The Silk Road

We're back! And we're at it again.

Our latest series of projects at FMAA took us along the silk road to learn about the art of Italy, Turkey, India, Tibet and China, to name a few. Marco Polo and Kublai Khan flanked the beginning and end of our adventure as students learned about the largest empire in the history of world.

We began class making pottery and Iznik tiles inspired by Turkey, then traveled along to India where real henna designs and watercolors were explored. In Tibet we studied the art of making pastel mandalas and created drawings that envisioned a greener, healthier planet.

Ending in China, students painted on silk while learning about harvesting silk from silk worms and the intricate skill of painting on this delicate fabric.

Come visit us on Thursdays from 4pm - 5:30pm or on Sundays from 10am -1pm. You are also welcome to visit our website at Flying Machine Art Academy.

Have any questions? Please email mollyleith@me.com or call 510-847-6348.

Happy New Year!!

Molly, Corby and Audrey Leith

Short and Sweet

Be sure not to miss the latest and greatest mural on display in a few weeks at our One Year Anniversary Art Exhibit! Seen above are Sophie and Ming working on their leopard paintings created by combining simple geometric shapes. Nice work guys!! They are not even in Kindergarten yet and are becoming SO proficient in their drawing and observational skills.

These paintings will be incorporated into the mural, inspired by Henri Rousseau, being created as a unified effort by all of our students here at FMAA.

We are extremely proud of all our students and can't wait to showcase their hard work and creativity! We hope to see you there!!

Details:

Where: Flying Machine Art Academy, 140 Balboa Street

When: Sunday May 23rd, 1-3pm

our website: http://www.flyingmachineartacademy.com

contact information: mollyleith@me.com

Flying Machine Art Academy ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY Student Art Show

Dear Parents and Dedicated Fans!

Please note!!! Due to a number of art projects that must be included in our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY Art Show, we are pushing the date of the exhibit forward to Sunday, May 23rd from 1-3pm. We hope you can still make it!!

What: FMAA ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY Student Art Exhibit!!

When: Sunday, May 23rd from 1-3 pm

Where: 140 Balboa St. San Francisco, CA 94118

Thank you for your patience with this important scheduling adjustment. We look forward to seeing you there! Please invite your friends!

Best wishes,

Molly & Corby Leith

Paul Klee, Watercolor and Value

Paul Klee

Known for his wonderful use of simplified shapes and amplified color, Paul Klee ( 1879 - 1940) was a Swiss painter of German nationality. Both parents were musicians as was he, although his future led him successfully in the field of painting and drawing to become an instructor at the Bauhaus, a famous German art school started in 1919 to initiate the combination of arts and crafts in one institution.

Klee's artwork was widely recognized for two things: color and simplicity. Athough it is hard to categorize precisely what style he used, he was certainly influenced by, and recognized as, one of the original cubists of the cubism/futerist movement.

Below are some of our kindergarten students having fun creating their own simplified portrait inspired by Paul Klee's famous Portrait of a Man.

Experimenting with color's endless possibilities and delicate radiance, we had our older students create graded washes, or a series of colors from their darkest to lightest value, essentially honing their brush control and value with watercolor. This was then applied to a picture of their choice, simplified to its essential compositional elements as in Klee's Tunisian Garden's below...

One of our students was able to create over 32 different greens using only blue and yellow ( ok and a touch of brown) for just one painting. Could you?

For more information about Flying Machine Art Academy, please visit our website at

http://www. flyingmachineartacademy.com

Symbolism in Aboriginal art and Dreamtime painting

Dreamtime paintings are sacred to Australian Aborigines. They tell a story and communicate to other aboriginal tribe members about the location of animals, watering holes, food and geographical details of their land. Only recently have contemporary art enthusiasts supported the marketing and proliferation of these dream paintings into the resale commercial realm.

These paintings reveal the sacred creation story believed by aborigine people of how the spirits formed all the mountains, rivers and valleys. "Found" in a trans-like state the paintings are done on the ground revealing a bird's eye view of the land and used as maps among other tribe members. Covered in dots, the surfaces resemble a celestial image of patterns and symbols arranged like constellations that reveal camp sites, fires, grass, kangaroos and endless detailed information in the night sky.

FMAA students studied many of the symbols and styles used by aboriginal artists to create a dreamtime painting of their own. First priming the canvas with a mid tone color to resemble the earth, students then drew their design with oil pastel and completed the painting in acrylic. The stories below tell of campsites and campfires with kangaroos and watering holes under the midnight stars. See if you can find them all!

Rhythm and Movement with Louise Nevelson

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

was born in Russia in 1899. She spent the majority of her years as an artist in New York City (1920 - 1988) working in metal, wood, and cast paper creating "assemblages", or assemblies of discarded objects, redefining their purpose and meaning by giving them new lives as a work of art. This new genre of assemblage was formally recognized in the 1950's although Louise had been creating her found wood sculptures since the early 1930's!

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."

Shallow relief, monochromatically toned, her sculptures are an organization of forms that create rhythm and movement through positive and shadowed space. Massive installations of organized forms, her work is monumental in size and feeling. Having studied with famous artists such as Hans Hofmann, George Grosz and Diego Rivera, her work is a mixture of styles that transcends categorical descriptions and is associated with as many art movements as Cubism, Dada, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism and she is also known as the pioneering dame of Installation art. She received several honorary doctorates and awards from schools including Harvard, Columbia and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Below are some examples of Louise Nevelson's work that strongly reveal a dynamic sense of pattern, taking on a life of their own in elegant silence. After studying several images of her work, students at FMAA were each given vast amounts of wood scraps recycled from lumber yards and local studios throughout the city to create an inspired composition that captured rhythm and movement. At the end you will see the first stages of these fantastic assemblages being built:

To find out more about the art classes at Flying Machine Art Academy, please visit our website at www.flyingmachineartacademy.com

Monoprints

Monoprinting!  

A monoprint is a really great way to create a loose, painterly feel to an otherwise meticulously precise method of printing.  It's a form of printmaking that can include collage, hand-painted editions and series of images that relate by reusing the same printing plate without washing it inbetween prints, therefore retaining the shadow image of the previous print ( and less cleaning!).  

Monoprint's unique process creates only one of each print, thus its name.  Typically executed on clear plexiglass, the artist can lift the clear plate to see what her image looks like before printing .  Painting directly onto the plate, the process is immediate, visceral and unpredictable, often capturing the texture of the original brush strokes.  

FMAA students studied the wonderful artist Georgia O'Keefe, famous for her desert skull paintings and intricate, oversized depictions of flowers.  We brought in a vase of sunflowers to use as inspiration for color, texture, shape and composition.  After perusing many O'Keefe images, the students painted directly onto plexiglass plates with the option of using the sunflowers as inspriation.  It was great to see their faces after each print and witness the confidence and curiosity build with each successful attempt.   The first image you see below is a portrait of Georgia O'Keefe followed by a few images of her paintings.

www.flyingmachineartacademy.com