Author Archives: Kristin Farr

About Kristin Farr

Kristin Farr produces arts videos for KQED and writes monthly features for Juxtapoz magazine. She lives in the East Bay, and her favorite color is all of them.

Everybody Dance Now! (Do Now #82)

May 21, 2013, 7:45 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Gangnam Style

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDEdspace and end it with #DoNowDance

For more info on how to use Twitter, click here.

Do Now

What's your best dance move? If you don’t have a signature dance move that you consider your own, then make one up! Capture your move in a short video and share the link with us via Vine, Twitter, YouTube, or in the comments section below. Dancers with the most creativity will be featured here on KQED’s Web site, and one grand prize winner will receive a handy messenger bag loaded with KQED goodies. If you can't send a video, tell us what your move would be called or what would it look like?

Introduction

You’ve undoubtedly noticed viral videos flying around the Internet featuring dance sensations, trends, and memes like the Harlem shake phenomenon and riffs off of Gangnam Style. Dance crazes have a long history of sweeping the nation, and platforms like YouTube and Facebook foster a worldwide dancing dialogue. Dance crazes are a significant part of American culture and span history, including wildly varying moves, ranging from the 1920’s Charleston to contemporary twerking.

You’ve probably tried some of these dances, but have you made up your own personal dance move? It’s time to show off! Celebrate the arrival of summer by showing off your best move, or making up a new one! Capture your move in a short video and share the link with us via Vine, Twitter, YouTube, or in the comments section below.l Don’t forget to give your dance a name and tag #DoNowDance. Everybody dance now!

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Filed under: Do Now, Do Now: Art and Popular Culture
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Inventing Our Future: Summer Institute for Educators

May 16, 2013, 8:12 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Join KQED, SFMOMA, the Alameda County Office of Education, local artists and educators for the Integrated Learning Summer Institute, August 13-15, 2013 at Chabot Space and Science Center. All educators are welcome to register. Plenary speakers will include Spark-featured artists Favianna Rodriguez and Rhodessa Jones. The Integrated Learning institute is like summer camp for educators, set in a beautiful, natural environment with three days full of working with arts education experts and getting inspired to integrate the arts across all subjects.

KQED and SFMOMA will be presenting a three-part workshop during the institute about storytelling and exploring identity. Educators who sign up for this special session will create their own short film using personal symbolism to create a storyline. This professional development opportunity, related to using and making media in the classroom, is a perfect way to learn best practices for incorporating art and technology into CCSS curricula.

Sign up by the end of May for $50 off the registration fee, and select "Tracing Identity through Digital Media" as one of your mini-courses. We look forward to seeing you in August!

Filed under: Arts, Arts Events, Conferences, Teacher Trainings
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Art21's 100 Artists Project

May 13, 2013, 7:54 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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The PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century is celebrating a milestone this year: As of now, they've featured 100 artists! To mark this grand occasion, Art21 is following up with some of the artists they've interviewed over the past decade, translating their films into multiple languages, and offering all of their video content for free to educators and organizations who want to host public screenings of the series. Imagine bringing world-renowned graffiti artist Barry McGee to your classroom for a virtual artist talk, or watching dynamic public artist Maya Lin at work in her studio — Art21 can make that happen through their free public screening program, Access 100 Artists. Visit the web site to discover the impressive list of artist videos to choose from and sign up to host your own event. Participants in Access 100 Artists can select any DVDs from Art21's massive archive, and are encouraged to plan events in formal and informal contexts.

Art21's compelling, documentary-style short films that are used by educators around the world to introduce students to the cultural importance of art and initiate dialogue about relevant issues. As executive producer Susan Sollins states, "As role models for creative thinking, these artists reveal alternative ways to consider and publicly address the important issues of our time, from technological innovation to environmental sustainability to globalization." Art can be an engaging portal through which to view the challenges and successes of society on a global scale, and Art21 has countless resources for helping educators incorporate the study of contemporary art into their curricula. Check out the Art21 education page to learn more.

Check out a short Art21 clip of Barry McGee talking about the act of tagging:

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Performing Arts Institute for Educators June 2013

May 8, 2013, 8:51 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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teacher workshop

Join us this summer, June 10-12, for a dynamic professional development institute focused on performing arts integration in the classroom. Educators will spend three days at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts working directly with professional artists to learn new skills and ideas for incorporating music, dance and theater into their curricula while addressing Common Core state standards. They will also discover new media-rich resources KQED and PBS, including a new arts video series made specifically for a student audience. Teachers can also earn a $200 stipend or two continuing education units from CSU East Bay for completion of the institute and follow-up assignments.

Artists and educators Kwesi Anku and Kweku Morgan were recently featured on KQED's new arts education video series, and they will be leading a full day of the institute. Check out their interview and then sign up for the institute by visiting http://kqedperformingarts.eventbrite.com/.

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PD Module #3: Narrated Slideshows for Arts Education (self-paced)

April 29, 2013, 2:14 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Nearly every student who is in school today will enter the workforce needing skills in media production. From social media to YouTube videos, many industries will require a knowledge of how to leverage online platforms. In the arts classroom, media production is a dynamic way for students to gain these technical skills, while also practicing aesthetic valuing, design thinking, communication, and creative writing. All of these skills can be cultivated through the use of media-making projects. For this reason, student media-making projects are an excellent way to introduce these 21st century proficiencies.

