CLS Elementary School Nature Based Art Day with guest artist Norm Magnusson

Thank you Rhinebeck PTSO for helping to make this possible!!!

On Friday, October 15, 2021, inspired by their studies of land-based artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Norm Magnusson, Rhinebeck's Chancellor Livingston School 5th graders took to the woods behind school to make some nature-based art. The art making activities were split into two groups, roughly defined as "moving things around" (Goldsworthy) and "decorating nature" with paint (Magnusson).

For the "decorating nature" with paint activity, the students worked individually and their finished work was marked with their names.

For the "moving things around" activity, the students worked in groups and their finished work was marked with letters.

It was a beautiful day, everybody had fun and the results were amazing.

Some pics from this event can be seen below, and references to some of the land-based artists studied are included below that.

(Click on any image to view it bigger.)

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Nature artist Norm Magnusson talks to the students and shares some of his creations.

Students started working individually with watercolor paints . . . 

Individual name markers were placed in the ground near each artist's creation(s) . . . 

. . . after they were placed back out in the woods where the "raw materials" came from.

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Students also worked in teams to create group interventions with nature . . .

. . . a good time was had by all!

Post-script

One week later, students returned to the scene of their artworks and found that nature was already taking the upper hand. Some of the highlights of that re-visit are here below, some with their "before" pics:

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One family returned to the scene at nighttime and took a bunch of pics; here are a couple . . . 

References

Richard Long

“A line made by walking”

the Sahara Desert and England

Here, English artist Richard Long makes a line by walking. In the English country side, his repetitive step temporarily killed the grass he was trodding upon. What message (if any, do you think he was sending with this piece of art?) He did a similar piece in the Sahara desert where he kicked stones out of the path.

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Robert Smithson

“Spiral Jetty” – Utah, USA

 

Robert Smithson's earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake. Using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site, Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water.  Spiral Jetty lasted only two years before the rising lake level submerged it, hiding it from sight for nearly thirty years.

 

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Simon Beck

Snow designs - worldwide

 

Similar to Smithson but more concerned with the decorative quality of the art that results from his walking in snow.

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Maya Lin

Mountainville, NY

 

Just down the road from Rhinebeck, at Storm King sculpture park, The Storm King Wavefield encompasses an eleven acre site, with the earthwork itself covering four acres. It is comprised of seven rows of rolling waves of earth and grass, each over 300 feet in length and no more than fifteen feet high.

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Michael Heizer

Los Angeles, CA, USA

 

A 340 ton boulder sits over an entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (LACMA).

 

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Krisztián Balogh

Hungary

 

‘World Tree’ by Krisztián Balogh doesn’t quite look real in photographs, but the 32-foot land art installation was really cut into the ground and filled with water to resemble a branching river in the shape of a tree.

 

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Icy & Sot (Artist team from Brooklyn, USA)

The country of Georgia

 

A human silhouette cut into the grass in Tbilisi, Georgia by Brooklyn-based duo Icy & Sot reflects the sky in a subtle nature-based temporary art installation that makes a big impact.

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Alejandro Duran,

Mexico

 

Trash collected from beaches around the world transforms into surprisingly beautiful works of art when arranged by color, size and shape and laid out on the coastline in Sian Ka’an, Mexico. “More than creating a surreal or fantastical landscape, these installations mirror the reality of our current environmental predicament,” says the artist. 

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Unknown artists found on internet

 

Cool and accessible ideas on how to make art with things you find in nature.

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Michael McGillis

Minnesota, USA

 

Artist Michael McGillis sliced into orderly stacks of logs and then painted the cut ends purple to create a beautiful path through the Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota.

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Norm Magnusson

Rhinebeck, NY

 

Norm Magnusson finds rocks and twigs and leaves and stuff in nature, paints designs on them and then photographs them back where he found them.  He's completed nearly 200 of these pieces so far and the entire series can be seen here.

He also rakes his leaves in interesting patterns.

 

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Andy Goldsworthy

British

 

A poet with nature and one of the great artists of our time, these are some of his greatest hits.

Norm Magnusson has an art career spanning over 35 years.

He’s in the permanent collection of NY’s MoMA, The Museum of the City of New York, The New-York Historical Society, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and The Anchorage Museum of History and Art amongst many other corporate and private collections.

He’s received numerous awards and grants including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, A NYFA Fellowship, two NYSCA grants, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant and the Ulster County Award for Art in Public Places amongst many others.

As a visual artist, he’s shown in galleries and museums in New York, New Zealand, London, Paris and all over the U.S. He’s been reviewed everywhere from the NY Times to the Washington Post to the Utne Reader, Sculpture magazine, trendhunter.com, and many other national and international magazines, websites and blogs.

As a curator, he’s brought together exhibitions such as “FU”, which examined and illustrated U.S. fair use laws as they pertain to visual artists; “The Museum of Controversial Art”, which re-created some of the most controversial art through the ages; “Beautiful Nonsense”, which consists of objects and art meant to challenge the intellectual sure-footedness with which we move through our everyday lives;  “abc@WFG”, a survey of text-based art; and “Abstract Evocative”, an exhibition of abstract art at WAAM in Woodstock.

As an educator, he’s taught art to under-privileged kids in NYC and over-privileged kids in Woodstock, NY, where he created a 12-class curriculum entitled “Art that’s Changed the Way I See the World Around Me” in which artists and gallerists and rock stars and film makers and authors and academics came and spoke on that topic with visual and audio aids. Most recently, he launched a new curriculum of appreciating and creating land-based art for 5^th grade students.

For the last 11 years, on August 29, the date of its world premier in Woodstock, NY, Magnusson has produced an anniversary concert of John Cage’s 4’33” at the WAAM Museum in that town, a concert series originated to commemorate that town’s role in debuting this amazing piece of art.

A decade ago, he returned to his first creative love, acting; starring in community theater productions of plays by David Mamet and David Ives, and as Pozzo in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” He performed in the The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck’s production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer” and wrote his first ever words and images monologue “The Signs in our Lives” and performed it at the Hudson Literary Festival in 2014 and 2015. It was followed by “Swipe Right (Looking for Love in the Digital Era)” in 2017 and “Kill the Head (Losing my Self in a Zombie Movie)”, about his months working as a stand in and photo double for Bill Murray. In 2021, he wrote and performed “The Definition of Pornography”, which debuted at 11 Jane Street Art and Performance Space concurrent with his “PORNWEAVINGSEXHIBITION” of visual art. He has also appeared in numerous feature films, mostly playing a shrink or a professor.

He’s the co-founder of FISHtheMOUSEmedia, a developer of educational apps for iOS, where his “Animal Alphabet” app was widely acclaimed and honored with a prestigious Gold award from the Parents’ Choice Foundation.

He serves on the board of directors of two 501(c)3 organizations, CultureConnect and GoodJTDeeds and s the father of 3 wonderful kids, all of whom are especially talented at seeing the world around them with appreciative eyes and a grateful heart.