Kara Dunne
College Course: Prinstaformance
This course will combine contemporary printmaking techniques with other artistic practices beyond the two-dimensional. Silkscreen will be used as a technique for printing the multiple, but also as a media that can be used in tandem with installation and performance. Students will learn the various silk-screening techniques and styles, while addressing the issues of using the printed medium as a way to incorporate the third dimension and transform a space. In truth, the printed image can be a vehicle, a catalyst, to produce bigger things. We will explore how to get into creating these ‘bigger’ things. Simple performance techniques/exercises will also be introduced as a way to bring a time-based element into a piece.
Using roller skates as a way of printing (wheels have been carved with chain relief), the student takes out images of politicians from suitcase and rolls chain imagery over them with skates and ink.
Using roller skates as a way of printing (wheels have been carved with chain relief), the student takes out images of politicians from suitcase and rolls chain imagery over them with skates and ink.
Project: Instacase
Demonstrate understanding of how to incorporate printmaking and installation into a small portable space (suitcase). The suitcase itself can be the art piece that incorporates printmaking and is used in performance, or the suitcase may simply be the vessel for the "prinstaformance" and hold items used to build or set up the installation outside suitcase after opening.
Inspired by the current “Heat or Eat” dilemma, a recurring economic problem throughout history, the student stands in a screen printed kitchen wearing winter gear. She attempts then attempts to make brownies. There is a screen printed cardboard oven, curtains and wallpaper. One wall has wallpaper with imagery of ‘Heat”: matches and heaters.
The other wall has wallpaper and curtains with imagery of “Eat”: eggs and bread.
images include photos of her family
Inspired by the current “Heat or Eat” dilemma, a recurring economic problem throughout history, the student stands in a screen printed kitchen wearing winter gear. She attempts then attempts to make brownies. There is a screen printed cardboard oven, curtains and wallpaper. One wall has wallpaper with imagery of ‘Heat”: matches and heaters.
FINAL PROJECT: Prinstaformulation
Use the cumulative experience from this course (the smaller exercises involving screen printing and performance as well as the instacase assignment) and create a final large scale, non-portable installation that incorporates screen printing and performance.
College Courses: Drawing I
Color
Student Feedback
‘Kara is so enthusiastic it really rubs off on you. She is a great instructor.’
‘Really dedicated, available. Willing to share and to interact.’
‘Kara was energetic…
I liked that she pushed us as
artists to be extroverted and to be conscious of every aspect of display…’
‘always upbeat and enthusiastic. Also, she gave informative presentations and referred relevant artists to students.’
‘I liked being emailed feedback, more direct concentration of a reflection…’
‘Kara planned every class ahead, and she encouraged us to discover new experiences we never did before…she helped us to be more open minded…’
‘ Kara is a really excitable and fun teacher. She gets everyone riled up to start the project. She also offers good advice in crits and individual meetings.’
‘Always had good and imaginative ideas for critiques/suggestions. Also, I could feel when she wanted something more so I could gauge where improvement was needed with everyone’s work.’
Printmaking
grades 10-12
year long course
3 hrs/wk
This is often the first art class taken by seniors. At this point they have not learned basic design fundamentals, and with these projects they are introduced to the importance of good composition and what makes an artwork visually interesting to look at.
Techniques Covered:
Relief, Etching, Screen-printing
calendar page
The students work collaboratively as a class to create a set of calendar pages for the upcoming year, to be distributed to at least 50 people in the school. This is their first screen printing assignment, and they are introduced to the concept of taking a finished drawing and separating the layers of color from that design for the printing process.
Strengthen creativity and explore printmaking as a means of personal expression.
Understand the role of the multiple throughout history in disseminating printed matter to the masses and how prints can still contribute to society today.
Be able to speak knowledgeably about what printmaking is. When looking at a work of art on paper, students will be able to differentiate between the printmaking techniques used.
ULTIMATE
LEARNING OUTCOMES
for my
printmaking
students
passion print
-Explore printmaking as a means of personal expression.
Students will be able to communicate what they are passionate about effectively for distribution. Their idea must be visually appealing as well as understandable in regards to getting what they believe is important and needs to be said across to an unpredicted audience.
from collage to print
- creating something surreal
Practice letting go of the worry of having to come up with an idea, and experiment with collage in order to stimulate creativity in design.
