Tricia Fuglestad's Blog

Painting & Singing: The American Gothic

2/2/2013

My fourth grade students worked on a double portrait drawing (in a frontal pose and three-quarters pose) of the two characters in the famous American Gothic painting by Grant Wood. I photographed them for our online gallery before they were reworked into spoofs and painted. See examples below or the entire gallery here.

American Gothic Spoof Drawing Guide

by Kenzie

By Jack

By Will

By Nikki

They are currently working on the painting step. Since this has been a long term project they are becoming very familiar with our "Theme Song" via Greg Percy. We listen to his song called, American Gothic at the start of each class while they settle in. This week I grabbed a camera and caught their enthusiasm. If you look closely you can see their beautiful artwork on the tables. These are going to be amazing!

Greg Percy's song American Gothic:
Here is the link :
http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/greg-percy/album/songs-in-the-key-of-art-volume-3/track/american-gothic
View Greg Percy's website and purchase his albums here.

We solved a mystery! The lyrics (my students' favorite part) say that the songwriter sees the American Gothic on his cornflakes box. We didn't understand what that meant until I found this video on pinterest. They used the American Gothic image to sell cornflakes in the 60's. This is one of the commercials from that time.

I wrote a post at the beginning of this lesson that includes

My American Gothic Spoof-o-matic
An edited version of the SNL American Gothic Skit
A video slideshow of American Gothic Spoofs.
and more!

View it here.

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About Me

Tricia Fuglestad, NBCT,
is the K-5 art teacher at Dryden Elementary School in Arlington Heights, IL. with a masters in K-12 technology integration. Tricia has been recognized for her innovative teaching in 2010 with the PBS Teachers Innovation Award, won Illinois Art Teacher of the Year in 2011, awarded Teacher of Distinction in 2012 by the Golden Apple Foundation, received Western Region Elementary Art Teacher of the Year 2013, selected to become a Jacobs Educator 2014-15, was presented with the NAEA Art Technology Outstanding Community Service Award in 2016, honored with the ISTE Teacher Educator Network Tech in Action award, 2018, and won an Art Education Leadership Award via Artsonia in 2019. Learn more here.