♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and the games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (cheerful music) - Hello, Early Learners.

It's me, Mrs. Readwright, back to welcome you to the art room.

This week we're learning all about Faith Ringgold.

She is an artist who is still living.

She lives in California, down in San Diego.

She teaches art there.

She has two daughters who are interested in art too.

Let's sing our hello song and get started.

♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to you ♪ ♪ Hello to me ♪ ♪ Hello nice to see you everyone ♪ Now in the mystery suitcase yesterday, I had you help me figure out what these things did to go together.

And we looked at this cloth and now I've hung it here on the table so that we can keep looking at it because it's so beautiful.

And some of the things like Faith Ringgold has this fabric tied in her hair.

Some of her blouses are made out of it.

She wears a belt of it.

So I thought it's nice to take a look at it.

Now the Faith Ringgold song goes like this.

♪ Faith Ringgold's a talented artist ♪ ♪ She paints story quilts and writes books ♪ ♪ She creates soft sculptures ♪ ♪ Makes masks and art prints ♪ ♪ Join me as we take a good look ♪ It's to the tune of "You Can't Make A Turtle Come Out."

And here's a picture of Faith Ringgold.

I wanted you to see this photograph of her because she is sitting in front of the quilt.

The story quilt called Tar Beach 2.

Here it is this size.

Here it is blown up a little bit so you can see some of the details But look how proud she is.

She's wearing some of that African print on her hair band and she's wearing colorful African clothing.

Excuse me.

And she's wearing beads around her neck and looking very fancy at her art show.

Now I want you to notice the tall orange building behind the bridge and many buildings on this side of the river.

So I thought we could make all kinds of colorful buildings and put windows on them.

I'm going to cut out my buildings but I don't know if I will put the buildings, cut little pieces for the windows.

I thought I would just use the edge of my pastels to make those.

So let's see.

I have to be very careful with my art.

I'm going to leave it on the mystery suit case because it's still drying.

So let me put this on my lap, move the clipboard.

I wanted to tell you about quilts being a tradition in Faith Ringgold's family.

Women in Africa put together quilts for a couple of reasons, to tell stories and to stay warm.

So when they make their quilts and sell them sometimes people buy them for the art and sometimes people buy them for the warmth.

So they can lie underneath their quilt and snuggle under it.

So now I'm going to start getting my colored paper and making my buildings.

I guess I better put my black paper up here because I don't want to make a building so giant that it takes over the whole picture.

Cause what if I made my orange building so big it covered up the entire bridge.

I'm going to make a tall one.

And I thought, how will I make it so it doesn't cover over any of the bridge?

Maybe if I cut it and just let it tower above the bridge.

Cause this is the only one really that is in the background quite a bit.

The rest of the the buildings are up front.

So I'm going to kind of measure and see how wide I want it to be.

I think I'll make it come out of the top of the bridge.

Remember how I teach you?

If you hold it up here and put your finger there you do a tiny tear so you know just how wide to make it.

So I'm going to cut this down and it doesn't have to be perfect because this is part that Faith painted on fabric and she made the painting of the building.

Oh, it goes all the way off the top of the paper.

I could do that.

And I'm going to make a little fold, how long to make it.

So you know about gluing.

When we do our glue we want to make sure it goes around the edges.

So I'm going, oh, I better get it off of here cause sometimes I make a shiny space where I put the glue.

So there it is around all the edges.

I got a little glob of glue on there.

So I wiped it off to the top, set it on, press it down.

It did go a little bit off my paper, but I'll show you how I trim that.

Let me turn it over.

And I see it on the background and I cut it off.

Tricky.

I'm going to put some yellow windows.

Oh, I don't think yellow would show.

I'll use dark green on this orange paper and I'm going to put one story.

And I'm just drawing rectangles for my windows.

I can look over and get inspiration from the picture.

You can barely see it because it's so far off in the distance, but I can just draw my windows.

These are the windows that are kind of dark.

I'm think I'll make some of my windows lit up like it's at night, I'll use white.

White might show up yellow, might if I, oh the white does show up pretty good on orange.

I wasn't sure if it would or not.

That whole floor is all lit up.

Maybe people are getting ready for a party on their Tar Beach roof.

And this one has some yellow lights in that bridge.

Maybe the bridge's reflecting up on the building.

All right.

Now what other color do I want to use?

I just brought a bunch of different colors that I thought would look pretty.

Oh, this blue is nice.

I'm going to see how tall I want this building.

I'll make a little fold there.

And how big should I make it?

Maybe this big.

And if you make a little fold it's easier to see how far you want to cut your paper.