Demonstrate understanding of a visually successful composition.
Students are given a blank sheet of paper. Their assignment is to cut out thirty different pictures from magazines. After collecting their images, they are instructed to give one cut out from their collection to each of their peers. Each student arranges their cut outs on their paper in five different ways (test compositions), taking a photo each time. They are to use at least six cut outs given to them by their peers in these test compositions. After reviewing their photos, they choose the one collage composition that they would like draw from in order to make it into a screenprint.
etching: suite of prints
Explore what it is like to create multiple prints that relate to each other in underlying theme or idea.
Students will design a series of small etchings that are somehow related to each other (a suite of prints)
Understand the dry point process of incising a line into a plate using an etching needle and cross hatching lines in order to create darker values.
Understand how to ink the plate cleanly and print using an etching press.
Reduction Relief Print
Understand how to use one linoleum block for three different layers of color.
Successfully carve away to the next layer of the printed design.
Register the print correctly and ink and print neatly.
Block Printed Fabric Repeats
Understand and demonstrate how to create a single element for a fabric repeat design, carve the block for that design, print block first on to paper to practice the measured pattern repeat, then print onto fabric. Once two pieces of fabric have been printed (one fabric piece has a rainbow roll, the other is printed using a single color), the students sew the pieces together on a sewing machine in order to make pillows.
Other screenprints
Ceramics
(selected projects)
SHOES
Students bring in a shoe. Use the recently practiced techniques of pinching, coiling and slab construction to build a shoe that resembles their real shoe as accurately as possible. This project is an exercise in ‘seeing’ and the students strengthen their observational skills during the time spent with their shoe.
Further develop their confidence with clay as a material that can be cut, pushed, pinched, scraped, dug in to, poked and carved in order to achieve desired results.
Understand how a three dimensional form can be deconstructed into two dimensional pieces.
Demonstrate that those two dimensional shapes can be reconstructed into the original form with a little extra manipulation.
Learn how apparel and footwear are made from patterns.
TEAPOTS
Understand the basic principles of design with respect to ceramics.
Consider the basic functional elements of a teapot in an overall design: body, spout, handle, and from there push these functional elements and create a teapot that is truly unique in desired theme or vision.
BUSTS
Understand how the face, head and shoulders of the human bust is formed three-dimensionally using basic identifiable shapes.
Demonstrate how to add and subtract clay in order to create realistic features and correct proportions.
8th Grade Drawing
Drawing the Face
After learning the difference between grades of graphite pencils with a variety of shading exercises, the students choose a picture of themselves or a picture of a celebrity to draw and shade. A grid system was used for the outline of facial features.
Narrative Portraits
After learning how to use colored pencils to create three-dimensionality in a drawing, students chose a specific person to draw and incorporate them into a narrative within the colored pencil composition.
Action Verb Drawings
Understand scale and balance of objects within a composition using magazine cut outs. All cut outs found for the composition relate to each other based on a chosen action verb.
Once magazine cut-outs are arranged, they are used as a source to draw from on another sheet of paper.
Demonstrate how to use colored pencils to render an object in the third dimension.
Beginning Drawing
grades 10-12
semester long course
3 hrs/wk
Still Lifes
All white objects are set up on a table.
Students will learn spatial awareness
and be able to differentiate between white objects on the table, adjusting their values accordingly using graphite pencils.
Render correct proportions and size relationships between objects. Shade a smooth transition from light to dark with layering of pencils.
Cross Hatching
Demonstrate how to render value in a drawing using the cross-hatching method.
Understand the difference between graphite pencils from 6H to 6B and how best to use them during the cross-hatching process.
Enlarging an Image
Understand and demonstrate how to use the grid system in order to take a smaller source image and make it a large scale drawing at least four times its original size.
Understand the difference in grades of graphite pencils, using H pencils and B pencils together to create layers of value to building up the drawing's three-dimensionality.
Drawing the Face
Understand the basic contour lines of the face and the proportions of facial features with the help of a transparency sheet that outlines the eyes, nose and mouth; use the transparency as a measurement reference tool as to where features are situated on the face.
Understand the difference between graphite pencils from 6H to 6B and how to use proper pressure with the pencils and shade evenly and neatly.
Demonstrate how to layer different graphite pencils in order to achieve successful three-dimensionality.