Classroom activities
Lesson One
I will be looking at the 4 sculptures using the 4 different looking at art strategies-one per sculpture with the students.
Hagar
For this piece, I will us the Compare and Contrast method, in conjunction with Hiram Powers' The Greek Slave, 1851, in the Yale British Art Center. Students will work in pairs to fill out a Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting the two works.
The Old Arrowmaker and his Daughter
Using Connotations and Denotations, using a graphic organizer, the students will work individually and then share their observations with the others at their table. Then as a group we will review the graphic organizer, allowing students to add to their work.
Forever Free
I will have the students look at this sculpture using VST as a whole group discussion. Using the three broad questions, I will guide them, through questioning, to consider each of the questions as specifically as we can. I will have the students take notes and use the notes to create a sketchbook page.
The Death of Cleopatra
I will actually explore this work as a bridge between Lesson One and Lesson Two. For this sculpture, I will have the students use the Feldman's Method of Art Criticism. Since the students have used this method before, I will have them develop questions that could be asked for each of the steps. By the students thinking about what questions would be relevant, I hope they would be considering the answers to the questions and thus looking deeper.
Lesson Two
In this lesson, the students will write an autobiography of The Death of Cleopatra. They will research the facts of what happened to the sculpture and then use that information to create a timeline, which will inform their writing. During the class period, Edmonia's biography, the context in which she was working and an overview of her artwork will be presented.
Lesson Three
As a culminating studio project, I will share three contemporary artists, exploring how their personal identity and context influences their work. The students will then design a medallion that will reflect their own identity and their place and space, in Richmond, VA in 2014. The medallions will carve into plaster by the students and then, facilitated by myself, will be cast-using pewter. I have students carve the medallion and then one by one, they will come to the pewter casting station, where they will don fireproof gloves and eye protection. They hold the ladle and I use the blowtorch to melt the pewter. On my say, they pour the molten pewter into their model. It cools rapidly and within a few minutes, is ready to be removed. Students then use small files to clean the edges. There are many wonderful books and websites on pewter casting, both how to do it and tips to be successful while teaching it to students.
Field Trips
While teaching this unit, I hope to take my students on several field trips. While focusing on Edmonia Lewis, I want to also have the students explore a local Neoclassical sculptor, Edward V. Valentine, and a work by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Shaw Memorial. By looking at Valentine, we can take a field trip to the Valentine Museum, which has his art studio. It is one of only four surviving 19 th century sculptor studios and is open to the public. By visiting his studio, the students will have a unique opportunity to see how a Neoclassical artist of that time period worked. Since we take an annual trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, we can also see the Shaw Memorial model, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, which was done in 1897. During the trip to DC, I plan on adding the Smithsonian American Museum of Art to the itinerary. At this museum, there are eight sculptures by Edmonia, although not all on display. The sculptures are Hagar, Old Arrowmaker, Poor Cupid, Moses, Young Octavian, The Death of Cleopatra and Anna Quincy Waterson.
Marilyn Richardson
November 15, 2016 at 4:27 pmMore Info About Edmonia Lewis
Google: Edmonia Lewis, Marilyn Richardson for more information on Lewis's life, career, and sculpture
Kirsten Pai Buick
October 28, 2022 at 8:42 pmoversimplification of my argument
I read this with great pleasure and interest. I think that this is a wonderful way to introduce students to Lewis’s work and to inspire other curiosities and a true model for exploration. However, my work on Lewis is vastly oversimplified. Of course her identity played a role in her work. She referenced it all the time—whether it was through Longfellow or her Catholicism or her figures based on enslavement, the Bible, history, etc. But those “identifications” (a more fluid way of understanding the seeming coherence of “identity”) are based on distances—Longfellow in lieu of direct references to her childhood; enslaved people though she was never enslaved. Lewis manipulated those identities that people could only narrowly comprehend. The author states: “This book, which began as a dissertation, argues that her work is more a reflection of the time period than her personal identity. Despite this being the most recent published work, I am not going to focus on the author's point of view. While certainly Edmonia Lewis' art was reflective of the context in which she was working, one cannot discount the impact her personal identity had on her subject choice and her work.” I was not arguing that her context was more important than her personal identity. My point was that her “personal identity” was never revealed by her. She used her deep understanding of context to make her dreams come true despite the limitations that the era set for her.
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