O'Keeffe

Ranchos Church

6th Grade Lesson Plan

When Georgia was 27 years old, she had an experience that changed her life, she explains.. "I heard music coming from a classroom.  A record was playing and the students were drawing what they heard.  This gave me a new idea that music could be translated into something for the eye."  From that point on, O'Keeffe put away her old drawings and decided to begin again.  She took out her black charcoal and stacks of bland paper.  She resolved only to draw her own ideas no matter what anyone said.

We are going to try an experiment in class today.  You will need to take out a pencil and a few colors.  (Pass out paper with the quote on it; also have a big cross dividing the paper into four sections).  We are going to turn the lights off and I want yo to listen to the music.  Draw whatever comes to your mind when yo listen to  the music.  Perhaps you will see just colors and shapes, maybe a memory of a place you've been.  Be creative but serious.  Have four different types of songs play about 3-4 minutes each.

Play Art Masterpiece Pictionary.  Divide into groups, use a scorekeeper and a time watcher.  After the group guesses the item drawn, tell what that item has to do with Georgia O'Keeffe.  Allot 30 seconds for each group to guess the drawing.  (These are in cards in the Art M packet)

State of Georgia:  Georgia O'Keeffe  (show her pic)

American Flag:   She was an American artist.  She was born in Wisconsin in 1887 on a dairy farm.  She was the 2nd child of seven kids in her family.

Violin:  Her dad liked to fiddle.  He kept sweets in his pockets for the kids.

Book:  Her mom liked to read.  O'Keefes' grandmothers both painted

Apple Tree:  When she was little, she would gather up her china dolls and spend the afternoon under the apple tree with them.

Gun:  Her mother would tell her tales of the wild west, which she loved.

School house:   She studied art seriously.  She wanted to be an artist from a very young age.  When 12, her mother sent her and her sisters to private art lessons.  It was a seven mile round trip on a horse and buggy.  Their mom wanted them to become proper "ladies" and maybe become art teachers.  There were not very many famous women artist at this time.

Dress:  She designed and sewed her own clothes since she was 15 years old.  She liked plain clothes and dressed mostly in black.  She would braid her hair and tie a ribbon at the bottom.  She was a private person and didn't want to be noticed.

Pencil:  When Georgia was 15, her family tired of the farm life and moved to Virginia.  her mother enrolled Georgia in a boarding school for girls there called Chatham.  The girls in school liked O'Keeffe because she was different, mischievous, artistic and fun.  She liked to draw caricatures of the teachers there.  (Explain what they are).  After graduating from Chatham, she went to the Art Institute in Chicago..  

Measles:  Georgia had a bad case of measles in her early 30's that temporarily affected her eye sight.  She couldn't afford to continue Art School because of her families finances so she returned to Virginia.

Tent:  when Georgia recovered from the measles, she enrolled in an art class at the University of Virginia.  Her art teacher introduced her to the world of abstract aft from some ideas he got from his teacher in new York, Professor Dow.  Georgia set aside her realistic paintings and began to experiment with abstract art.  Show the picture of TENT DOOR AT NIGHT.

Apple:  New York - Georgia had been teaching art in Texas and had saved enough money to go to New York to study with Professor Dow.  not long after she accepted a teaching position at a women's college in South Carolina.  It is here when she heard the music coming from the classroom of students and decided it was time to create her own works, not art just to please her teachers.  Night after night she created her own images.  She thought she was going crazy.  She sent some of her best art work to a friend in New York and told er not to show anyone.

Glasses:  Alfred Stieglitz, a famous art supporter and photographer was 20 years older the Georgia.  he had bushy eyebrows and would glared at people through his glasses.  He owned a gallery and so Georgia's friend had showed him the drawings given to her from Georgia that she wasn't to show to anyone.  Stieglitz exhibited them in his gallery.  When Georgia found out, she was mad and went to confront him.  They argues, then went to lunch.  Over the new few years they corresponded through letter and soon fell in love and got married.  She had been teaching in Texas, the wild west and was loving it, but moved to New York to be with him.  They moved to the highest floor of the Shelton (show pic of the Shelton)

Lake:  They spent summers at Lake George (My Shanty).  She painted some realistic paintings and some abstract while there.

Flower:  Georgia painted hundreds of  flowers.  Men thought her colors were too bright.  She loved to paint them close-up.  When people asked her why she made her flowers so large, she asked them why they never wondered why she made her rivers so small.  (show RED CANNA).

Cape:  Stieglitz and O'Keeffe both dressed in black most of the time.  He wore a black cape and she would wear a black coat and black gloves.  They wanted to feel unnoticed and to be taken serious.  She still sewed her own clothes even though they had money.

Horse:  She needed to see new country so Al let her go to new Mexico to stay with friends each summer.  Georgia loved riding horses into the mountains.  She would find bones and shell fossils.

Donut:  Georgia was the kind of kid that would earn around the raisin in the cookie and ate around the hole in the donut to save the best for last.  When she found a skull, she was more interested in the hole that the bone itself.  She would collect a barrel full of bones to take back to New York with her at the end of the summer so that she could take a part of New Mexico with her to draw.  She loved to draw bones and dint associate them with death (show skull and bone pictures)

World:   When All died she decided to make New Mexico my home for the rest of my life.  Though she had  traveled around the world she stayed fascinated with the power of the mysterious desert.

Ranchos de Taos:  She loved new Mexico and this old mission church built by the Spaniards in the mid 1700's.  Rancho de Taos is one of the most photogrpahed and painted churches because of its unique architecture.  (Show other paintings of Ranchos)

Read quote by O'Keeffe about Rancho de Taos.  Talk about the shapes she use, then read the quote on the handout.  "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way - things I had no words for."

Treat:  card with quote on it and 2 or 3 jolly ranchers taped to it and a pencil taped to it also.

Notes:  This takes about 1 hour, can delete some of the pics if you don't have time. 

Idea;  you could give donuts as a treat and eat the outside first saving the inside hole for last...

Pictionary:  made a rule during pictionary that if a group is still talking after the picture is guessed  you will take a point off of their team.