Hungry for art

Arts & Activities, Nov, 2002 by Susan Buck

New Realist painter Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of food were the perfect common ground needed for our Art Exchange Day. During the exchange, my advanced art students from Valley Heights High School in Blue Rapids, Kan. spent the day in a joint studio project with students from another high school. The other school that participated was Herington High School in Herington, Kan., and the art class was under the instruction of Cathy Crouch. The purpose of the day was to let students bounce their ideas off new people and get comments on style. The students also got another teacher's point of view.

The previous year we went to Herington, and Crouch designed an illustration project where students brought an article out of a magazine to illustrate. This year it was Valley Heights' turn to host Herington for the day. The idea for this year's exchange day started with a trip to the Spencer Art Museum located at University of Kansas in Lawrence. The museum happened to have Thiebaud's Around the Cake (1962). Thiebaud had built up his canvas to look and feel like frosting, which would intrigue any student. The whole idea was fun and yummy. It made the viewer hungry!

When the Herington students arrived at our school for Art Exchange Day, they found a table set up with an array of goodies. My students brought layered cakes and doughnuts. Our home-economics class even baked a beautiful three-layered red velvet cake for the event.

The day started at 9 a.m. with a short art-history lesson on Thiebaud. Even though Thiebaud is a New Realist, he is sometimes considered a Pop Artist because of his use of everyday subjects such as food. Students were shown several other pieces of Thiebaud's work, such as Four Ice-cream Cones (1964), Bakery Counter (1962) and Pie Counter (1962).

After the presentation, students were excited and ready to paint, so we broke them up into three groups and arranged the food into three different still lifes. Next, students were asked to study each still life and make a thumbnail sketch. When they felt ready, they were to paint a background color on an 18" x 24" piece of canvas board with acrylic paint.

Finally, students were ready to dig in. They were given the option of using modeling paste to build up the surface like Thiebaud did in his Around the Cake painting. We encouraged them to go wild--but not too wild--with the paste. The texture of the painting needed to fit the work and not be distracting.

The whole studio part of the "Art Exchange Day" took about five hours. We wrapped up the day with an informal critique. All the students went home stuffed both visually and physically. Oh well, not to worry, they will be hungry for Art Exchange Day again next year.

Susan Buck teaches art at Valley Heights High School in Blue Rapids, Kansas.