Aspen Room

Joey Christensen

“The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences”

-Maria Montessori

We started by screen printing the foundation - the trunk of the tree.

Over the course of two sessions, the third year students using an impressive amount of grace distributed the ink, stabilized the screens, and passed the squeegee to pull two beautiful prints. The first print is a bark texture in silver ink, and second, is the children’s names in black ink.

In the next step, students used geometric insets to create the years of the classroom and leaves of the tree. The first year students used a solid circle, the second year used a half fraction, and the third year used the thirds fraction insets. These circles anchor their path from year to year.

The final step of the process was sewing thread into paper creating branches. The beginning for each student was the circle of their current year, and the ending point was where they would be the following year. After the students chose their thread color, they did a combination or all of: threading a needle, tying a knot, using an awl, and sewing from point to point creating their path. In addition, the students sewed thread next to their name in the legend making it possible to follow their individual path and see their developing aesthetic sensibilities