Visiting Artist Liliana Rodriguez

Thanks to the support of the Ontario Arts Council as well as the generous funding from the Dewson parent council, Kindergarten classes were given four days during this entire school year to work with visiting artist Liliana Rodriguez.

Liliana is a Colombian-born, Toronto-based artist. She has a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Hunter College in New York City, as well as a teaching degree. Liliana has received awards from the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. She has led workshops for TDSB elementary schools for the past six years and developed art programming for the City of Toronto Parks and Recreation. Liliana has over twelve years of experience teaching creative arts to children and is also a former Dewson parent.

Liliana’s theme for this year’s project involved an exploration of shapes. After having students trace all of the triangles they could find in a copy of Lawren Harris’s Icebergs, Davis Strait, 1930, students used pre-cut triangles to form their own landscapes and then sprayed their picture with yellow food colouring. The cut triangles were then carefully lifted revealing triangles in the negative space. The cut out triangles were then arranged in a different configuration and the whole page was sprayed again with blue food colouring. Students saw how yellow and blue make green and when the cut out triangles were removed and then positioned for a third time followed by a spraying of red food colouring, they saw how blue and red make purple.

Liliana then shared a wonderful book entitled Museum Shapes by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The intent of this book was to have students recognize 10 different geometric shapes as depicted in famous works of art. It was fun to find the shapes in such beautiful and interesting paintings and to see some of the works of art owned by the museum.

Liliana then had students use small, medium and large circles to create a figure. With the abundance of snow this winter and a great many stories about snow read to them, many of Team 3’s artists chose to make snow people. Students painted over their pictures with a silk screen and then transferred the circles they had taped on to another sheet so that they would have a stencilling effect.

For Liliana’s final print making project, students were shown five basic types of lines including, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, zigzag and squiggly lines. The artists then chose one type of line and etched it several times on a piece of Styrofoam in order to create a pattern. This printed pattern will then be painted over and stamped on a piece of paper as a starting point to create animal shapes.

We are so grateful to Liliana for teaching us about shapes, patterns and lines as well as for all of the opportunities to practise print making. More than one student commented on what a nice teacher Liliana is when told that she would be the teacher for the day when I had to be away for various literacy and numeracy workshops. Thank you so much Liliana!