Adobe Illustrator: Exquisite Corpse
Lead by Camila Garate at Boston Arts Academy under Supervising Practitioner Gretta Olton.
The idea behind this lesson was purely to explore the tools in Illustrator, and take a well deserved break from a term long project. The students were hesitant at first, but once it was evident that the activity was to have fun and be completely free creatively, they were extremely invested.
A large struggle we face in the Mac Lab is the seclusion that the monitors provide. It's very hard to work collaboratively or get the students up and moving. The purpose of this activity was to get the students excited about collaboration and the mystery behind the outcome of their "corpses." Students were laughing and bouncing around the room. It was so refreshing to see how open they were to a "game" like this.
Camila Garate
This year has been the most difficult, but fulfilling year of my life. I'm originally from New York, and have a BFA in Fine Arts from The Fashion Institute of Technology. After graduating in 2019, I was unsure of what my next steps were. I decided that I wanted to travel, and use an ESL certification as the way to do it. The pandemic quickly ruined my plans, but since taking the ESL certification course, I found a new love for educating. I was writing lessons that incorporated art and art making as a universal language to teach english. Teaching art seemed like the obvious next step, and since then it's been the best decision of my entire life. I've loved every minute of student teaching, and learning about the impact that art has on the development of our youth.
I firmly believe that art has endless capabilities beyond art making. It's a means to express yourself, and develop the abilities to understand other peoples expressions and emotions. Creating art, and comprehending the visual world around us is how humans understand what goes on around them. It's the most important transferrable skill that any one person can acquire, regardless of what profession they choose to pursue.
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