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My campers were wonderfully enthusiastic and adventurous as we "traveled" around the world, learning about 5 countries, listening to the music of each culture, making a piece of art inspired by the country, and trying foreign foods. I loved every minute!
Day 1: Argentina When campers arrived, they painted and beaded wooden name tags that my husband made on our Glowforge, then they colored in a giant welcome banner. We learned information about Argentina, made clay llama sculptures, and wove tiny blankets for them with a straw loom and yarn. Later in the week we painted the llamas. For food, we made homemade alfajores cookies by rolling out the dough and filling them with dulce la leche. Yum! Recipe: https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/alfajores-28373
Day 2: Russia
We talked about the vast country of Russia and then read a story called Babushka's Doll by Patricia Polocco. The campers painted wooden matryoshka nesting dolls and then we made blini, a thin pancake, which we filled with strawberries and whip cream! Recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/215962/blini-russian-pancakes/
Day 3: Italy
After watching a video about Italy, one of the students dressed up like Leonardo da Vinci and "painted" the Mona Lisa. We read the story Strega Nona by Tommie de Paola. We spread wet plaster on burlap to make our own frescoes. When they dried, we drew fruit still lifes with chalk pastels. We also made margherita pizza with sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, and basil. Yummy! Recipe: https://www.thekitchn.com/easy-recipe-classic-margherita-pizza-recipes-from-the-kitchn-174103 (we used refrigerator bistro pizza dough and jarred pizza sauce instead of homemade)
Day 4: Egypt
After watching a video about a tourist in Egypt, we made funny Pharaoh selfies with our names written in hieroglyphs. We cooked up some Egyptian Basbousa Semolina cake that was very interesting, like sweet, dense cornbread with syrup on top. Recipe: https:/cleobuttera.com/middle-eastern/best-ever-pastry-shop-style-basbousa/
Day 5: Thailand
We enjoyed a video about a family who traveled to Thailand, and got some special information from MaiLa, one of the campers whose grandparents are from Thailand. We read a book called The Umbrella Queen and painted with liquid watercolors on paper lanterns. We cooked up some veggie stir fry and rice noodles with the option of sweet/sour sauce or Thai peanut sauce. We topped it off with Pocky candy sticks and watermelon slushies. The kids enjoyed shopping at the studio store, too! Recipe: https://damndelicious.net/2014/05/24/watermelon-slush/ (I skipped the sugar)
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I had a fabulous group of artsy, enthusiastic campers for my first week of 2019 summer camps. Here is a recap of all of our fun projects and learning. Projects 1, 2, & 3: When the kids arrived, they stained and beaded wooden name tags, which my husband and I designed and etched on our Glowforge. They also colored in a big Crazy Art banner. When those were complete, we went into the studio and viewed a slideshow of the work of artist Paul Anton, who makes giant, hyper-realistic food art. We made pinch pot cupcakes with coiled frosting out of air-dry clay, then painted them a few days later and boxed them in adorable bakery cupcake boxes. They were a hit! Bonus: my daughter, Grace, made fancy cupcakes for us all to enjoy at the end of the first day! Project 4: We watched a slideshow of the Pop Art prints of Andy Warhol and then proceeded to make our own using gelli plates, texture items, and acrylic paints to pull our mono prints. The kids printed on black & white photos of themselves that I had snapped on Day 1, then put them all together on black paper to make them POP! Project 5: After looking at the beautiful close-up floral art of Georgia O'Keefe, we drew and painted these wonderful extra-large paintings of flowers. I taped down the edges to produce a nice white frame. For the outlines, I introduced the kids to India ink in bingo daubers. They work beautifully! Then we practiced mixing the acrylic paint right on the paper to get lovely blends of colors. They added tiny insects and a butterfly magnet to finish the piece. A couple of the kids ventured in their own direction when I mentioned that Georgia O'Keefe also liked to paint animal skulls! Projects 6-7: Friday was the BIG DAY! We blacked-out the studio, turned on the blacklights, and painted with fluorescent paints. There were lots of oohs and ahhh! The kids loved how my mural glowed under the blacklight. We designed and painted mad scientists in a cartoon style, with chalked bubbles in the background, and then we designed ice cream cones on foam core and filled them in with glowing ice cream salt that I dyed with fluorescent paint. I forgot to get pictures of these! Such a sensory experience for the kids! Of course, the paint ended up on their faces (and mine!) We invited the parents down for a Glow Show at the end. Here are a few more pictures of the other ways kids had fun at camp, including petting the studio cat, Ginger, and playing on the rope swing, zip line, and slack line in my