Your class can explore their adventurous side by looking outdoors for all their equipment, then express their artistic side when they’re ready to create their own masterpiece. It can help them develop planning and organisation skills. This resource also asks children to look at other artists’ work for inspiration, so they can learn how to research effectively.

Land Art Challenge Cards - Print off these brilliant cards to set your children the task of collecting lots of resources. They can develop physical and mental skills while they explore nature and finish by creating even more artwork. Amazing artists who use nature for their art: The nature and trees around him have always been an creational source for him, not only are they beautiful from the outside at but also when you try to investigate a look inside. Gill found that things were more beautiful and complex inside than what was visible from the outside. Pattern, texture, color. ‘You’ll never know what you’re missing if you don’t find some way to get inside and look’ and that brought him closer to the gentle giants we live among. Gill used recycled lumber, covered it with ink and paper and pressed and scratched the wood pattern on the paper with his fingers. When Gill is working with wood, he is not fighting it but he is going with it. He is printing over a period of time and you can see and feel the slight changes in the texture or mushrooms growing on it. For him, his process is very organic and it just comes to him while working. Its engagement is to understand his place in this world in this time, which he has to participate as a record of his connection to it. In his prints you can see the natural beauty of the earth and its plants and creatures and the natural unique fingerprints and stories they tell in their texture, if you just listen carefully. Gill died on May 17, 2013, "unexpectedly of natural causes" at the age of 52. He was married to Gina Gill (née Kiss) for 12 years, [6] and they had a son named Forest. [1] Bibliography [ edit ] Gill's work has been displayed at the New Britain Museum of American Art and DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and he was commissioned to create installations for Expo 2005 in Japan and the World Financial Center in New York. He was a fellow of the California Arts Council and twice received grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. [1] He was profiled in Martha Stewart Living in 2012 and was the focus of a documentary video produced by the magazine. [5] Personal life [ edit ]Inside Out, A collection of works by Bryan Nash Gill: Baxter Gallery, Westminster School, Simsbury, CT

BNG: The stories that come to mind are about narrowly escaping injuries from falling trees or tree branches. That’s why we call them “widow makers.” The gallery is in the West End at 424 Findlay Street in Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibition opens on Thursday, September 28, with reception for the artists from 5-9 pm. Some artists in the exhibition will be present for the opening reception. The aim of this activity is to encourage students to create their own artwork using natural resources. It can be anything they like, but must incorporate things they find, like leaves or branches. To help, you can print off the prompt and give it to your children as a guide. There are also plenty of examples to help.If you think your class could use an added challenge, why not ask them to get specific? They can use the tree identification sheet as a helpful tool to determine exactly what leaves feature in their artwork. Gill was born in 1961 in Hartford, Connecticut and was raised on a farm in Granby, Connecticut. [1] He attended Westminster School and graduated in 1980. [2] In 1984 he graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, [1] with a focus on glassblowing. [3] He moved to Italy to learn stone carving before returning to the United States to study at the California College of the Arts. [3] He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 1988. [1] Career [ edit ]

Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture, Samuel S.T. Chen Art Center, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CTAfter 16 years, however, he came home to the very farm in the western Connecticut hills on which he grew up, which he has since bought and converted into a home and studio complex. For all the study and experience he gathered in his travels, in the end it was returning to New England, to its woods and its history both geological and anthropological that gave him his voice as a sculptor. It was from this place that he first made art that connected to the deeper roots of his sensibility. That first work composed of 42 Christmas trees suspended upside-down, in echelon, in situ, above the floor of the forest contained many of the elements that would come to characterize his mature work as a sculptor. For the first time, says Gill, "I wasn't making something for somebody to buy. I wasn't making something to please somebody else. And I [certainly] wasn't 'making it big, painting it red, throwing it in the field and calling it art.' The only people who saw [this work] were people I brought to it, or who stumbled upon it, like my family when they cross-country skied or walked in the woods. It was very uplifting, very eerie." Anniversary Exhibition: Highlights from the Last 20 Years; Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT

BNG: The notion of landscape is so rooted in culture. It is hard to get beyond the conventional ideas of landscape. So when I speak of,” beyond the landscape”, I am referring to your own landscape, or more simply, “it is whatever you imagine.” In the most deliberate way, since his return to New England, the nature of Gill's work - its medium, metaphor, syntax, meaning - has been rooted in nature, particularly the grown-over tangle that is rural New England. But it is equally rooted in the evidence of time, of life cycles, of human labor and art. BNG: Dendrology, the study of trees, a science that has given us historical data about our global environment and forever-changing climate. Looking closely at an individual tree’s structure and annual rings teach us about a particular species, the environment in which it grew and the occasional marks therein indicating invasive trauma. Branching Out: The Trees as Inspiration, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT Tree Conscious, an exhibition of twenty-one artists illustrating the distinctive beauty of trees through still life and portraiture. It will include a diverse range of media spanning the early twentieth century to contemporary art from Cincinnati, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, and other international locations. The selection of two- and three-dimensional work will highlight the tree’s historical significance as a provider of sustenance and shelter throughout time; as a metaphor for growth, humanity, monumentality, and enduring life force.Bryan Nash Gill (November 3, 1961 – May 17, 2013) was an American artist who worked primarily with wood, in the form of relief prints and sculptures. Woods: Installation and Drawings, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT