Art Masterpiece: the Old Checkered House in Winter, Grandma Moses

Art Masterpiece: The Old Checkered House in Winter, Grandma Moses

Keywords: Detail, Line, Shape, Pattern

Grade(s): Kindergarten – First Grade

Activity: A collaborative wall mural to depict the season of the year.

About the Artist:

• Anna Mary Robertson Moses was born in 1860 in Greenwich, New York. • Later in life the press dubbed her as “Grandma Moses” and the nickname stuck. • At age 12 she started working as a live-in housekeeper. One of the families she worked for noticed her appreciation for their Courier and Ives art prints. In kindness, they gifted her with art materials such as crayons and chalk. • She was inspired to paint from taking art lessons at school. She would use lemon and grape juice to make colors for her “landscapes”. Other natural material she used included: ochre, flour paste and sawdust. • At age 27 she married a man who also worked at the same farm as Anna. Together they built their life together working on four different farms. They had five children. • To supplement the family income, Grandma Moses sold homemade potato chips and churned butter from the milk of a cow that she had saved money for. With time and hard work the couple bought their own farm. • Grandma Moses created embroidered pictures of yarn and quilts for her friends and family. At age 76, she developed arthritis, which made embroidery painful. Her sister, Celestia, suggested painting.

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

• Grandma Moses began painting in her late 70’s and over the next three decade created over 1500 canvases. • For her 100th birthday the NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller named the day “ Grandma Moses Day”. • Grandma Moses died in 1961 at 101 years old.

About the Artwork:

The artwork, “The Old Checkered House in Winter” Grandma Moses captures the excitement of the winter’s first snow. Originally purchased in the 1940’s for $10; it later appraised in 2004 for $60,000. Her paintings were simple and realistic in style. She worked to portray the simple farm life and rural countryside that she knew and loved.

Artist Quote: “I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”

Possible Questions: 1. Begin by asking the students to take a good look at the artwork. Ask them to imagine themselves hiding somewhere in the scene. Together start building a story based on what the students are experiencing as they imagine themselves in the artwork. 2. What do they see? Look for the DETAILS. 3. Do the people look like people do today? Why not? (clothing ) 4. Do the people look happy or sad? How do you know? ( expressions) 5. Imagine what they would hear? ( horses, snow crunching under feet, people chatting) 6. How do they feel? Is it cold? Are they feeling excited to be a part of the fun? 7. What season does this picture show? How do you know? ( snow, people bundled up in coats and hats) 8. What month during the year might this be? 9. Does the snow look fresh? (Yes, very little tracks, snow on the trees)

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

10. Look for different types of SHAPES and LINES ( straight, curvy, diagonal) 11. Find PATTERNS. (Checkerboard, fence line, windows, brickwork around front door, upstairs porch railing).

Activity: A Collaborative Wall Mural - Season of the Year

Students will work to create a collaborative wall mural with a scene depicting the current season of the school year. Each student will build a house using simple shapes out of construction paper. As they add their house to the wall mural other features can be added for interest to create the desired seasonal setting. ( Fall, Winter, Summer, Spring)

Materials Needed:

• Rectangles out of construction paper. 1/student. (Base the size on the amount of room you have for wall space. The larger the better. ) • Triangle shapes. 1/student (Size these to match the short side of the rectangle.)

Suggested 2 piece per paper • Seasonal add-ons. o Die-cuts work great. Check your school’s workroom for an assortment of shapes. (Leaf shape, flowers, snowflakes, trees, horses, cars, trucks, etc) - The IRC also has a large collection of die-cuts. o Cotton balls for snow. Etc.

o Sample of Die-cuts

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

• Assorted paper scraps. • Glue sticks. • Scissors. • Butcher paper to build a background for the wall mural.

IN advance of the lesson: Assemble the background for the wall mural. Keep it simple but add either a white or green contoured ground to the blue paper. You can paint clouds in the sky, a sun, some trees, etc. The idea is to give the students a starting scene that they can add their house and other details to it. See photos attached for ideas.

Assemble 3-4 expanses of back ground so that students can be divided into small groups and assigned to a certain section. This will allow students to work simultaneously and experience the sense of collaborating to build their scene together.

Afterward these expanses will be hung together to create one large mural.

Process:

1. Show the students the prepared back-ground for the wall mural. Explain that they will each build a house to add to that background. After they add their house they can add other details to the scene to help show the season. 2. Take another look at the art print “CHECKERED HOUSE”. Point out the simple shapes used to make this simple house. What shapes do they see? (Mainly rectangles and squares and triangles.) 3. Hand out the rectangle shape and the triangle shape. Ask students to put the shapes together to make a house shape. Check everyone’s position. Once approved students can glue the two together. 4. Next, using paper scraps students can cut shapes to add doors and windows to their house.

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

5. Details are fun. What else can they think of adding to their house? Consider a chimney, a wreath on the door, a flower in a pot, curtains in the window, etc. ***Have them add at least one detail to their HOUSE. 6. When finished they can glue their home onto one of the background sections.

7. Once everyone has added their house to the butcher paper students are to work as a small group to add other details to make the scene depict the season of the year that they are working to showcase. Have each student add at least ONE extra detail feature. ( a die-cut of a car, tree, etc.) They can keep working at adding details until you run out of time or the mural becomes full. 8. Afterwards, these murals are to be hung together to create one long wall mural. Art guides may want choose to add a few details to bring the scene into completion.

Display and Enjoy!

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

Using Classroom Document camera you may show these visuals to help with instruction.

Step 1: Glue Roof Step 2: Add Door & windows

Step 3: Add at least one other detail

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

“Winter”

“Spring”

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

“Autumn”

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA

The artwork, “The Old Checkered House in Winter” by Grandma Moses captures the excitement of the winter’s first snow. Her paintings were simple and realistic in style. She worked to portray the simple farm life and rural countryside that she knew and loved. Today in Art Masterpiece students created a collaborative wall mural. They studied how shape, pattern and details create an interesting yet simple landscape.

Chandler Unified School District Art Masterpiece Program, Chandler, Arizona, USA