BOO!

"Haunted House" by Murch Elementary students from Make slash Believe on Vimeo.

"Haunted House" by Oyster-Adams Elementary from Make slash Believe on Vimeo.

"Haunted House" by Chevy Chase Elementary from Make slash Believe on Vimeo.

Happy Halloween from Make/Believe! These Art Brains haunted house videos are a couple years old, but no worse for wear.

STORY-TELLING AND MOVIE-MAKING

Action/Adventure - Alice Dreams of Peru from Make slash Believe on Vimeo.

This Fall, Art Brains students will be doing a collaborative project called "Action/Adventure" in which they work together to create and perform mini movie scenes. Check out the adorableness of this abridged version of our first film of the season, above, in a class led by our awesome teaching artist, Eun. It details the dreams of our hero, Alice, finding gold, tripping over an exploding time capsule (which sings "Happy Birthday" when it explodes!), and meeting a talking snowman named Carrots. It is narrated by a talking tree.

OVER THE RAINBOW

As our little company grows, it's getting harder to find time to post about our projects, but the projects are definitely in full swing! This season, we've started out with a project called "Over the Rainbow", as in, "The rainbow? We're so over it!" We aren't, really, but it's been fun to see kids "inventing" their own colors and color sequences, and coming up with creative names for their hues, using imagery-filled house paint names as inspiration. Some students also invented their own rainbow shape, although most of the pictures I have here show some iteration of the classic arch. Finally, some come with facts about how a particular rainbow was formed, as opposed to the standard sunlight-refracted-through-water routine. E.g. rainbows formed when frogs sing, or when candy falls from the sky.

My favorite color names shown here: Grape Tiger, Friend's Money, Monster Glow, Golden Black Trash, Bird Feathers, and The Sssss.

THEMES FOR FALL 2014

Photo by Florian Maier Aichen

Too soon to talk about the upcoming Fall semester? Never! We have a creative season planned for the Art Brainers for Fall 2014, including:

- Action/Adventure movie making
- crystal balls/wheels of fortune
- houses for mouses
- cave drawings to be explored in makeshift caves with flashlights
- neo-rainbow paintings (that's "neo" not "neon"!)
- a Jekyl/Hyde Halloween project
- and "Thanksgiving on Mars" makes a comeback

Projects for the entire year are all planned, and include a couple recurring themes: theaters and/or cinema appears every season (including a "3D movies" project and one called "Shadow Show") as well as some seriously collaborative group projects involving city planning, print making, and art games. 

What's up, 2014/2015 school year! We're comin' for you!

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