The ART of sports (Active Art Part 2)

This week at school we are joining in the
 It's going to be happening all across the country this Friday, MAY 8th!!
So of course I like to tie into things like this, and I decided to do the post right before this one, Active Art (Part 1)  We had a lot of fun making poseable pipe cleaner people at home, and later that day my son Eli surprised me with his people and a cardboard box -- he handed me a paper remote, had me "turn the tv on" and performed a whole show!

But in addition to talking about making people in motion, I wanted to find some art ABOUT sports to share too, because I invited all my students to draw their favorite active/sport hobbies and send me some drawings to get excited for our field day.  So I started looking...


In traditional American art history I immediately thought of Columbus native George Bellows and his boxing painting -- The Stag at Sharkey's (1909).  This painting calls Cleveland its home normally but is currently on loan to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art!!  
George Bellows | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

Or how about America's National Pastime as celebrated in many paintings (not just this one) by iconic American painter Norman Rockwell?  
Rockwell Files: The 1948 Chicago Cubs in Boston | The Saturday ...
Via The Saturday Evening Post 
Click the photo above for ALL the Baseball covers The Saturday Evening Post has done (not just Rockwell's)!!!

Then my mind went in a new direction:  the Olympics (kind of like field day, right?).  When I was in New York City last May I went into a gallery that had prints from some artists I recognized for sale! I saw Haring, Miro, and Britto in this little gallery shop near our hotel, and with them was new-to-me artist James Rizzi.  He was the official artist of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics!.  In the first piece pictured below, the artwork was printed many times over, cut apart, and then reassembled so that certain parts "pop out" further than others!  I'd love to try this with students as one big piece sometime -- maybe kids playing on the playground popping off the page!  The poster below that, A Village for the World,  was also made for the games, celebrating the city of Atlanta and the Olympic Village.  Many of those retired posters are currently finding their way to auction.

The Olympic Spirit by James Rizzi on artnet
The Olympic Spirit (via Artnet)

Centennial Olympic Games by James Rizzi on artnet
Centennial Olympic Games (via Artnet)

 When a country hosts the Olympics, they build stadiums and hotels and sports arenas to prepare.  But they also call on their artists to create a logo for the games, design programs, posters, merchandise and the mascots for the games! Although the this summer's Olympic games in Tokyo had to be postponed, artists had already created a mascot for the games (pictured below with link), the "emblem" or symbol for the games, and many promotional posters. 
Tokyo 2020 Mascots Miraitowa and Someity to Promote 'Make the Beat ...
Via Olympic.org

 DID YOU KNOW that there were medals awarded for architecture, music, painting and sculpture in the Olympics from 1912-1948?!?! I had no idea that happened until I started searching "Olympic Art" and found that first!

Researching art made about the Olympics led me to contemporary commercial artist, Charles Fazzino.  Fazzino paints popular images from modern culture including city life, sports, and celebrities. He creates illustrations like the one below (for the MLB AllStar Game in Cleveland) to celebrate major sporting events!  Click on the image below to see other prints he makes, along with baseballs and football helmets he embellishes as art objects.
Via Charles Fazzino

Finally, I discovered another talented modern working artist who depicts sports heroes of today.  Stephen Holland grew up in New York City, watching his classmates play sports from the sidelines while temporarily disabled as a child.  Drawing others playing sports or drawing from sport magazines led him to art school in New York and fame today as the official artist of the Los Angeles Kings in the NHL.  His work is also featured in the American Sport Art Museum and Archives, in New York City (yes, there is such a place!). Click on Kobe to see more of his paintings.
Kobe for the Record   (via MoucheGallery)

I was really fascinated at what I found when I took this little journey on sports and art and the path it took me down.  Olympic medals for painting --  who knew? Artists who work for hockey teams -- that's someone's dream job! But I know my students love to draw themselves playing soccer, dancing, riding horses, and playing on the playground as well.  Fifth graders this year made zentangles of football players, helmets, Nike shoes, and sport logos.  I'd also love to explore sports photography sometime (a whole separate job -- action shots are hard!), but we'll leave that for another day...or for the parents who get to try to catch their kids in action during Field Day this Friday!  Please share your active/sport drawings and photos with us!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's draw our PETS!!

Image
Do you know what so many of my students LOVE to draw over and over again?  Animals they love.  For many it is their pets (our pet count increased by 6 last week but more on that later...) .  For some it is a pet maybe they wish they had.  Just over two years ago, my family took in our cat Fritz as a foster cat, and he wound up staying with us for good.  Our boys love him more than anything and he has turned into the subject of many of their comic books: Aidan uses "Fritzie" as a character in many of his drawings. When we went to the Columbus Museum of Art this winter we also found some pet-type animals on display -- James Thurber often depicted a dog in his newspaper and book drawings, and in the interactive kids area, we were invited to create with Post-It notes, so of course we left a cat behind.  When I was in high school our dog was the subject of several of my art projects. He was a cock-a-poo, which is just a medium sized, very furry white dog.  I
Read more

Chain reaction fun!

It happened, finally.  The kids were bored enough to start creating something new!!  This has been their day's learning.  On my phone we also recorded it in slow motion, which was really fun because when it didn't work we were able to watch it and figure out where things went off course.   This is what artists and scientists do -- they work through problems, they try different methods, and they adopt a growth mindset to keep trying.  They go through hard time and boredom, and they make something new to the world out of it! (Bare with me...first attempt at posting video shot on my phone to Blogger - all three videos should work, though!)
Read more

ACTIVE art!! (Part 1)

Image
When you're looking to draw figures in motion in art, the obvious place to go is the "stick figure" to start.  In fact, many artists have used their own version of the basic stick man in their art for years.  Keith Haring wanted his "bubble figures" to be universal -- they could be every man or woman.  In fourth grade we make collages inspired by Haring's figures.  Students draw and cut out the figures, putting them on a background with props and "action lines."  The students love to create them jumping on trampolines, riding horses, playing sports, and dancing to music.  It's not always easy to just draw a figure into an imaginary pose, though, so we have a couple of tricks up our sleeves to practice poses.  The first is "gesture drawing!"  Gesture drawing is doing a quick sketch of a person who is posing for you.  At school I invite students up into the front of the room to pose for me, and then I draw them as a stick figure o
Read more