Its Officially over for the year...

Art 1 Student
Abstract painting

...but unofficially, I still need to go back to my room and finish putting away some things and getting some things reorganized for next school year.  I have made a promise to myself to purge and get my classroom better organized over the summer, so I will be visiting my classroom, at least, once a week.  That is my plan.  Being in the same classroom for a long time can be a good thing and a bad thing.  Good, that it feels like home away from home, bad that I don't always get rid of things that I should.  And I am very lucky to have a large art room, so there are plenty of places to put things.  I started at the beginning of this year throwing away things that have not been used in awhile.  But as the year went on, I got busier and busier, so I didn't have any time to continue with the clean out process and as always, I ended up with stacks and stacks of student artwork.  Eventually that artwork must be passed back out to the students, but it becomes a big chore.  I stack them by class period and by projects.  But some pieces get chosen to be displayed in the art room or in the end of the year art show, so they don't stay in the original stack.  That doesn't sound that difficult to most people, but when you have 140-150 students x 20 stacks of papers/canvases/3D artwork, per semester (at least), then those stacks of papers/artworks, become mounds of papers.  So, I am determined to get a hold of this monster this summer with a plan.  I'm still thinking about that plan and looking for some type of storage unit for student portfolios that will be poster paper size portfolios. So if any art teachers out there, have any ideas, please feel free to share...or direct me to a good blog or website that has some good ideas for storing artwork during the school year.

Being my last official day of work for the year, today I am showing a few more of the abstract paintings that my beginning Art students created last month.   Keep in mind that these are high school students, many of whom take art because they have to have the credit to graduate.  Some of them realize after they take the class that they are a little creative!  And some go on to take Art 2, Art 3, and even some on to Art 4.  

And a few clay sculptures by one of my Art 3 students: 

Looking forward to a productive and relaxing summer break...

Mrs. Macre♥Art