A good, basic-level media project to use with students is a narrated slideshow. The programs used to make one are relatively simple and students can either take their own photos or find properly licensed images on the web in addition to using their own voice to narrate the story. KQED has developed a new tool for educators to assist in the understanding of how to create a slideshow as well as the implementation of such a project in the classroom. Arts-focused slideshows can be used in visual and performing arts classes as a reporting, portfolio, or assessment tool, but they can also be used in other subjects, such as history and social studies, as a tool for understanding culture through art and artifacts.

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Filed under: Arts, Online Training Modules, Teacher Trainings
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In the Studio with Kirsten Lepore

April 26, 2013, 11:21 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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photo/kristin farr

photo/kristin farr

Kirsten Lepore is an artist and filmmaker who works with different animation techniques, including stop-motion animation and claymation. Creating personal short films and animated segments for clients such as Yo Gabba Gabba, Whole Foods, and MTV, Lepore is known for her hand-fabricated film sets and characters made from an eclectic mix of materials including clay, food, sand and snow. Her wildly popular food-themed film, Sweet Dreams, stars a butternut squash who shows a cupcake the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. The award-winning film is remarkable in its production design, art direction, and wordless storytelling style. We visited Lepore at her Los Angeles studio to learn more about the intentions behind her food-focused film, the unusual materials she works with to create her animations, and why she loves the laborious process of stop-motion animation.

Kirsten Lepore also gave us a hands-on demonstration of her preferred techniques for creating claymation. Lepore's technical set-up is sophisticated, but the animation process is simple and can be recreated using digital cameras and editing programs like iMovie and iStopMotion. Even flipbooks are a form of animation.

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Do Now #76: What's Your Illustrated Story?

April 23, 2013, 6:51 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman

To respond to the Do Now, you can comment below or tweet your response. Be sure to begin your tweet with @KQEDEdspace and end it with #KQEDDoNow

For more info on how to use Twitter, click here.

Do Now

Artists often use true stories to inspire their artwork. Which of your personal stories would you illustrate? What is a story from your life that would make a compelling series of illustrations?

Introduction

Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton creates her own "drawn journalism" by embedding herself in communities, talking to people, and drawing images based on their personal stories. She created a book about the San Francisco Public Library and its frequent visitors, and is currently working on a book about the stories behind people's tattoos.

MacNaughton's approach to storytelling is unique, and there are many other artists who have developed their own styles of drawn journalism. There is an entire genre, non-fiction graphic novels, with examples such as Chris Ware's substantial collection, Building Stories, which chronicles the lives of a group of people who share an apartment building in Chicago. Below, listen to Chris Ware discuss his approach to "giving shape to the human experience" in 19 seconds.

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Filed under: Arts, Do Now, Do Now: Art and Popular Culture
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Congressional Art Competition

April 9, 2013, 7:42 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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Art by Winnie Chang from California High School in San Ramon. Photo by Jennifer Wadsworth.

Art by Winnie Chang from California High School in San Ramon. Photo by Jennifer Wadsworth.

This Friday, April 12, is the deadline for The Artistic Discovery Contest, an art competition initiated by Congressman Eric Swalwell that is open to all high school students in California's 15th congressional district. Winning artworks will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. For more information and to submit your artwork, visit Congressman Swalwell's web site. We encourage you to have your students submit works to the competition! Show our nation what Northern California's brilliant, creative young minds have produced in the classroom and beyond. The 15th congressional district covers part of Santa Clara County, including Los Gatos and Cupertino.

 

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In the Studio with Wendy MacNaughton

March 21, 2013, 5:07 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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IMG_0318Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator from San Francisco who works on a variety of projects, including her "drawn journalism" publications, which she creates by spending a few weeks interacting with different communities. She draws people, interviews them, and listens to their stories, then compiles the information into a book.  One of her recent books is about the people of San Francisco Public Library's main branch. Some of Wendy's illustration projects are about San Francisco specifically, including a specialized map of the city, and humorous drawings about the types of people who live here. She's also published her work in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and her latest illustration project is a book called Lost Cat.

We visited Wendy at her studio to learn more about her projects and her approach to making art about real people. She also gave us a lesson in how to draw beverage containers! Take a look at the videos below.

Check out more of Wendy's work on her website, WendyMacNaughton.com.

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Meet the Alphabet Rockers!

March 13, 2013, 5:19 am • Posted by Kristin Farr
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We recently met a group of educators known as the Alphabet Rockers and started jamming to their YouTube videos, including this one called Shape Rap that helps young students learn their shapes, and encourages them to recognize common shapes in the real world.

Each of the Alphabet Rockers videos is accompanied by multiple classroom activities that are designed using principles from the Common Core State Standards. They also do school tours and performances about nutrition, bullying, and other topics that are relevant to today's educational community. Their approach is a perfect example of how art techniques, such as singing and rapping, can be a great way to integrate subjects and help students remember facts in a fun, engaging way.

Check out the Alphabet Rockers web site to find more fun videos, discover their lesson plans and other classroom tools, and find out when they are performing near you.

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