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Cultural Cuisine

 

Grade/s: High school Level 1

Time Required: 10 periods of 45 minutes

Enduring Idea: Food

Unit Title: Cultural Cuisine

Key Concept: Culture

Unit Designer: Jillian Keyes

Essential Question: What kinds of foods are associated with different cultures or communities?

 

Unit Description: This lesson explores the characteristics of different cultures by the types of food they are known for. The students will each get their own city and create a piece of art based on their findings through research.

 

Outline of Class Meetings:

Day 1: Introduction with visual exemplars, student research

Day 2: Student research

Day 3: Ceramics demonstration, preliminary sketches, studio

Day 4: Studio

Day 5: Studio

Day 6: Studio

Day 7: Studio, finishing with clay

Day 8: Studio, bisque

Day 9: Studio, glazing

Day 10: Presentation of sculptures, review

 

NCCAS Art:

  • VAH1-1.4: The students will apply materials, techniques, and processes with skill, confidence, and sensitivity sufficient to make his or her intentions observable in the artwork that he or she creates.

  • VAH1-2.2: The students will create works of visual art that use the elements and principles of design and other compositional strategies.

  • VAH1-3.1: The students will explore the sources of the subject matter and the ideas in a variety of works of visual art.

 

Learning Outcomes:

  1. The students will conduct research on the city or community they are given in class

  2. The students will create a 3-dimensional ceramic representation of their food choice that pertains to their given city or area.

  3. The students will demonstrate what they learn about ceramic hand building and glazing.

  4. The students will present their artworks to the class and be able to explain their food choices.

 

Artists: The artists that will be used as visual exemplars in this lesson are Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen, and Carmen Lomas Garza. Claes Oldenburg is a sculpture and installation artist born in 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden. Coosje van Bruggen is also a sculpture and installation artist born in 1942 in Groningen, the Netherlands. Oldenburg and van Bruggen were married in 1977 and are well known for Spoonbridge and Cherry, a sculpture of a large spoon and cherry located in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in Minnesota. This sculpture is the main inspiration for this lesson on culture because it is a 3-dimensional piece that has a place in a certain area and community. The second artist, Carmen Lomas Garza, is a Mexican American painter born in 1948 in Kingsville, Texas. Garza’s artwork is strongly influenced by her family and heritage. Her paintings focus on her happy childhood memories of her family and community participating in Mexican American activities. The examples I chose from Carmen Lomas Garza are Tamalada and Empanadas. These paintings depict her family working together to make food that is special to their Mexican American culture. I decided to use these paintings because they are great examples of a specific culture and what food they make and have for their family gatherings and celebrations.

 

Images:

Materials:

  • Earthenware clay

  • Kiln

  • Needle tools

  • Wire tools

  • Sure forms

  • Wooden ribs

  • Slip

  • Various ceramic tools for texture

  • Various glazes

  • Cups for water and slip

  • Paint brushes

  • Paper towels

  • Newspaper for tables

  • Plastic bags

  • Spray bottle for water

 

Day Breakdown:

Day One:

  1. The teacher will introduce the lesson with a PowerPoint that includes the description of the lesson, the objectives, and visual exemplars.

  2. The teacher will pass around a container filled with a selection of different cities/ communities and the students will blindly choose one of them.

  3. The students will take their selection and begin their research to find what food is special to that particular city/ community.

Day Two:

  1. The students will continue their research and choose a food they want to create for their sculpture.

Day Three:

  1. The teacher will demonstrate the techniques of ceramic hand building using the materials needed.

  2. The students will sketch and plan how they want to create their choice of food.

  3. The teacher will start to distribute clay to the students based on the development of their sketches.

  4. The students will begin constructing their sculptures.

  5. The students will clean up their area and put their sculptures in a designated area covered in plastic.

Day Four:

  1. The students will continue work on their sculptures.

Day Five:

  1. The students will continue work on their sculptures.

Day Six:

  1. The students will continue work on their sculptures.

Day Seven:

  1. The students will continue and start finishing up work on their sculptures.

  2. The students who have finished will leave their sculpture uncovered to dry.

Day Eight:

  1. The students will finish their sculptures and the teacher will load them for bisque.

Day Nine:

  1. The students will glaze their sculptures.

Day Ten:

  1. The students will present their sculptures and briefly explain their research findings and why they chose what they chose.

  2. The teacher will assess the students with a summative rubric.

 

Motivator: Music playing during class

 

Vocabulary:

  • Ceramics

  • Hand building

  • Culture

  • Scoring

  • Slipping

  • Needle tool

  • Wire tool

  • Sure form

  • Leather hard

  • Bone dry

  • Bisque

  • Kiln

  • Glaze

 

Resources:

 

Assessment: Formative checklist (for teacher observation only), Summative Rubric

 

Formative Checklist (Each day):

  • The student arrives prepared and promptly start working

  • The student follows classroom and safety guidelines

  • The student works efficiently and stays on task

 

Summative Rubric:

Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen

Empanadas by Carmen Lomas Garza

Tamalada by Carmen Lomas Garza

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© 2015 by Jillian Keyes.

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