Monster Makers Art Camp: Students will learn about animals and plants that are adapted to live in particular environments around the world; they will create new amalgam creatures (Monsters!) with different animal and plant characteristics and an environment their creature can live in.
| Materials & Equipment | |
| Polymer clay Clay tools — rollers, pins, cutters, awls Clay adhesive Aluminum Foil Toaster oven, power source | Drawing materials Sketchbook materials — paper, awls, thread, needles Extra paper for dioramas Laptops Slidesho, access to internet |
Skills: research, discussion, sketching, polymer clay handbuilding, use of clay tools, presentation of ideas, reasoning, connection of researched ideas into a final product.
Get the Monster Makers lesson plan here (link)
Other versions of Monster Makers:
- The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR (2021)
- Coos Bay Public Library, Coos Bay, OR (1-day workshop coming Winter 2022)
I love this monster makers camp, and I was so excited to be invited in the summer of 2022 to visit The Annex Charter School in Ontario, OR and make some monsters with students as part of their amazing STEAM month! Ontario is right on the Oregon-Idaho border, directly on the other side of the state from where I live in the Willamette Valley. Located in the Snake River Plain ecoregion, The Annex Charter School is in a completely different environment from what I’m used to.
My visit to Ontario was organized with Art Center East’s Artists in Rural Schools Program made possible in part by The Reser Family Foundation, Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation, and Lamb Foundation. Art Center East is an arts organization serving Eastern Oregon with all kinds of amazing art opportunities including gallery exhibits, creative community events, an art shop, and connecting artists with rural schools.
See more about Art Center East and the work they do at artcentereast.org
With a whole week for our camp, we had lots of time to work on developing sketching skills, research, and claywork. Each day of the camp and each new project lead directly into the next, so that students could connect ideas and practices throughout the week.
Of course, we started off with sketchbook making! We made the classic pamphlet style binding for simple sketchbooks that students would collect ideas in by drawing and writing over the entire camp.
We took our sketchbooks outside to draw plants and objects we could find in the school playground, starting with basic shapes and adding details to our sketches.
For this iteration of Monster Makers, I did some extra research to make the information accessible to the students specific to their home and local environment. I created an interactive slideshow with Google Slides, that students used to learn about animals from different ecologies, including the Snake River Plain ecoregion.
Students used laptops and worked together in pairs or groups to learn about animals and adaptations they have developed to thrive in their environments. We discussed what we observed and students took notes and sketched different kinds of animals in their sketchbooks.
The notes and sketches students made in their books informed their designs for clay creatures. We practiced polymer clay techniques, starting with simple forms and adding pieces or using tools to shape their creatures.
While we waited for the clay to bake and cool, students also created environment dioramas, using cut paper and drawing to make 3D popup scenes for their creatures to inhabit.
At the end of the week, students shared their work with family and friends in the community in an Open House hosted by the school to showcase all the cool things students made during STEAM camp. There was honestly a lot of cool stuff, including a bridge build challenge, flying things, and slime (who doesn’t love SLIME?!)
Check out some of the local media about The Annex Charter School’s STEAM Open House:
This camp was filled with so much creative thinking and surprising creations from students, and I also got to learn a lot about an ecological environment I didn’t know much about (which I LOVE). Thanks again to Art Center East for helping put this camp together and connecting me with such a wonderful community and school!
Want to bring Monster Makers to your school or community? Contact me or your local arts organization today!
See other versions of Monster Makers:
- The Arts Center, Corvallis, OR (2021)
- Coos Bay Public Library, Coos Bay, OR (1-day workshop coming Winter 2022)
Monster Makers Residency Plan by Jen Hernandez Art LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://jenhernandezart.com/2022/06/27/monster-makers-summer-2022/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://jenhernandezart.com/about/.
