After being remote for the last 18 months of our program, we finally got back into classrooms this past September to begin our third and final year of ArtsMatter 1. We kicked off the year with a unit on Graphic Design. Teaching Artists and collaborating classroom Teachers were at liberty to decide how to best integrate the project, with a few parameters: use AdobeSpark; use a graphic, image/photograph and text.

Here is a copy of a sample Project Brief, a teaching tool we use in every media unit. You'll see the specifications are standardized for every student.

Notes from TA, Steve Sobalvarro I find inspiration and encouragement through the educators that I collaborate with at Manual Arts High School. Despite being unable to be on campus with them, offering a hybrid program, they have been gracious with their efforts in incorporating me into their classroom through the technology they have available on campus. Some examples of their creativity and innovation include projecting me onto their Promethean big screen Smartboards via Zoom, using their laptop cameras as webcams so I can see the class and having students join me on Zoom to work on collaborative projects. My favorite moment was logging into zoom, visible and audible on the Classroom Teachers laptop, the laptop was then placed on a utility cart by the classroom teacher and wheeled around the classroom so I was able to interact with Student Teams. Along with my collaborator’s efforts, I tried my best to find ways to contribute through this hybrid format. I was unable to provide feedback for Students and their work in person, so I decided to create slides with a link for Students to share their work. Once they uploaded their work, I provided notes, along with a visual example I created in Photoshop (see picture 01).

Notes from TA, Christina Korn Ms. Hudson’s 12th grade students from West Adams Preparatory High School applied their graphic design skills to creating posters that illustrate ways in which one might contribute to making the world a better place. The students worked through several drafts of their design, shared their works in progress, and made revisions to incorporate feedback and utilize compositional strategies.

For the final showcase ThinkLA’s Director of Content and Marketing generously joined via Zoom to share his journey as a Graphic Designer and provide feedback to students on their posters. I was very impressed with these students' creativity and professionalism as they presented to Don and their classmates.

Evelin and her artwork

Evelin’s Artist’s Statement: This artwork is about global warming. My goal was to show awareness of this topic that’s always brushed off. Through making this artwork I learned that it’s best to make different versions of the work. I feel like doing this was able to get the best outcome. It influences my future artwork because now I know how to come up with the best piece.

Edgar and his artwork

Edgar’s Artist’s Statement: I created a poster with red roses and dried up grass in the background.This artwork is about keeping earth beautiful. I was inspired by roses because they’re one of the natural beauties of earth. We need to keep earth beautiful because many plants could go extinct.I created this artwork by first finding a background that matched the idea, then I started looking for roses and finally, I added a text that matched my poster.Through making this artwork I learned how to create a poster and learned how to use the tools in Adobe Spark. I feel great and happy about this artwork.

Notes from TA, Ilene Squires Mr. Rambo's 8th Grade students at the Russell Westbrook Why Not? Academy spent the first month of school learning how to be students IRL again by doing a Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum, so by the time I got to them, they were ready to channel all of their creative energies towards a project. Since they are in an ELA class and they were at the top of their unit on the Writing Process, Mr. Rambo asked students to create a poster reflecting their own writing process that could adorn the walls of his classroom. While I am extremely proud of these three Graphic Artists for the artwork they created, I am equally as proud of them for writing a Statement of Intent (SOI) to match the caliber of art.

ArtsMatter is a proponent of the Artist Statement and the SOI is an iteration of that. Modern artists have to be able to create, and speak publicly about their work and having written statements is a critical step in this process. Writing and speaking about artwork are steps in helping students be more reflective about their creative process.

Check out our template below, along with a few student samples.