This is a picture of a blue duck. I made the duck blue because to be honest I'd never seen a blue duck before and I wanted to see one.

I think if a child made a duck blue it would show great outside the box thinking.

This is a picture of the magic school bus that a group of us (Heather, Jesslyn, Jordan, Ida Mae and I) made for our science class dramatic lesson last year. This was an interesting project for me because the creating of the set was something I was not used to. It was a giant project that took a lot of thinking in ways I wasn't used to. Luckily I had group members who are much more artistic than me to do most of the creative work. The project also involved drama, which is another thing I am not used to. It ended up being a very fun project and gave me lots of ideas that I think I could take to my classroom someday.

I love art that contains a message. I have this print hanging on my wall. While it is great to have to decipher deeper, hidden meanings from a piece at times, I love this picture because the message is great and to the point. I think I could bring this into a classroom and have students say what it means to them, and tie it into a language arts lesson and a fine arts lesson to incorporate some cross-curricular activities.

 I took these photos on Cranbrook Hill during July and the second set this fall of the exact same spot, and thought I'd upload them to show how important season and weather are in how we view a scene. I know that for myself, these things play a big role in how I will feel about a piece, especially literature. Almost every good book I can think of used these elements to create a mood and atmosphere for the reader. I think each set of pictures brings a different set of feelings with them when someone would look at them.

I thought I would use these two images I used in another class to talk about the idea of that is built upon: art that is built upon other works of art. We mostly think of this with music, and songs that are remixes of other songs, but it's a concept that exists in all areas of art. We tend to look down on things that are obviously built on other works, like remixes, thinking that it doesn't take much skill or effort to create something so closely linked to another piece. However, no art really comes from a truly original concept; in one way or another, everything is built upon past ideas or methods. That doesn't mean they didn't take any skill to create, it just means that they borrowed ideas to create something wonderful. With this in mind, we should recognize that all art takes skill to create and should judge each thing separately on its own merits, recognizing that it may have borrowed elements from other works but is its own piece and should be looked on as such.

This picture I took of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum made me think about how some art is so respected and known for hundreds or even thousands of years, while so much art that is created never gets noticed. In this case, the original location of these sculptures and their travels have helped make them famous, but the age and incredible skill and detail that went into all of them are the real reason why. They were very impressive to see in person.

I like this picture because it's a quote from Oscar Wilde that I think is very true: art is, in and of itself, useless. It gains its value from the way that each person views it. A piece of art has to speak to some part of our experience in order for us to appreciate it. A painting might depict a scene that takes someone back to a happy place in their life, or a song might have some lyrics that deal with an emotional issue that the listener can identify with. Even though these are both negative and positive emotions, they are powerful and make a person relate to the art that is inspiring those feelings. This is how art gains its value; without a person attaching some personal emotion to the art, it has none.