Pinhole Cameras

Light is part of the science core. Making working pinhole cameras from oatmeal boxes and then processing the exposed paper in real darkroom chemicals to make one-of-a-kind non-digital images is a real charge and plays to a range of scientific and artistic elements. It’s fortunate that I’m also a practicing photographer and long-time photo educator. I’ve performed pinhole workshops in schools for 30 years.

We start by turning the art room into a “camera obscura” by blacking out the windows and all other light sources. A small 1” square hole is cut in the black paper covering the windows. The room has been hung with white paper or sheets to capture the image. With the room black I welcome the students not only to the inside of a camera, but the inside of their eye. The hole is opened and students soon exclaim at being able to see an image on the walls. The questions fly and I fly them right back, directing them to discover for themselves how and why it appears.

A Pinhole Powerpoint reveals photographic history and ends with a portfolio of pinhole images ranging from pictures made in a matchbox and airplane hanger to the images made by last year’s 6th grade.

Motivated, they now build their own. We use Quaker oatmeal boxes, special tape, and other materials. The building process reveals those kids with engineering talents.

Once built they are introduced to exposure and processing (second session). The darkroom reveals the nature of chemistry. Exposing the paper/film introduces them to the scientific method as getting the right time is an experiment with control and change factors.

Once images are developed (theirs are made on paper and come out as negative images) I scan them and convert them to positive images.

Brain-Scape

With a shortened schedule to work with 6th grade I think it an obligation to send them off to middle school with a strengthened sense of self. This multi-media self-portrait project asks no more and no less of them than to look into the mirror of themselves and validate who they are at this juncture in art. We first look at how artists do that then lay out the smorgasboard of materials and they begin. This is rather my graduation present to them….and to me. For the past few years I’ve had the good fortune to have had graduating 6th graders as art students since kindergarten.

Planets

The science of planets is studied in 6th. They learn about planet composition including minerals, atmospheric gases and why they appear to have particular colors. We extend that study by having individuals choose a planet to mimic or create a new one. Either way they have to come up with a scientific description of it. This gives rise to the art elements of color and techniques for applying it. We used mostly watercolor for the planets and added salt, isopropyl alcohol, tissue dobbing and whatever else was needed for effect and then created the darker background sky with acrylic. Students later wrote about their planet as a personality.

Paper Sculpture

So what do you do when given 100+ sheets of blue and orange, 24x36”, gloss-coated, heavy paper? You make sculpture – with no waste. The paper gift was given to a class of 6th graders. Only scissors, X-acto blades and staplers were provided. Students viewed an introductory PPT of paper installation artists and then formed an action word list under the theme “Paper Manipulation.” Twist, bend, cut, fold, pop-out, etc. A short discussion of form was had and then students were turned loose to create with only one other stipulation – no paper could be wasted. After individual forms were created they were combined with others to create 3-large group forms that were hung in the 6th grade stairwell.