Pop go the art students

Half a century ago, the painter Roy Lichtenstein had a novel idea ? taking images out of advertisements and comic books and reproducing them on canvas. His bright, simplistic works helped give rise to pop art, and they’ve been unlikely staples of museums ever since.

Nowadays, they’re even teaching about them in school.

Last week, Lichtenstein was the latest entry in Adams Elementary School’s “Art Masters” series, in which students learn about famous artists and then replicate their styles. On Friday, Kelly Lopez’s fourth-graders sat around tables with construction paper and scissors, cutting out the shapes of sundaes and lemonade glasses and piecing them together on black backdrops.

Call it high art, pop art, whatever you will ? it’s going on the wall during open house.

“The cut paper has real appeal to them, and recognizable shapes ? it’s easier than realism,” said Sally Harrison, an Art Masters teacher who travels to schools throughout the year, stopping at Adams on Friday.

Every year at Adams, students learn about six different artists in the Art Masters program. The early grade levels begin with simple works ? “colors and lines,” as Harrison put it ? and gradually work their way through realism and other complex forms.

Is pop art simple? Yes and no. Lichtenstein, who was once quoted as saying, “I want my images to be as critical, as threatening and as insistent as possible,” used popular images to dramatize the values and stereotypes of his time. At the same time, creating a mock comic-book panel requires less technique than painting the Mona Lisa.

“You don’t have to put in lots of details,” said Maria Vargas, 10. “The paper you use, you can use it again.”

In Lopez’s classroom on Friday, Harrison gave the students two sample images ? the sundae and the lemonade ? and had them cut symmetrical shapes out of construction paper to produce dishes, glasses and lemon slices. Once the students had their cutouts, they duplicated the shapes on white paper with Benday dots ? the technique of using small, colored dots of two or more colors to create a third color ? a staple of Lichtenstein’s work.

Ultimately, they created images that would have looked at home on food cartons or magazine ads ? or a classic pop art painting. It was a far cry from the previous artists in the program, which include realist painter Joseph Raffael and Harlem Renaissance artist Lois Mailou Jones, but one of the points of Art Masters is versatility.

“Anything that’s in our mind, we can get it on paper,” said Melinda Hernandez, 10.dpt.18-itc-2-CPhotoInfo4N1Q21MQ20060418ixvvkenc(LA)Fourth grader Janette Venhem uses the bowl she made out of construction paper to trace a copy of it onto another sheet of paper. The class studied pop art in the style of Roy Lichtenstein. dpt.18-itc-1-CPhotoInfo4N1Q21MV20060418ixvvjencPHOTOS BY MARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Fourth grader Emanual Valdez applies some glue to a paper bowl he made during Friday’s Arts Masters class at Adams Elementary School.