O'Keeffe

These are overheads that are in the packet.

O'Keeffe

O'keeffe

O'Keeffe Art Activity Idea:
fill a page with pastels (use pastels, charcoal pencils, paper, double sided tape)

O'Keeffe

Ranchos Church

6th Grade Presentation

Wore all black

Introduced Artists

Used book Images of Spirit & Vision: Ranchos De Taos Church and showed other artists pictures of the church.

Used Georgia O'Keeffe book, Georgia O'Keeffe: Portraits of Women Artists by Robyn Montana Turner to briefly give highlights of her life

Passed out donuts.

O'Keeffe



Ranchos Church















6th Grade Presentation

After giving presentation on Georgia O'Keeffe; put these items in a pillow case and pull them out one by one and have the children tell why you chose these and how they relate to the artist and her life.

caricature:  she used to draw caricatures of her teachers.

white paint:  she used it to brighten up her paintings

china dolls:  when she was young she would gather up her china dolls and spent the afternoon with them underneath he hemlock and apple trees in Wisconsin where she grew up

books:  her mother loved books

fiddle:  her father loved to play the fiddle

sweets:  her father used to keep his pockets full of sweets to share with his children and she loved this.

play gun and cowboy hat:  Wild west, she loved to hear tales of the wild west.  Her imagination would soar when told of the tales.

watercolors:  she loved water colors

ribbon:  she wore her hair in a braid with a ribbon tied at the bottom

eyeglasses:  her husband and famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz wore eyeglasses that he seemed to glare behind at his students

apple:  she made her way to New York City to study with a famous art professor

thread:  she sewed her own clothes

black charcoal pencil:  she started over with blank white paper and her charcoal pencil and created her own ideas

letters;  they fell in love through letters

flowers:  she painted hundreds of flowers

black clothing:  both she and her husband wore black clothing they felt they were unnoticeable in black

adobe:  she lived in an adobe art studio near a stream in Taos, New Mexico

Cow skulls:  she pulled them from her barrel of bones and painted them

blank canvas:  she rarely signed her works

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.

O'Keeffe

Ranchos Church

6th Grade Lesson Plan

Presentation as though presenter is ghost of Georgia O'Keeffe.  Dress in black with a white pleated blouse, interact with class in 1st person.  Pass out "skull" candy suckers to remind them of "my" love for bones.  Find pics for bolded words in O'Keeffe book or other places and use as you present.

I was born in 1887 on a diary farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, just 20 years after the Civil War ended and Frank Lloyd Wright was born there.  I was the second of seven children and named after Grandpa George.  I loved to play with my dolls under the apple trees when I was a little girl.  My dad played fiddle and took me for long walks in our fields.  My mom read books to me each night about the Wild West.

By the time I was 10, I knew I wanted to be an artist.  I didn't like my teachers to correct my paintings.  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.  In school, I was a bit of a rascal; my friends though I was fun.  Sometimes I drew cartoons of my teachers.  You should know that at that time in history, "ladies" weren't taken seriously as artist.  One of my male classmates once asked me to pose for him, saying, "It doesn't matter what you do, I'm going to be a great painter and you will probably end up teaching painting in some girls' school."  Had, I'd like to see him now!

When I was 18, I went to Chicago to study at the Art Institute.  I learned about oriental and abstract (ask what abstract means) design.  I also studied in New York City and won prizes for my paintings.

I taught school in West Texas and began to develop my own abstract style of landscape.  My classes were an adventure!  Once I put a live pony up on the table as a model for my students.  I loved Texas.

When I was 27, my style changed completely.  I had to ignore much of what I had been taught and destroyed all my old paintings.  I decided to paint only what pleased me.

In 1916 (29(, some of my drawings were shown to a man who would have a great influence on my life.  his name was Alfred Stieglitz, a famous art supporter and photographer.  He declared, "At last , a woman on paper!" and thought my work was very original and honest.  Without my permission he displayed my drawings at his New York art showroom.  I was furious!  But the show won me admiration and attention.

In 1917 (30), he gave me my own show and money that allowed me to paint full-time.  We wrote letters to each other and I sometimes visited New York to see him.  He was stubborn, impatient and courageous and fought hard to get his artists recognized (including Picasso, Cezanne and me)

By 1924 (37), we were married.  he was 23 years older then I was, didn't like to travel, was often sickly.  He supported my work and took a series of beautiful photographs of me.  We lived in New York (Radiator Building-Stieglitz in Neon), it was cold and windy.  We spent summers at Lake George (My Shanty).  I liked it best when we  were alone but many people visited us there.

In 1929, (42), I went to New Mexico on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.  After I saw the landscape through the train window, 'from then on i was always on my way back'.  Every year I would return alone to New Mexico.  I lived in an old adobe house called Ghost Ranch or at my home in Abiquiu (Abbey-kew) and walked through the hills at all times of the day and night.  Red Hills.  It is "perfectly mad looking country, hills and cliffs and washes too crazy to imagine all thrown up into the air by God and let tumble down where they would.

I painted this subject (Ranchos Church) many times.  I had to paint it.  It was one of the most beautiful buildings left in the United States by the early Spaniards.  This is my favorite view.  The fragment accurately tells you how I feel about it.  I painted it during the first years in New Mexico (1930).  It's still standing (built 1734-1772)

* Subject
     Is it realistic or abstract.  "I take the subject into my imagination, alter and simplify its appearance to reveal the secret life of nature within it.  It takes time to see things - like to have a friend takes time."
     Does it look like a building or a sculpture?
     Does it even look like a church or is it a riddle, a puzzle?  (It is the Mission church of St. Francis of Assisi in Ranchos de Taos.)
     How would this painting feel to your touch?  Adobe Brick

*  Form
     What would it look like from another angle?  front and back view postcards (in packet)
     Am I a good draftsperson; or could you build a replica of this church based on my painting? 
     Are there enough details and correct perspective?
     Are the colors pure or subdued/muddy?
     "This painting is quiet but many of my flowers were described as blazing.  Red Canna One said, "the colors regain the fun they had forming the first rainbow"  I painted hundreds of flowers in every color, shape and form that went right to the edge of the canvas.  People asked me why I made them so large.  I asked them why they never wondered that I made the rivers so small.  I got those busy New Yorkers to look at flowers!"

*  Content
     How would it feel to be inside the church?  The walls are 6 feet thick.  The windows are small.
     How does it make you feel?

I was an excellent seamstress and sewed my own clothes.  Sewing gave me time to think and solve problems.  I usually work black and wore my hair tied back.  I did not like to be noticed, wanted to be taken seriously and enjoyed my privacy.

i collected bones - real cow skull on a small quilted flag to paint and loved their lively line, form, shape and texture.  I decided to make and American painting.  New Yorkers usually looked at European art for inspiration and ideas.  (A critic said there was too much French sauce in art).  I thought that the importance of the cow should be reflected.  Cow Skull:  Red, White and Blue.

In 1946, Alfred died.  I was 59 and missed him very much.  i decided to make New Mexico my home for the rest of my life.  I traveled around the world but stayed fascinated with the power of the mysterious desert.

When I was 84, I began to suffer from a form of blindness called macular degeneration.  I could not see objects that should be in the center of my field of vision.  I had to stop painting but could still touch the bones and smooth rocks throut my home.

When I died in 1986, I was 98 years old.  I and achieved many things.  I received the US Medal for Freedom, the Gold Medal of Painting, the National Medal of Arts, made a fortune, created over 900 works of art that hang in museums throughout the world.  There is a new museum full of my work in Santa Fe.  I am called the most famous woman artist America ever produced and the most successful woman artist of the 20th century.  That is my legacy, my children.