You've all made buildings before in your art classes.

So I don't really have to tell you too much about what to do, do I?

I can just show you mine.

Do you need to make yours orange and blue?

No.

And what if you don't have construction paper?

What could you do to make buildings?

Sure, you could just draw straight on the paper with pastels or crayons, or I think I'll use a dark blue for these windows.

I like to think of what goes good together.

What colors look best together?

What do I think about that?

You'll see a lot of these buildings have flat tops.

In New York city when I went to visit there I wanted to see all the places that had rooftop gardens because they let anyone who lives in the building go up to the roof on some buildings and you can go up there and sometimes you can have a little flower garden in boxes or they'll have pots of, maybe they grow their own tomatoes, which is always nice to do.

I still have my colored pencils out from yesterday and I might make the bottom of this building have some bricks.

And how I do bricks is I draw the lines and then I color in the bricks but I think I better use the red.

So it'll show up like a red brick.

You can decorate your buildings however you think looks good and I thought putting bricks at the bottom might be nice because I love a brick building.

And when you do bricks, when you do the top two though you make the next one underneath the space.

So it really looks like a brick building.

If you put them off all in one row, it doesn't look like a true brick because it makes too much space in between and it's looks like it would fall apart if it doesn't have something to hold it up.

Let's take a look and see what color I want next.

Oh, I think I want to put a little white at the top.

Like maybe they have lights showing at the top of their building.

Boys and girls I hope you're having fun making your buildings.

And maybe you will do a lot of buildings.

And would you do this for me?

When you make things, would you take a picture of yourself working and send it to me here at the studio.

We have an address that you can send your things to and that way you can send it to me and then they will send you a little book.

Let me bring it out and put it on front of me here.

They might send you this Arthur book or a Curious George book but you have to include your home address.

So do that and we'll put them in an envelope and send it to your house.

Cause we like to know who's watching and what fun you're having as you watch our shows.

Some of you watched Ms. Laura before you watch me and you learn about her too and she loves getting your photographs of yourself with your face because she takes a look at your face and says, how are they feeling?

I'm going to put this purple next to it cause I think blue and purple look so good together.

I think I might do my magenta next because I like magenta next to purple.

I'm doing all these cool colors.

Remember warm and cool colors when we were learning about them?

Oh good, this one's a little taller.

I'm going to cut off that rough edge from where I tore it.

It doesn't matter if you have a torn edge because some people don't have any scissors.

Now I can just tear things and just make the edge.

I can fold it under and just put it on my paper that way.

Let's put this building next to this one.

It looks like mine are going downhill a little bit.

Sorry, buildings.

Oh, what about this bright green?

I'm going to make it as tall as this.

I'm not even going to measure it.

Snip.

Put it back in my folder.

You noticed I kept my paper all in one place so that I don't make a mess in my living room.

You have to be a really tidy artist if you want to be a good artist.

Cause your family has to live where your art studio is.

Gonna line up a few more colors.

Maybe I'll use dark green next to that.

I'm doing it kind of rainbowy, I like it very much.

I'm going to make this green one shorter, just a tiny bit shorter.

Pinch.

Ooh, don't get on the lights.

And snip it up.

And snip it over.

Put my glue on there.

Now, you know, I want you to bring this back tomorrow because we're going to be adding our flying Cassie Lightfoot or Bebe but we can finish putting a few more windows on here and you know, I'll work on this tonight and add some or maybe if I don't, I'll just do it tomorrow after I put the people on here.

Maybe that's what I'll do.

Let's take a look.

Maybe this one's lit up.

So tomorrow's materials that you'll bring because we're going to make Cassie and Bebe, you'll need this paper that we're working on.

You'll bring scissors and a glue stick.

I'm bringing some magazine pieces to put my clothes out of magazine texture.

I'm going to bring color of paper that's the color of skin.

If you don't have your own color skin in there you'll just use a different color of skin.

I am also bringing, oh, I didn't bring yarn but if you want to use yarn for your hair that might be interesting too.

All right, boys and girls, I think it looks like it's time to start singing our goodbye song.

♪ Goodbye ♪ ♪ See you next time everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye ♪ ♪ See you next time everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye to you ♪ ♪ Goodbye to you ♪ ♪ Goodbye to you ♪ ♪ Goodbye to me ♪ ♪ Goodbye ♪ ♪ See you next time everyone ♪ I'm going to keep doing a few windows until it's time to go say goodbye, and I'll just wave you off as I'm doing it.

I'm adding some white windows here.

(cheerful music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (cheerful music)