THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
An abstract art thinking activity
Throughout time and across cultures, people have used art to convey complex feelings and emotions.
Maria Bowman, Intangible Sculpture: Passion, 2025
Overview
Lesson Summary / Rationale:
As students grow in the education system, an emphasis is placed on photo-realistic and representative art. Many struggle in finding meaning in artworks that don’t convey it from the start, and struggle even more-so in creating a non-representative piece. This activity is meant to help students become more comfortable looking and deciphering abstract art, in taking representative objects and breaking them down, and to begin to push them towards making non-representative sculptures to capture an intangible word.
Artworks, Artists, and/or Artifacts:
Alma Thomas was a painter who drew much of her inspirations from the natural world and outer space. This piece, titled Blast Off (1970), is heavily inspired by the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. The shapes, line direction, and color can all be clues to what the painting was inspired by, allowing the students to begin to understand how they can take a representative idea and break it down to make an abstract piece.
Key Concepts:
A deeper understanding can come from discussion and collaboration with others, a chance to understand someone else’s perspective on a subject.
Abstract art is a conversation, artist and viewer must respond to the piece and can reflect on their responses.
Every person sees and understands the world differently, how one person may interpret a piece, someone else can interpret something else entirely.
Essential Questions:
How can artists collaborate to further understand a subject?
What can artists learn from their responses to non-representational art?
How does their responses and reactions reflect how they perceive the world?
Standards
National Standards:
VA:Cr1.1Ia - Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Enduring Understanding: Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed
Essential Questions: What conditions, attitudes, and behaviors support creativity and innovative thinking? What factors prevent or encourage people to take creative risks? How does collaboration expand the creative process?
This project pushes the students’ outside of the proverbial box, they are working with an art style many of them don’t have experience with nor are accustomed to thinking abstractly. These new and uncomfortable ideas may prevent them from taking creative risks, but through discussion and a collaborative activity, they may see abstract art in a slightly different light and be more willing to take risks.
VA:Re7.1.Ia - Perceive and analyze artistic work
Enduring Understanding: Individual Aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments
Essential Questions: How do life experiences influence the way you relate to art? How does learning about art impact how we perceive the world? What can we learn from our responses to art?
Art is a conversation between artist, piece, and viewer. While there may be a point the artist is trying to convey, the viewer can interpret differently based off their own life experiences. The students will be asked to look and analyze both the works of others and their own.
Objectives:
Students will modify their sketches from representational to something more abstract.
Students will interpret works of art made by themselves and others and find personal meaning and value.
Students will discuss and collaborate to further their understandings of abstract art.
Assessment:
Formative Assessment: Through discussion and observation of student groups and sketches, the students’ understanding will be evaluated.
Instructional Procedures
Day 1
Motivation/Engagement/Development:
Students will begin class with an activity meant to warm their brains up in looking at non-representational objects. They will be asked if any of them tried to find shapes, stories, or images in clouds, and will be asked to describe what they see in the images. The first few images are obviously representational, but the clouds become more natural forcing them to think and get creative with what they may see. The human brain wants to find patterns and recognizable things, and in pushing the students to look and think, they may find inspiration develop their creativity.
The second part of the activity is a guessing game for the students. They will first be shown an abstracted and broken down version of the image, and see if they can guess what the subject or subject matter is. The first few were made using simple shapes found in Canva, but the last is Alma Thomas’s Blast Off, showing the students how an artist may push this further to break a moment or representational object down to create an abstract work. Many of the students’ sketches were of figures or physical objects to represent the word they’ve chosen. This part of the activity is meant to show them ways they can still use their ideas, but asking them what does it look like if they break it down to the basic shapes.
The last part of the activity is a short creative collaboration. The students will each be given three small balls of clay, and asked to alter each one in different ways. They will then pass one of their creations to a neighbor, receiving someone else’s piece. The students will then attach one of their remaining clay pieces to the new one, and repeat the process once more. They will place their finished sculptures in the middle of the table and have a brief discussion on their reactions and what that piece may convey.
Culmination or Closer:
As the discussion finishes, students will be asked to form their sculptures into balls so that the clay may be used for the next class. As this is the first activity that I have created for them, I will ask the class a series of questions to receive feedback. The students can respond with a thumbs up, down, or somewhere in the middle, but if any of them have something to say verbally they are more than welcome to.
Do you feel more comfortable creating an abstract sculpture or sketch for your sculpture after doing these activities?
Was there anything in particular that you are confused about, or you felt didn’t help your understanding at all?
Or vice versa, was there anything that helped your understanding in thinking about your project?
Do you think these activities were worth doing?
Student Examples
