Free Art Friday '14

Over the last two years, one of my growing interests has been the Free Art Movement, which celebrates the notion that "Art is for Everyone." It's easy to get hooked when you live in a place with an active and generous art community like Atlanta. Free Art Friday is a worldwide art hunt in which artists leave small pieces of art in public places for passerby to find, creating an unexpected artful moment in the day. You can look for clues and post your findings on social networks like Twitter and Instagram. You may have previously read some of my previous posts about this topic or you can click the label in the right sidebar about last year's FAF celebration.

The art teachers in my county have been teaming up with a number of local artists for several years now to put together a professional development "production party" - they teach us how they make their "drops" and we work as a group to make bunches to share at our school - think Warhol's Factory - it's that cool (I imagine at least ;) ) My husband, son and daughter came to help too and here you'll see me with artists Evereman and SadStove.

                                  

I also contacted several other local artists for donations and they mailed me some nice pieces to add to the stash, including CrazyMonkeyTrucker, Ms_ATL, and @flounder.

Free Art Friday can happen on any given Friday, and ours in the county happened last week, May 9.

At our art show the week before, we set up materials for the kids to begin their FAF projects for the next week. Last year's clay charms, made from semi-dry clay scraps, were a huge hit with the families, and this year we tried something a little deeper in the "upcycling" trend.

At the beginning of every school year, my Dick Blick order comes in and I unpack a million little boxes of various supplies. I'm really not much of a hoarder at all by art teacher standards :), but I just hate throwing out all those clean, new boxes. I have been saving for two years and I have plenty for the base of this years project: box monsters! We also used foam scraps, too-short pencils, old plastic caps, and of course, googly eyes. We also affixed a label with the tags #freeart4U and my classroom twitter name @MKSAfaf. One little friend Jaxon tweeted a picture of his box monster hiding in a mailbox - it was awesome!

 

 

The day of the event was super exciting - the kids got off the buses and immediately began scanning the halls. Kids who made their own pieces to drop were stealthily stashing their art all around the building. It was such a fun day! Can't wait to do it again next year! 

Here is the free art I make called "Check the Box" - Aiyanna was excited to find it and the tiny art inside:

and @atl_ET kept an eye out for fires - before he was found!

Here are some pieces from @BargerArtRoom, an art teacher I connected with following FAF on Twitter.

and a few from fellow blogger extraordinaire, Don Masse of shine brite zamorano. Really enjoyed the collaboration with these two awesome teachers.

I caught these kids in the act of hiding their personal FAF's - shhhh, I didn't tell!

Four lucky finders went home with a @RockIt_ATL, an Evereman, an IkeMadness, and a SadStove.

Even the teachers got in on the hunt...

Here's an Evereman I mailed to Barger in Chattanooga

and a SadStove that flew all the way to San Diego.

Do you have a Free Art community in your neck of the woods? I'd love to hear all about it!