Art Curriculum: Text Art Silkscreens
March 5, 2009The latest challenge I have given my high school arts students at YBCA is to
“design a dynamic, one-color silkscreen print using only text to create the image.”
This assignment was actually first inspired by this Skull T-Shirt, but the Ork Poster of SF is probably a better example.
I place the roots of text art in the neo-impressionism of Seurat, who’s pointillist paintings could be viewed as the forerunner of ascii art. If Sunday Afternoon can be composed of daubs of paint, why not daubs of text?
The assignment serves several purposes:
- Revisiting and emphasizing the Elements of Art
- Exploring their first significant, individual silkscreen project
- Create large, bold images for Orson, one of the top restaurants in San Francisco, who graciously provided the opportunity to have the work of our class projected on the restaurant’s digital wall.
If you want to take a look at the assignment sheet I gave the students, which includes several more examples of text art, click this link for a PDF version of the handout.
Related posts:
I place the roots of text art in the neo-impressionism of Seurat, who’s pointillist paintings could be viewed as the forerunner of ascii art. If Sunday Afternoon can be composed of daubs of paint, why not daubs of text?
Ok, this just killed me!
Also, “Text as Art” is a not uncommon theme on shirt.woot.com.
I really really really need to leave a set of blank shirts in your office. I’m going to pick up a bunch during my “craft weekend”. This sounds like such a cool assignment.