Art teachers share their STEAM efforts through a variety of powerful interdisciplinary lessons. Students experiment with electroluminescent lights, collaborate with science students to engineer moving mechanical insects, use natural materials to create colorful inks, explore surface tension with paper marbling, and much more.
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At the Texas Art Education Association conference last November, I was fortunate to meet Mariah Reading, one of the keynote speakers. Reading is a remarkable artist who expanded my understanding of STEAM, an educational approach that meaningfully integrates science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.
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In our choice-based pre-K art studio, we’ve been discussing and exploring different media that artists use. My students were quick to jump into the discussion, sharing that some artists use paint, others use cameras, and some use clay to make sculptures. I explained that we’d be looking at the work of an artist who used a totally different medium: light!
Steampunk is a style that combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science fiction. After discovering this style of design, it really inspired me for an up-and-coming project. I love the use of metal and gears and how, through this genre, the viewer sees the inner workings of mechanics.
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In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we have an abundance of world-class museums and cultural attractions. Such a wealth often affords collaborations between different institutions and local schools. One of the most successful projects this year has been Beads and Seeds, a STEAM collaboration between the Museum of International Folk Art, the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, and local schools.
Wow!” “That’s so cool!” “Can I do another one?” These are some of the comments I frequently hear when paper marbling with my middleschool students. It’s a fun and engaging activity that’s guaranteed to excite and motivate students. It can also be adjusted for almost any grade level.
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As STEAM becomes more popular in education and we as art teachers are more frequently asked to incorporate aspects of science, technology, engineering, and math into our curriculum, new ways of thinking need to be addressed as a means to integrate the unique qualities the visual arts bring to the table.
For art students, experimenting can be one of the most difficult tasks, especially when they are focused on learning basic techniques. In an attempt to approach inquiry-based learning while working on foundation skills, I’ve turned my emphasis toward a variety of cross-curricular approaches.
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While teaching a magazine design layout project to our Intermediate Computer Graphics students, we stumbled across an image of Steve Jobs made entirely of text. Students were intrigued by it, and it started a class discussion about how images could be combined with the written word to create surprisingly complex visual results. Students wanted to make their own images out of text in this way, and thus the Text Art Project was born.
I was introduced to the idea of painting rain barrels when my local library held an event in which artists were invited to paint rain barrels to be auctioned off at a community garden event. When I heard about this project, I inquired if they accepted group work and work that was completed by students.
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Consider the ultimate irony of artworks that are lifesized replicas of massive tanks, trucks, train tank cars, building façades, and automobiles in delicately stitched, translucent fabrics. This characterizes the work of Canadian artist Jannick Deslauriers.
