A Dream World of Day-Glow at C.V. Starr

It’s a dream world of Day-Glo parrots, pandas, koalas, unicorns and alien spacecraft that actually glow in Danielle Michielini’s fourth-grade art classes. 

The vibrant, glowy depictions are inspired by the artist Lisa Frank–a name you would recognize if you were a teen in the 1980s. Frank’s designs expressed a colorful, psychedelic sensibility and could be found on all manner of decorative products 

The school’s art theme of the year is GLOW, and this assignment fits squarely into the theme.

“I want students to create the most colorful and imaginative project of the year,” said Michielini, “The challenge is to create a wild, layered background for an animal of their choice and to fill the space with tons of fun, colorful and completely jumbled ideas from the students’ imagination.”

The ideas are bursting with creativity:

Nik Vataj has illustrated a boy with a jet pack, dogs on the moon, a bone in space and an earth that drips like ice cream.

Dylan Graff has created a world surrounding a giant bear, including a flying shark, vortex, and drips of goo falling from an alien space ship. 

Valentina Juarez is excited about her super bright mushroom.

Using Day-Glo markers, the students got busy adding elements such as a sparkling rainbow road made of ice cream; cosmic objects, such as a cloud shaped like a puppy; action or flying vehicles; and repeated details to fill in the background space, such as sprinkles, smiley faces, stars and hearts.The students then excitedly lined up at a black light board to test their glow–parrots, pandas, koalas lit up in yellow, pink, green and blue.

“Wow! Look at my rainbow ice cream road glow!” said Olivia Helmiyan.