Aini Azidah // Lesson Idea

Name of Artist:  Aini Azidah

School: Pioneer Junior College

This lesson is suitable for students in: Secondary 3, JC1

Nature / Form / Shapes / Similarities / Organic

How can students learn to observe forms found in our natural surroundings and apply substitution (from the creative thinking strategy, S.C.A.M.P.E.R.)

Objective/ Instructions

Students will:

• Visit a garden, park or nature reserve near the school. See https://www.nparks.gov.sg/
• React, respond, research and reflect to forms found in local flora
• Sketch and depict segments of flowers from direct observation
  • Encourage students to exercise close observation on interesting looking plants (e.g. Heliconias and other tropical plants)
  • (Extension) students produce a silhouette drawing of their chosen flower.

• Draw similarities between the form of the chosen flower to parts of the human body
• Photograph flowers using macro lenses
•  Explore concepts in Surrealism, such as the term “the recognizable yet unfamiliar”. (Use Salvador Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo)
• Participate in critique sessions at intervals, such as during ideation, Marquette-making-phase and after completing the artworks. Students take turns to take and give feedback on their progress, challenges and successes.
• (Extension) Curate and exhibit student works. Refer to Marc Quinn’s Garden (an impossible garden) for ideas.

Elegant art task(s):

Simulacra

1.    Produce an uncanny digital image that shows a flower, but with its parts substituted with something else (e.g. human body parts, surface texture of other objects). 

2.    Produce an organic-shaped sculpture that combines a human figure and flowers (part human, part flora).