Art and Content Area Literacy

When visiting the Georgia Museum of Art, I found a painting I really liked that nicely captures both science and art. The painting is called Galapagos II by Rebecca Rutstein. The story behind her painting was that she was on board a ship traveling from the Galapagos Islands to southern California, and during the trip the boat was trailing a hurricane she created this painting. She poured paint on the canvas and let the ships movement do the work, and she worked with scientist who mapped the ocean floor with sonar technology and put the data in her painting.

This would be a good painting to incorporate into my classroom when learning about the ocean. It has actual data from sonar technology from the oceans floor so this could be a good introduction for a section about ocean geography. Also, I could have the students do an assignment similar to how this painting was created and have them pour paint on a canvas and move the canvas around in motions like the ocean rocking the ship and then they can incorporate some scientific data on after. For example, they could also do sonar technology data of the ocean floor, or migration patterns of whales. (203)