backyard. Thanks for a great week to my beautiful, talented new friends! I usually say YES when it comes to new artistic opportunities, because I not only learn new skills, but I break up the routine and often find new ways to creatively apply what I've learned. As I painted long hours in the quiet church gym this week, I listened, among other podcasts, to a TED Talk on "Jumpstarting Creativity," in which speaker Tim Harford talked about a powerful technique to unleash new avenues of creativity called "disruption." Mixing it up. Doing something ridiculously different than your usual. I realized that my current disruptive activity was painting a gimungous canvas backdrop for my church's VBS program, which has the theme of "ROAR" this year. My talented friend, Amy, who designs sets for television, designed the backdrop. I had to learn how to project it, sketch it, and properly paint it. I messed up a lot, improvised when I couldn't see the shape of the elephants, and continually dripped on finished parts. Cringe! But stepping back, one can forget about the little mistakes and see the magic! Thanks to custodian and former sign painter Brad Higgins for his good advice, starting with reminding me to pour the paint over the drop cloth instead of the gym floor! And thanks to Pastor Brian and the whole team for pouring your hearts and time into transforming the church into an African savanna and preparing wonderful messages and activities for the kids! VBS "disrupts" the normal routine at our church and ushers hundreds of kids into the mystery and roaring power of God's love.        I had a most unusual request from a friend recently. Six month ago, she and her family adopted a daughter from China, who would become their 5th child and 2nd adopted child. This 10-year-old girl is spunky and curious and soaking up the language and culture. She is also deaf and has the wonderful ability to express herself through art. Her art is full of manga-style princesses, rainbows, ruffles and glittery crowns. She carefully labels the portraits with her new English name and the names of her new brothers & sisters, and mom and dad. She is finding her place in the world through art. Throughout these 6 months, as she works to bond with her daughter, my friend has also been caring for her mother, who had late-stage cancer until she died a week ago. How do you explain death to a young girl from a different culture who has limited sign language. How do you explain the belief that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord? My friend asked if I could help...if I could somehow draw this concept. As she talked, I formed a vision for the painting, and then, startlingly, my friend described what I was picturing...the bed, the hand, the body, the spirit. It was a Holy Moment that made me shiver! I said I would try, and the next day I laid the watercolor on their kitchen counter. The picture was of a manga-style grandma, rising from her final resting place into the heavenly realm and toward the hand of God. I'm glad I clothed her in a rainbow gown before I even knew how much this girl loved rainbows. She quieted and studied the picture. Her mom signed "grandma." She nodded knowingly. And I thought to myself that God, the Grand Designer, paints around and over and through us all grief and joy and beauty and love and hope.   I had a parent ask for my thoughts on how often her student should take art classes and if it was okay to take breaks and prioritize other classes. Schedules get so busy with conscientious parents trying to make sure all bases are covered. The question got me thinking back to my own educational experience. I was a highly driven, straight-A student my whole life, from K-college. I was also involved in all kinds of extra-curriculars, from sports to student council to music and theater. I took AP classes and did all the college prep stuff. Times were different in the 80s, but I CANNOT remember a semester where I was not able to fit in an art class. Art classes were a vital time of creativity and decompression for this little high achiever. They exercised a different aspect of my brain than math, science, and English, and I am certain they helped to keep me balanced and mentally healthy.  Even though I didn't pursue it as a degree and never thought I'd teach it, my art experiences and skills have influenced me daily for my entire life and have greatly enhanced my quality of life. I approach problems creatively, which comes in handy in everything from parenting to business meetings to interpersonal relationships. I am the one who gets asked to paint banners, create business cards, make jewelry for fundraisers, and help decorate for friends' weddings. The fact that I can contribute artistically in multiple ways to people and organizations is a huge blessing to me. The fact that I have a deep appreciation of beauty and design is a salve in a troubled world.  I know this is all anecdotal. But I've read plenty of scientific studies that confirm my points. You can research those on your own. But keep this in mind, dear parents: depending on your child, art may be more than a "fun extra," it may be the class that keeps them mentally healthy and has a life-long Return on Investment.
