Art project: part 1

Shayna has been working on her art project and paper the last few weeks. She chose Salvador Dali. She has to do a written paper (1-2 pgs.) with title page and bibliography including some pictures of the artist and artwork, and then do an art project in the style of the artist- can be made to look like the artwork or in the artists "style" or they can choose to come to school dressed to look like the artist. So I have been helping/encouraging her in this endeavor by: printing out articles from the internet, getting out library books, looking through the Dali book I have, showing her the mementos and one photo I took inside the Dali museum in Spain, and renting 3 movies- one about Dali called Dali, one a movie he made called Ma Chien Andalou (20 minutes in B&W), and the 3rd happened to just be showing the artwork. Then I had her put together her "research" using index cards, organize them, and type out the paper (learning to choose what facts are important). It turns out they have this bibliography online tool for the elementary kids that I thought was SOOO uber cool and easy - type in the info and it formats it correctly for you, makes up the bibliography ready to print- presto! Last, she made her title page and put it all together so the written part was done. Now onto the fun art project. Shayna decided to do a small replica of the "surreal apartment" - a room in the museum made to look like Mae West using lips sofa, nose fireplace, eyes framed pictures, etc. That was the only photo I took in the museum and I mentioned it was my favorite art of his, then Shayna said that was her favorite (she is to say which artwork is her favorite) so i said she just said it because its MY favorite, and she said no, it IS her favorite too. This is after we looked at maybe 100s of his paintings (I personally like Van Gogh and Munch not Dali so much). She decided to use a shoebox for the mini apartment, and make the lips and nose from sculpey clay, we found picture frames in the dollhouse section at AC Moore and printed out the Mae West eyes (Manny helped with this). Shayna learned that art is not easy, it took a few tries to get the lips sofa made. The nose fireplace was very challenging! She went outside and got little twigs to make the fireplace logs inside the nose. here she is working on the lips with the sculpey clay: pondering...how will I make this into a lip shaped sofa?
You can see the actual surreal apartment in the report cover on the table above.

After helping Shayna with this, I have to say I have become quite the Dali expert (go ahead ask me a question) and even found out what he meant by the clocks, melting clocks, ants, grasshoppers and eggs featured in a lot of his art. He painted the persistence of memory one night when his wife was out and he opted to stay home.

They will be making a Dali movie this summer starring Al Pacino as Dali and filming in NY and Spain.