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The Dennos Museum Center

Introduction

This lesson plan aids students in understanding how to gather source material and create works of art based on those materials. The goals of this Webquest are to:

  • Integrate art and images as primary resource material.
  • Provide resources so that students can focus on using information instead of looking for it.
  • Build and support student's inquiry, critical thinking and analysis skills.

Your Quest: To understand how artists use source material to create final works of art

To gather source material from the Internet and your everyday life and create a multimedia work of art based on your source material.

Part One: Research how artists incorporate images and objects from different sources

The exhibition, Andy Warhol Photography: Gifts of the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, features photographs by Andy Warhol, the infamous pop artists. Warhol used the camera as a journal and sketchbook, and carried it everywhere with him to record his world. Several of the photographs in this exhibition were used as source material for larger paintings and silkscreens. For examples, The Polaroids of the famous golfer Jack Nicklaus and hockey player Rob Gilbert were used to create the Athlete Series of the late 1970s. See images of the final art works here and here.

Explore these websites and record your observations on your worksheet (download the worksheet here).

Joseph Cornell

Andy Warhol

René Magritte

Kerry James Marshall

Robert Rauschenberg

Part Two: Gather Source Material

Gather source material for your own work of art from your everday life. Use a Polaroid or digital camera to take snapshots of the world around you. Collect small objects and images from the mass media (newspapers, magazines, internet, etc.).

Part Three: Create a multimedia art work using your source material

Spread out all of your source material in front of you.

  • What connections can be drawn between the items?
  • Do all of your items and images feature a common subject? (people, animals, food, etc.)
  • Is there a theme that emerges?
  • Is there a dominant color scheme that emerges?
  • Are there certain shapes that repeat throughout your source material?

Use the connections you draw to decide upon a theme for your art work. Create a multimedia collage to bring your images and items together. Sometimes artist will alter objects and images by painting or drawing on top of them or reproducing them through photography or printing. Decide for yourself based on your theme.
When you artwork is finished write a short paragraph explaining your theme and your process (this will be your artist statement). Then display the artwork with a label identifying you as the artist, the date of the piece, the medium, and your artist statement.