slightly moved the letters and repeated. Students also used iPads loaded with the iStopMotion software to achieve the same results.

 

“They get really excited about seeing things come together that way,” said Middle School art teacher Janice Gomez.

 

The closing reception for “Animated Adjectives” took place Thursday, Feb. 11, in the Sam Francis Gallery, where there was a screening of the students’ animated words. At the students’ afternoon reception, the Eighth Grade Jazz Collective performed.

 

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