Standing Back

This student began her collage with a carefully cut out landscape from a magazine. As she continued on her piece she layered thin tissue paper over the image, which garnered positive process comments for her technique. From here, she continued to cover up the image with layers of tissue until you could no longer seeing the image, losing the effect that she had just received positive comments on. As the adult artist in the room, I found it difficult to stand back and not intervene while this artist continued her process when it meant changing the aesthetics that had appealed so much to me personally. As facilitators in an open studio, we often have to remind ourselves that the environment we create is more process oriented than product and that every individual's work is their own. Opinions can so often get in the way of creativity, especially in the child who is discovering.

Making clean-up fun.

This artist and his caretaker have found a way to make the clean-up process less daunting and more like a game. Spare clay that needed to be collected was rolled into balls around the table, with the objective of picking up all the pieces as fast and efficiently as possible. This technique works well to help bring a focus to care of materials without feeling like a lesson.

 Involving adult and child in the clean-up task as a team effort helps to build a sense of responsibility, achievement and pride in their work. Here the hands-on, open environment of the studio continues even once the artwork is finished and put away.

Color mixing continues....

On this day, artists ages 3-5yrs began exploring collages. They started with the option of oil pastels then adding glue and paper/plastic scraps to their drawings. For several weeks leading up to this class, students had been working with color mixing and paint, this being the first week these materials were not readily available. At one point they began to play with color mixing the dyed glue and soon became more invested in this than their works of art on the table. They excitedly voiced their new color concoctions just as they had done in weeks prior. At this age, each discovery seems to be met with pride, positivity, and an immediate need to share the inspiring news with their peers

Painting between the lines...

This painter continues to find temptation to paint outside of his paper. Often, when confronted with a clean sheet, we would observe him attempting to paint on the wall between his paper and that of his neighbor artists. It required a lot of constant redirection on his parent's part.

After contemplating this we realized he may be drawn to the areas he already sees color, and not understanding his mother's "nos" and continual diverting of his brush when there is already paint where he wants to go.

Our goal in the studio is to problem solve in a way that lets the child continue to explore and create, with more yeses than nos, but in a way that allows for some control of the environment.

One solution here is to experiment with one long sheet of paper across the wall, giving the artist a greater freedom of expression and movement, and a beginning a social awareness of other artists in the studio.

Let the Observations begin....

My goal for this blog will be for it to serve as a documentation and process journal of the discoveries and learning moments that I observe during my 1st year internship as a graduate Art Therapy student. Initially I will begin by talking about two specific children: one, a younger child who attends class with her parent/guardian and one, slightly older, who attends one of the afternoon classes. This first post is really just a test because I've never tried this before.