December
〰️
After School
〰️
December 〰️ After School 〰️
Private Art Session
Whether your child is not ready to be dropped off, would benefit from extra attention or if you would like to experience an hour of creativity together, contact me to schedule a Private Art Session.
Check out some of our recent classes
Hanging Sculptures
-
Hanging #sculptures with mesh, copper leaf, wire, thread, fabric, string, clay, found objects and absolute imagination. How can we work with elements that are not meant to work together such as mesh and fabric, clay and string? I offer an idea and their imagination delivers. My dream job is to provide the environment and facilitate what they need to give form to their visualization
Transfers
-
What a delightful group of girls in the Wednesday class! During a conversation about what we do in class, as they were welcoming a new friend to the group, one child said, “We are kind to each other, we imagine, we don’t copy.” I replied, “Today, we are going to copy—but not each other’s work, rather using transfer paper.” The joy they felt when transferring a shape that would otherwise have been difficult for them was unexplainable. They loved going through books, finding images they liked, and bringing them to life. Gradually, other materials were added, such as ink and black labels, on which they wrote: “This is friendship,” “This is peaceful,” “This is peace,” and “I love this.”
Block printed Leaves
-
Wow I can’t get enough of these unicorns playing with leaves and color as an extension from their own fingers! We meditated holding hands in a circle and they were too fidgety to stay in silence so we just tried humming like bees. Then we took a walk in nature to find different leaves and had fun learning how to print them on paper using block printing ink. They decorated the paper into these magical colorful pieces.
Self Portraits
-
I have the most adorable group of boys on Thursdays. They care about art and are lucky to have parents who prioritize that space for them even though they also play so many sports. I get to see them surf at the beach, play soccer, and they really excel at it but they also enjoy creating and expressing how they feel. Today I asked them to tell me what are the things that they like about themselves. Of course they like being good at what they are good at! It didn’t come so easy at first but after a little practice they started sharing and going deeper, from “I like that I like to do art” to “I like that I can create”; from negative to positive from “I like that I am unorganized” to “ I like that I am creative” and from “I like that he is not mean” to “ I like that he is kind”. When asked to say what they liked about their friends, the ideas were flying, it was a lot easier and they also realized that. These paintings are to be continued next week: a self portrait in color and a self portrait in words
We Need a Village
-
Everyone has loved this project so much that we will have to continue building and adding infrastructure until we create an entire village and move into it!
Pocket Door
-
Did anyone say a pocket door to another world?! That’s a world in a tin box, a hiding spot for your secret coins, the entrance to cloud world, gateway to diamond world, a door to a magic world, and the portal to cookie world
Rainbows
-
Today was about rainbows. We looked at some images of Tibetan art where rainbows envelop a figure and they were really impressed by all the magic in the book and how nature intertwines. Stairs going up into clouds and people coming down from them along with many kinds of rainbow shapes. We visualized a rainbow around our shadow while walking on the street and when we were done I got some suspicious looks. “If you think that’s crazy, let me tell you that this happened to me today!” “Tell us!” I was in town and my friend said -you gotta get out of your car and come see this- and showed me my shadow in the pavement surrounded by an oily rainbow light. It was pretty cool.
Lil man Caves
-
Boys just want to build. Look at their little houses. How can you make a nice place for yourself to survive with no electronics and make sure you’re never bored?
Puppets
-
Wednesday class puppets continued today culminating with a little performance based on a class poem. I’ve been obsessed with a poem about mice written by a third grader in the 60’s that inspired the kids to create their own collaborative poem using a similar structure. They performed the poem out loud using their puppets and Greta made a bananas background using markers and twine.
Continue the pattern
-
Today I was amazed by the kids response to this exercise. The youngest group of 4 to 7 year olds were able to continue the pattern of one piece of fabric onto the paper. They imagined that I needed to make a dress but my piece of fabric was so small that perhaps they could help me by continuing the pattern. They did this by choosing their fabric among many options, cutting it or asking me to cut it in a particular shape and then gluing it onto the paper. At the beginning the idea of copying the pattern instead of copying an object was strange for some but they slowly understood the idea and we worked on using a system that was right for each individually. This was an exercise of finding the right colors, mixing them and placing them in the right place. Some of them worked extending the pattern from the edge of the fabric into the paper, while others worked by adding different layers of color.
