Mrs. Ryback's Art Studio: My Neighborhood: Collage-Using shapes to construct imagery

Our last unit of the year is inspired by the artwork of Harlem Renaissance artist Romare Bearden. His imagery that he created in collages came directly from his own life, his family, friends and neighborhoods. Seen below is his collage entitles "The Block" from 1971.

Each class began the unit by brainstorming the different things that they see in their neighborhoods. Our lists grew quite long:

school
animals-bunnies, deer, birds, dogs, frogs
fire station
sky, sun, rain, rainbows
fire truck
streets/roads
police
hotels
train
colors
air planes
taxis
cars
bikes
restaurants
gas stations
houses
flowers
buses
river, lake, beach
trees
museum
grass
garden
bushes
park
stores
people/neighbors
hospital, doctors
family
Dunkin Donuts/McDonald's
ice cream/pizza parlor
police station/fire station
offices
movie theaters
garbage men/trucks
library
fields
ponds
stores
stop signs
driveways and backyards
stadiums
ants/bees/butterflies
pet shops
the lake
lemonade stands
mall

We then read All Through My Town by Jean Reidy and some selected excerpts form Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories by Jan Greenberg. After discussing more artwork on the Smart Board, students drew sketches of their own neighborhoods that would be used to inspire their collages the following week.

As we moved into day 2 of our unit, we talked about how Romare Beared cut shapes from found papers and painted papers to create his collages. Students were given a multitude of colored and patterned papers, as well as some papers they painted themselves using tissue paper and water. I told them to look carefully at the shapes they had drawn in their sketches, and start with the largest shapes first. Leave the small details for last.

Students had 2 class periods to complete their collages. I then sat down with each child and talked to them about what they included in their neighborhood collages. Below are a sampling of some of the completed collages.