Collaborate with the English and History departments in your school to teach students about the myths and traditions associated with the month of January so students can draw inspiration to create artwork for your display. Have students paint or draw self-portraits imitating the traditional style used to create images of Janus, depicting themselves looking forward with one face that is joined to a second face looking back.
You can extend the Janus display by creating a large gateway to represent the future year. Have your students draw and paint images that represent dreams and aspirations they have for the upcoming year inside the gateway. These paintings and drawings can be created in a surrealistic style to form a dreamscape of the future. Of course, this dreamscape can be used as a display project on its own as well.
Make a collage of pictures taken in the previous year, or a photomontage. You can create a second gateway to border the photo montage and put the Janus self- portraits in a line going in a line directly in between the two gateways, with one of the faces looking towards the "future" gate and the face on the other side looking back at the gateway of the photo-montage to tie these projects together. This can be tied into a lesson on Dada, taking a more expressive stance on world events that have taken place over the last year by using pictures produced by the media as the photomontage materials. This project can also be used as the main display on its own.
If the Chinese new year happens to fall in the month of January, have your students make traditional lanterns to celebrate. Give the students a broad selection of images that have been used traditionally in Asian artwork. Geisha, bamboo, pandas, dragons, koi fish and flowers are appropriate images. Teach your students how to use the watercolor wash technique along with wet on wet, splatter and wet with salt techniques. Provide every student with four 10-by-13-inch watercolor paper panels and have them each select one image. Tell the class to wash their panels and paint the image on the panels. Make sure they leave a marginal space measuring 1 1/2 inches on all of the sides of every panel. Fold the marginal spaces over and glue them down. Use a hole puncher to make holes in a line up the long sides of the panel. Thread string through the holes to lace the panels together (in the same way you tie your shoes). Knot the ends and tie the top strings together. Hang the lanterns for your display.