Curriculum Connections for the Mobile Residency Project

Visual Art: Students will explore pattern, color, balance, rhythm, symmetry and asymmetry, positive and negative space, spatial relationships (overlapping, size, proportion and placement), and organic and geometric space, thus increasing their visual literacy and art vocabulary. Working abstractly allows students to compare abstract and realistic works of art. Moreover, the residency provides students with an understanding of site-specific work and the role of public art.

Language Arts: The residency and the resulting mobile/sculpture is an ideal stimulus for writing. During the residency, students can write descriptively about their experiences in a journal or report on their experiences for class or school publications. Students can write poetry inspired by the sculpture and publish a book of class poems, illustrations, or photos. Students can script and film a video documentary of the project. Students can also name the sculpture.

Music and Dance (Movement): The residency can inspire students to express through music the movement of the mobile/sculpture: its rhythm, dynamic, and tempo. Students can research music or compose their own. Similarly, students of dance and movement can create a piece inspired by the sculpture's movement.

Math and Science: The principle of balance is a rich springboard for mathematical analysis: greater than and lesser than, balanced equations, and comparing and contrasting weight and materials. The selection of appropriate materials encourages analytical thinking, and the mobile/sculpture's construction requires calculation and physics. The residency provides students with a hands-on understanding of many abstract notions. This learning can be extended by having students design and build their own smaller mobile/sculptures, calculating all weights and measurements.

Social Studies: The sculpture can be based on a major idea central to the school or to a class's curriculum. Students will have the opportunity to see how an idea finds abstract expression through a work of art. For example, fourth graders in Washington, DC worked to capture the spirit of immigration in a standing mobile.

Social and Interpersonal Skills: The sculpture itself is a model of many parts working as a whole. Students involved in the residency must collaborate with Mr. Reese and with each other. Decisions must be made, consensus must be reached, and skills are tested and stretched. The final product is a testament to teamwork.