My Life Is My Art
Part 1: Reading and Reflection
Read - Choose one of the following books based on your students’ reading levels:
- Jake Makes a World: Jacob Lawrence, A Young Artist in Harlem - this book explores how Jacob Lawrence found inspiration in the colors and people in his Harlem community.
- Story Painter: The Life of Jacob Lawrence - this book tells the story of Jacob Lawrence’s life through his artwork.
- For younger students (grades K-2), read aloud to students.
- For older students (grades 3-5), you can have them read the book together in pairs or small groups (partner reading).
Reflect:
For read alouds, have students pay attention to the pictures. After each page:
- For grades K and 1, ask students to share out loud what they learned about Lawrence’s life from the pictures.
- For grades 2-3, ask students to write down what they learned about Lawrence’s life from the pictures.
- At the end of the reading, ask students: What do you think inspired Jacob Lawrence to create art?
- Teacher’s Note: you may need to define the word “inspire” for kids. For little kids, you can define inspire as “something that makes you feel an emotion and makes you want to create something.”
For partner reading:
- For grades 4-5, students should discuss what they learn about Lawrence’s life and how those experiences are evident in the pictures as they read.
- At the end of the reading, students should discuss and respond to the following question: What do you think inspired Jacob Lawrence to create art?
Part 2: Connect
Everyday Pinboards:
- Have students create a pinboard. A pinboard is a collection of images, ideas, styles, words, clippings, etc. that represent a certain theme. It can be created by hand or using an online platform like Pinterest. Students will gather ideas to EXPRESS who and what influences them. Artists, like Jacob Lawrence, engage in processes like this to plan their artwork.
- For grades K-1, in a whole group discussion, have students IDENTIFY things they see every day (on their walks/drives home, people, nature) in their lives. You can support students by having them use their five senses. Provide students with prompts such as “What sounds do you hear?” “What things do you see?” “What do you smell?”
- For grades 2-5, have students work in partners or small groups and IDENTIFY things they see every day (their walks home, people, nature) and important events in their lives. Students should use their five senses to help them identify things they experience every day. You can use this graphic organizer for support or create your own.
- Ask your students to consider their brainstorms and pose the question: What thing from your everyday experiences inspires you the most?
- Students should select one item from their lists or pinboard for the artmaking portion of the lesson.
Part 3: Artmaking
- Students should create a piece of artwork (i.e. collage, painting, diorama), using any style or set of materials (i.e. newspapers or magazine cutouts, crayons, modelling clay, markers, construction paper), inspired by their everyday experiences and the pictures from the Jacob Lawrence book(s).
- For grades 2-3, students should write 1-2 sentences that describe the experience they depicted.
- For grades 4-5, students should write a short paragraph or poem that describes the experience they depicted.
Visual Context
Here are some artwork and images to further contextualize the content of the lesson. You can incorporate the images into your lessons or use them to build your own background knowledge.
Please note: Images are available to download only for personal, noncommercial use. For any questions about image rights and reproductions, please contact imagerights@phillipscollection.org.
Kenneth F. Space, Jacob Lawrence making block prints at a WPA Federal Art Project Workshop, 1933-34
Roger Smith, New York, New York. Street musicians in Harlem, 1943
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel no. 31, 1940-41
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel no. 1, 1940–41
Jacob Lawrence, This is Harlem, 1943
Artwork Example, Everyday Pinboard
Additional Context
Lesson Context
Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917. His parents migrated from the rural South to find a better life up North. His parents separated and Jacob and his two siblings spent time in foster homes in Philadelphia. Eventually, they reunited with their mother in Harlem.
As a teenager in the 1930s, Jacob Lawrence attended after-school arts programs in Harlem. These workshops were an important component of Lawrence’s early success, granting him access to teachers like Sarah West, an artist at the WPA Federal Art Project Workshop, and his first mentor, Charles Alston. Charles Alston was an African-American painter and educator whose art explored racial identity as well as the personal and common aspects of the Black experience.
By age 20, he had his first solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and was creating what would be the first of three narrative series on African-American historical figures.
Four years later, he would receive a grant from the Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to embark on creating the 60 panels that comprise The Migration Series with the help of fellow artist and future wife, Gwendolyn Knight.
Key Terms
Great Migration: In the Southern US, African Americans endured blatant discrimination and segregation as part of Jim Crow laws, as well as poor economic conditions. In the hopes of improved living and working conditions, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to the North, in particular to Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York, between 1916-1940. The Great Migration happened in two major waves: the first one being from 1916-1940 and the second one from 1941-1970.
Harlem Renaissance: The largest concentration of African Americans who migrated during the Great Migration moved to Harlem. From the 1910s to mid-1930s, the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City became a hub of African American culture, with an explosion of literature, music, theater, and the arts.