SALAMANCA — Inspired by a family trip to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s Electric Op Art exhibit, STEAM teacher Stacey Clayson introduced her Seneca Intermediate School elective classes to the art form — and how they could use technology to create these visual pieces.

Op Art is a style of visual art that uses patterns, line placement and the thickness of spaces to create an optical illusion, a sense of movement or depth. Op Art is often black and white, but could also be in color as well.

Although you can draw, paint or build Op designs, many times technology is used to create it, Clayson said. Computer drawing programs, 3D design programs and even video programs can be used to create these interesting images.

“The students first looked at examples of art created by famous artists Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley,” she said. “The classes were then introduced to and taught how to use the Paint program on their school laptops.”

Clayson said students were instructed on the program’s different features and explored the icons and how they functioned. After becoming more familiar with the program, students were encouraged to design their own pieces of artwork based on what they had learned.

“The students really enjoyed making their creations and were surprised that changing something as simple as the thickness of a line could ‘trick’ your brain into thinking an object was 3D, even though it was not,” she said.

Clayson said she was happy with the end results and loves that students were able to incorporate all of the STEAM attributes into a project that they created and could be proud of.