I'm so grateful to the 13 folks who signed up for my first Watercolor Bootcamp. Not only were the enthusiastic learners, the were excellent encouragers to me as I experimented with new ideas and teaching methods. We agreed the class should be longer, so my next bootcamp, coming in September will be every other Thursday for 6 weeks. I will keep some projects the same and try some new ones. Check out the slideshow! These girls got together to celebrate Emily's 12th birthday by painting abstract layers, starting with a secret layer of words, then adding a colorful background layer with textures, and finally adding abstract flowers and a cute 3-D butterfly. They did a great job! I teamed with two dear friends who are also wonderful therapists to host a workshop and art project on the topic of grief. The project I chose was based on the Japanese are of kintsugi, in which broken pottery is repaired with gold instead of thrown away. The paintings have a secret layer of words, a beautiful abstract background layer, and a "broken" pot whose cracks are "filled" with gold leaf. The message is that our cracks and brokenness can be beautiful and part of our character. We'd been looking forward to this trip all year, having studied 16 pieces of art in the vast collection and having learned about the artists and interesting history of each piece throughout the year. One of the pieces was nearly destroyed during the attacks of 9-11 before it hung in the lobby of the Gonda Building. One of the artists lost an eye. One of the gigantic pieces was moved from outside the building to inside using 2 cranes. Such a treasure trove of beauty and story! Warhol, Chihuly, Michelangelo, Miro, Mestrovic, and on and on. Checkout the slideshow from the 4 groups I took on the tour. Our final project of the year in my intermediate classes was painting 16x20 canvases with beautiful landscapes. The students chose their own reference photograph and synthesized much of what they had learned through the year to create the paintings, and they were lovely! They spent 5-6 hours on these. The newest editions to my art room are black-out shades, blacklights, and fluorescent paints! This allowed us to have an awesome end of the year party, at which we painted ourselves, our papers, our plaster hands, the tables, and even the poor floor, which kids said looked like a galaxy (it came off easily!) Why a glow party? I want kids to remember their unique art experiences when they're 80 years old with a great-grandkid on their lap. I want them to say, "I remember when I did ________ in my art class." I think this is one memory that will stick! I have wanted to do this project with my elementary classes for a long time. It's one of my favorite art memories from childhood, except we did not cast our hands, we cast our FACES! The kids, who were initially skeptical and may have thought their teacher had lost her mind, warmed up to the idea of having their hands wrapped in gooey plaster gauze, allowing it to harden, and then sliding it off. The sliding off was the hard part! It would have helped if their hands were boneless! After they spent a week drying, the kids painted their sculptures and some added embellishments and fluorescent paint so they glowed during our Glow Parties. Here are the winners of our 2nd Annual Flapdoodles Ice Cream Art Contest! Nearly all my students created 3-D clay relief sculptures mounted on painted canvas panels with an ice cream theme. The owners of Flapdoodles selected the winners from 3 categories: 7-9 yo, 10-12 yo, and Intermediate. The art is currently displayed at Flapdoodles South through July. Drama students performed my original mini-musical, Unleashed!, about a writer who is typing a story about characters in an enchanted story, when suddenly the characters begin to interact with her and try to take over the story. We even had a cool slow-motion blacklight glow scene! Thanks to the over 30 friends and families who came to watch! These ladies let me guide them through watercoloring feathers and nests in honor of the long-awaited arrival of spring! Our 2nd Annual Flapdoodles Ice Cream Art Contest is underway! The students planned and executed these adorable clay relief sculptures, mounted on painted canvas panels. Some are still life sculptures and others incorporate animals enjoying ice cream, inspired by the book "Gorilla Loves Vanilla." Here are all the entries. Winners announced in April! Drama students created their own paper mâché marionettes to help them tell the story of Tacky the Penguin, based on the book by Helen Lester. The read winter poems, created voices and personalities for their puppets, and sang songs to tell the story of a penguin who just doesn't quite fit in. It was SO adorable! |
AuthorJill Pearson, owner & instructor at Riverwood Studio, Oronoco, Minnesota Archives
June 2019
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