Art students spent their short week making gratitude drawings ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. We did some brainstorming to get us started and made lists of things, people, personal traits and talents, experiences we were grateful for. Then we took those lists and transformed them into works of art. Everyone had a unique way of visually representing their gratitude but there was a lot of overlap in the things we recognized – family, friends, shelter and food, love and nature. May we all be blessed with those things and more over this holiday weekend and season.

Middle School art classes had a chance to head outside earlier this week and take part in the construction of our new school community garden. We build and installed a number of raised garden beds, planted 5 apple and pear trees, and layed a lot of soil and mulch. The garden is looking great and ready for our Spring Action Day where we will be planting a lot of fruit and vegetables. The students had a lot of fun helping out and we are all super grateful for the opportunity to have such a beautiful, community centered space at Lowrey.

We are in our second week back at school and the art room has been busy! I love starting the year with NAME art. It’s an easy way to start thinking creatively again, it’s fun, and students can feel a personal connection to their art because – it’s all about them! Plus, it helps us all get to know each other and learn each others names. Here are a few SUPER works from the past weeks.

Symmetry Names by 8th Grade 2-D Artists: Nour, Nisreen and Asra.

Watercolor Grid Names by 7th Grade Artists: Saeed, Fatima, Hassan and Sindus.

Enjoy your summer everyone! Rest up. Go outside. Read a book. Visit with your friends and family. MAKE SOME ART! 😁I’ll be seeing you all next year!

As we wrap up the year and roll into summer all of us here in the art room are working hard to surround ourselves with positive thoughts and words, for ourselves and for others.

May me all feel brave, happy, fortunate, beautiful, creative, successful, gifted and loved. May we all strive to be charitable, bighearted, loyal, helpful, and trust-worthy. May we never forget to dream, seek out adventure and nature, and be good to our friends.

Middle School Art Display

Some amazing finished pieces from 8th Grade 3-D art:

Closing out the year with a super fun mixed media piece. 7th Grace 2D students did such a super job with these, I love them. We did a contour line drawing of a portrait with sharpie on a piece of laminate. Then we flipped it over and painted on the reverse. The portraits were then mounted on either a textured painting or image collage that students created. Here are a few of the finished results:

A few of our amazing, hard working, talented 8th Grade students are on the middle of a mural project to end the school year. I’m so proud of them and their initiative and their creativity and all their effort.

I can’t wait to share the finished piece with you. Until then, here’s a sneak peak of the work in progress.

Lowrey student artwork is still on display at the Padzieski Gallery inside the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center! If you haven’t been to check it out yet, the show is up until May 29th and I highly recommend going. We have some amazing artists!

Here’s me enjoying the opening celebration last week, looking like a proud art teacher:

Middle School students recently participated in an Earth Day poster contest. The PTA generously donated gift baskets for our 1st 2nd and 3rd place winners. Middle School staff and teachers voted this past Friday and below are our winners! So proud of these students, their hard work, and creativity. Congrats!

1st Place Winner: Rehab Aljahmi, Grade 8

2nd Place: Dalia Nassar, Grade 8

3rd Place: Sarah Hachem, Grade 8