In the start of the 2013 school year, I found myself becoming bored with my own ideas. Having completed my first year of teaching, I had a year of lesson planning under my belt. As I looked the work that students created the year before, I found a large commonality among them. Most of the projects were two-dimensional and completed with a wet medium of either tempera paint or water colors. This year, I wanted to try something different. So, knowing my budget, and that I was either limited to paper or found objects, I got to work. What I came across in my research was a well known project to high school math teachers: the sierpinski triangle. A sierpinski triangle is a pyramid made up of equilateral triangles. A central triangle is removed from each triangle creating a regression of space.
The discussion and the project:
After deciding upon the sierpinski triangle installation, I knew that I would need the whole school to participate. I then faced the challenge of how to teach a concept that students grasp in high school to all levels within my elementary school. I evened the playing field so that students in every grade would learn the same information. Every grade started out with discussing the difference between items that are two-dimensional versus items that are three-dimensional. We started out pointing out items within the art room, then moved onto art.
We then discussed what installation artwork is, how it is always three-dimensional, how it is meant to transform a space, how it can go inside or outside, and how it can be temporary or permanent. We looked at exemplar artists such as Tara Donovan,
, Gerda Steiner and
Jorg Lenzlinger, Azevedo, and Kusama to get an idea that installation artwork
can be made out a wide variety of media, and then we got to work on
installation artwork of our own. Soo Sunny
Soo Sunny Park
After seeing an image of what the students were about to create, students grasped the idea that they were about to create three-dimensional art using two-dimensional paper. Each student had the opportunity to design two tetrahedrons, or triangular pyramids with four planes, using a template. Younger students in kindergarten through third grade cut out their own, while older students in fourth and fifth grade helped in the folding and gluing process. The completed triangles were then hot glued together by myself.
The final product:
The final product is made up of 1,024 tetrahedrons. Other teachers had the opportunity to contribute as well. It is held together with mostly hot glue, but reinforced with wooden dowels and popsicle sticks. Placed in the commons area of the school, students have the opportunity to gaze upon it and search for their contribution in this school-wide installation art.