International Dot Day!

Today is International Dot Day, created by Peter Reynolds, the author of The Dot. There are 115 countries and 3,970,708 people celebrating this day today! Byam students and I are especially excited about this project because Peter Reynolds grew up in Chelmsford and even graduated from Chelmsford High School!

In art class, we read The Dot and each grade made their own different dots. Kindergarten learned about using primary color to draw dots, first grade learned how to use dot markers, second grade painted their dots with watercolors, third grade made large dot mandalas, and fourth grade made dot magnets. Here are some pictures of our dot day artwork below!

Every student at Byam will "Make their Mark" on this large poster. So far there are about 7 classes. I will update our large Byam dot when everyone has had a chance to make their mark!

How will you make your mark and inspire others today?

Welcome Back!

Welcome back everyone! I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing summer. It has been so nice to see excited and familiar faces at Byam today.

While I was not at Byam this summer, I stayed busy by taking graduate classes at Framingham State University. In July I took an Encaustic Painting class. We used a hot plate (shown below) and wax pigment to paint with. This was difficult because once the paint brushes left the hot surface with the wax pigment, you had to act quickly and make a mark on your board because the wax dried in about 5 seconds.

Here are some paintings I made during the course!

This summer I also visited a few museums and taught several classes at the Danforth Art Museum. Here are some different projects we made below. I am looking forward to bringing some of these new ideas and techniques to Byam this year.