Studio Art with Ms. Hopenwasser: Mixed Media Collage Inspired by Music

Music is a powerful way to convey emotion, tell a story or create an imaginary world that transports us to another place. I love to integrate music into the art making process in variety of ways. Whether it serves as a backdrop to create a mood in the classroom or the song itself is used to inspire a painting or drawing; music touches us all and is a great way to connect with students of all ages. Music can reveal feelings and emotions that are sometimes difficult to put into words and capture poetic sentiments that paint a picture. Teens go through so many changes and face a lot of pressure socially, academically and sometimes struggle to find their identity or express who they are inside. This collage project is conceptual and personal and a great way to evoke personal expression. Students choose a song (it can be a poem or story too) that they want to depict in a 2-D collage that integrates text and image to create a final, unified artwork. This project is a great way to get to know your students on a more intimate level and can reveal much about what is going on inside that student. This project is challenging because not only do they have to integrate text into their composition they have to choose materials wisely and use the elements of art to make connections between their components.

The basic steps for this project are:

Students pick a song (it can be a poem or story too) that they are connected to in some way. The song should not be offensive or contain explicit lyrics. Use your discretion as a teacher for what is appropriate depending on your setting.
Next, have students print out and write about the lyrics they choose in their sketchbook. Some thought provoking/brainstorming questions to get the creative juices flowing include:

Who or what is the song about?
What do you associate with this genre of music?
What images come to mind when you read the words to this song?
What images come to mind when you hear the music/melody to this song?
What is the artist/song trying to convey?
What mood is created by this song/music?
What colors come to mind when you hear this song?
What kind of marks/lines/shapes do you associate when you hear this song?
Why do you like this song?
How can you use color to capture the emotion in the song?
What story does this song tell?

Now, students can begin to storyboard, draw pictures, and collect images to start the project. Here is a must have for starting the project–Students must create an original substrate or background to jump start their collage. This means they create a background that has color(s), texture(s), and/or shapes instead of just starting with a white piece of paper for the background. This is a whole little mini project in itself and forces students to create something that relates to the song but is abstract or more of a design that they will build on for their collage.

I like to work along side students to demonstrate the steps and process and emphasize how to integrate the elements, blur edges and layer the images and text. The computer can be a great way to print text and create unique images using image editing software. Below are some examples of high school Studio Art 1 students who completed the project.