For this art piece, I took the time to look around outside to see what I could find to use for a visual art piece. I wanted to do a land-based art creation, so I walked around my yard looking for fallen leaves and sticks. As I was wondering around, I realized that I had some flowers in my front yard still that would be perfect for what I wanted to do. I was planning on getting rid of my flowers for the year already, so it was not a big deal to use these for an art piece. I gathered some flowers and decided that I wanted to flatten them, to do this I placed them in between two pieces of wax paper then laid a textbook on top of them. I left them like this for a week or so, I completely forgot about them until I went to move the textbook again. After they were flat like I wanted, I laid them out on a piece of paper and placed leaves, sticks, and some weeds I had found around them. I wanted my art piece to not be a picture, but more of a collage style of pieces you can find outside. Using the sticks and leaves added a bit of dimension to art piece next to the flattened flowers as well as some brown tones next to the reds and purples.
During this experience, I was able to realize that anything found in nature could be used to make a piece of art in someone way. A person could use sticks and mud to create a sculpture of some kind, or use grass, leaves, and sticks to create a picture. The options are endless. I created my particular piece because I have always liked the way a flattened flower looks and think it is a great way to preserve their beauty. Through working with these art materials, I have learned that it is a lot harder to manipulate them into the shape I want, unless I want to search for the perfect piece. When using a stick, I could not bend it in the other direction only break them to make them shorter. This limited the way I could use certain objects I had found outside, but I was able to make it work for the way I have visioned.
This activity reminded me a lot of one I had taken part in when I was in elementary school. We were given a scavenger list of certain kinds of shapes to find, it did not matter what kind of object was used for these shapes. Once we had brought them inside, we were to make an art piece with the objects we had found. This activity allowed for our creative sides to truly be shown, when it came to seeing these shapes and creating our art pieces with them. As I was outside walking around and picking my sticks and flowers, it made me reflect on a major educational belief that I have. I believe that the most learning happens outside of the classroom. Creating an art piece for this is the perfect way to allow students to explore their surroundings and find beauty in what they have directly in front of them. They can realize that they do not need to use paint or crayons to create art. A lesson like this in an art class would allow them to really get in touch with their creative side and focus on the process of the art rather than the product.
