Next time you are stumped — or panicked — while searching for a cool art project for the little ones, think minimalist. Less is more. No supplies needed, just your everyday garden hose. Check out the expressive silhouettes and the reactions to them in this vid. Performance art in its simplest form. Who cares if it disappears in minutes? It’s all about the process, isn’t it?
It’s All About That Paint, ’bout That Paint, ’bout That Paint….
“If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” — Abraham Maslow
So the other day, in reference to something I can’t for the life of me remember, my husband threw out this old proverb. I had no earthly idea what point he was trying to make, and as I often do, I just filed the conversation somewhere inside my most underused medial temporal lobe.
Then over the weekend, Hope’s Nest (hopesnest.org) volunteers and artists held our annual Halloween art workshop in South Los Angeles. As always, it filled me with a sense of joy, and I quickly began planning our Christmas session. Suddenly, in celebrating the excitement of the moment, and the anticipation of the next, I had an epiphany. I realized that the bliss I experience from of these events, comes from the same source: putting kids together with paints.
At that moment, I realized Halloween is not about candy, nor costumes; the treat in the “trick or treat” for me, is watching the little ones tap into a creative spirit that they almost never get to show off.
For me, I know now that Christmas is less about the presents, or even the spirit of the season, than it is about crayons and acrylics, the boundless sprinkling of glitter, and kids who rarely get to play with these materials.
And Easter? Easter is about resurrection, but it’s the rising of artistic energy from the kids — toddlers to teens — as they design their one-of-a-kind Easter eggs.
That’s when that proverb crawled it’s way back into my brain. I realized it applied to me. All I have, metaphorically, is a paint brush, so in a real way for me, everything looks like a canvas. That’s obviously an oversimplification, but the thought of it makes me smile. Wanna paint?
Check out a few of our favorite creations here:
Art OUTSIDE the lines? Yes!
Teaching our children: To conform or create?
“Stay within the lines!” It’s one of the first instructions we hear as soon as we are old enough to color. And the implications can extend throughout the rest of our lives. Thinking she is a “good girl” by listening to teacher, a child may “strive to please” thereby limiting her sense of self-expression.
I get that she needs to learn how to follow direction, but what about teaching them more? Offering an alternative to the norm? International superstar artist Ai Weiwei once said, “Creativity is part of human nature — it can only be untaught.” So if he’s right, it’s actually more natural for a child to “explore” than “obey.”
In my case, in Kindergarten, I became so obsessed with neatness — over inventiveness — that around age six I would constantly ask my best friend Tana Klugherz if she could see the white spaces I left in-between the strokes of color on the pages of my Venus Paradise (color by number) Coloring set. In other words, was I filling in the blanks between the lines completely? It was my top priority — because I was taught that was important. If Tana saw white, I saw red. I knew I had more work to do.
Ultimately, I discovered the artistic rebel inside. But it took years to let her out.
Finding fearlessness in beleaguered South Central LA:
This weekend at our annual Easter art workshop, I was shocked — and stoked — to see dozens of inner-city children create unplanned masterpieces in their own way. I can’t explain it, but they didn’t seem to care about the lines — they just wanted to splash paint around with reckless abandon. They were so free. Yet so focused. So unaware of any rules they might have heard before. Check out the work at the top of the page and the artist who created it (Pic #3). We handed him a black and white line drawing of a cross with flowers and he decided to basically ignore the constraint of the pre-made image on the page, and make his mark another way. Bold, loose, uninhibited. And notice how the painting matches his black, white, and red shirt. That kid got it. And he wasn’t the only one. (Pics #2 and #4) It renewed my faith.
Real working artists have one predictable shared quality: they cannot be contained. In practice, this means they are always experimenting, pushing the envelope, and focused on the fresh and new. Their daily mantra: “Reject the status quo.” Thank God. Or we would have some pathetically lame or boring art emerging from painters’ and sculptors’ studios.
My hope is we can show kids the excitement in unleashing imagination, and the sense of accomplishment in making something out of nothing. So let’s just get the heck out of their way.
Special thanks to Lucindy Jeter and the staff of Algin Sutton Recreation Center in South Central Los Angeles.