Description

Students from this Montessori school in Canada studied Keith Haring and then worked collaborately to make several murals, custom t-shirts, and sculptures, all exploring the theme of "Peace, love and the environment."

Objective

To appreciate the art of the artist Keith Haring.

To design and implement Keith Haring-like images for a wall mural.

To understand and experience a project containing many different compenents and processes from beginning to end.

Resources

The Keith Haring for Kids website, posters, postcards, The Keith Haring Biography, The book "10".

Materials

Paper
Pencils
Tempera or acrylic paint (acrylic is permanent paint and will be good for tee-shirts)
Brushes & painting supplies
Varnish (shellac or polyeurothane)

Procedure

MURAL
Synthesizing Haring's Work & Scale
After showing the students some reproductions of Haring's work and discussing how he made some pieces and what they might mean to him as well as to others, we practiced drawing some Haring-inspired images on coloured paper. We later enlarged the drawings to suit several walls within our school, and painted them as permanent, site-specific murals. We used bright colours, black outlines (painted last), and movement lines to convey action, all characteristic of Haring's work.

SCULPTURE
Dimension & Volume
Afterwards, we practiced drawing some more shapes (containing figures/colors inside of each section), folding the paper to create 3-dimensional geometric shapes which now hang in our classroom.

TEE-SHIRTS
Just as Keith made tee-shirts for his friends and family, we painted t-shirts so we could have our own memories of Keith Haring. The students used symbols in their own lives that held personal meaning for them, just as Haring used the Radiant Baby and Barking Dog images to communicate his personal identity.

Extensions

Tyee's web site