creativelifeandtimes

I have not had any available creative energy left for blogging these last three weeks! All of it has gone into thinking about and preparing for the museum art camp I have just finished teaching. I enjoyed it immensely especially this last week. The title was ART IN IMAGINATION, official description: Mermaids, Fairies, Spacemen, Robots- Create original artwork based on fantasy using both 2 and 3-D media.

I remembered to take my camera two or three days but I needed a full time photographer to take pictures. With things happening fast and furious most of the art work got away without being photographed! We try to send most of the art home as soon as it is finished so usually my pictures of finished art is a haphazard catch-as-catch-can occurrence.

My lovely and talented assistant, my daughter gave her account of art camp here.

Monday- Draw and paint your imagined character using tempera paint on white paper. Embellish the person and place with the addition of yarn hair, google-eyes, glitter, sequins, tissue paper, and feathers.

Tuesday- Create your own three dimensional imagined character. I showed examples of a doll/action figure made of a roll of corrugated cardboard, one inch diameter wooden bead for the head, and pipe cleaners for arms and legs. I also showed how they could make a character by cutting two simple shapes of felt, ovals or rectangles stapled all around and stuffed with polyester fiber. We had colorful felt, pipe cleaners, colored staples, google-eyes, variety of colored paper, plastic lids, corrugated cardboard, brads, buttons, beads, sequins, markers, paint, glitter, craft glue, and yarn. Available tools were: scissors, hole-punch, needle, and thread if asked for. We had a cool glue gun station with an adult doing the gluing as requested. My assistant was very busy gluing as soon as the children realized the potential to glue almost anything without the “wait to dry time” required by the white craft glue.

Wednesday- Continuation of the above. Most children made multiple items of increasing complexity.

Thursday- Imagination at Night

The children wanted to do the same thing again as the previous two days….They begged!

I had them start with black construction paper to create an imagined scene at night with their characters. All of the same materials and tools were available to use. Some children were so intent on creating 3-D that they pushed the boundary of the assignment to construct dioramas out of the black paper. Others made three dimensional characters to attach to a night-time scene. I found a roll of yellow crepe paper so I showed anyone who wanted to how to make crepe paper and tissue paper flowers.

Friday

Imagine a set of double doors that when opened hold an imaginary world. All the materials and tools of the previous days were available. We made triptych structures out of corrugated cardboard with bead and button doorknobs. The interior became a forest, mountain with a castle, the moon with an astronaut, sea shore with fish and mermaids, space aliens and dragons… Some of these structures morphed into castles!

The director of the program, parents, and children gave this class high praise and I have already been asked to repeat it next year.