Spooky Art

"This is a spooky race car track. And a ghost is trying to knock some of the cars out. And the fence shoots out bomb ghostes. And the haunted house has ghosts trying to knock the people out of the cars. I made it with paper and glue. It was hard to make the haunted house stand up."

"It's halloween night, that's why it's black."

"It's Frankenstein, I used crayons and watercolor."

"This is a haunted house, but it's not too scary!"

"The skeleton is wearing a hat and he's knocking on the door."

"It's my halloween book!"

"These are two skeletons, playing basketball, one is red, for the U[niversity of Utah] and one is blue for BYU."

This is a sampling of some kindergartner's chalk pastel drawings.

"She's a girl monster, and she's pretty!"

"It's a cat, only she's lots of different colors!"

created at the collage center

"It's a apron for my sister's barbie, I sewed it, but then I glued on the pocket. She's going to be happy that I made it for her."

"Look teacher! It's a street that curves, and there are cars there, too!"

"Those birds are happy. And it's raining."

"Well, I saw this material and I glued it to be dresses."

"This took me two whole art times! But it's a purse and I can use it all the time now!"

"Well, this is just the paper towel that we were using with the watercolors. And then I found shapes on it, and look: these are seals and baby seals, and clouds. And this is their house."

"I just was drawing, it's a zipline, and it's fun, 'cause you go real fast."

"It was so hard to make the house glue together like that. And there's some glue on the outside, but it's okay, right? Because you told me that when it dries it will be see through. And then I drew the other houses on the street."

Appreciating children's artwork

"These are pandas, and they have on hats! That one is hanging upside down, from the bars."

It can be difficult for adults (including myself) to appreciate the seemingly random art pieces children create when they are self-directed. We are accustomed to seeing adult-driven art projects assembled by children. But we must not confuse the two distinct activities. Adult-driven projects are fine, in fact, they help children learn to follow directions, and the results can be quite charming, and pleasing to our adult eyes.

The child-created pieces, though, those are my favorite. The younger children, especially, are not burdened with the self-criticism of the older, wiser (?) kids. These younger kids create with purpose, with vision, with joy. 

"It's a rocket ship, see? That is the space where the guy, the driver, you know, the space guy sits. And over here is an escape hatch, so he can get a way quick. These things are the drivers for it."

"It's a tower, like Rapunzel's"

"This is a farm! That's me, and that's my mom, or maybe my grandma. Anyway, we're at a farm together, you know the kind with a red building where the chickens live. In kindergarten, I got to see a real farm!"

"Okay, so I made this doghouse, and it was hard to make this part stay up. And look! The dog's looking out the window, but if you turn it around, you can see the back of him through the other window. Only, this doghouse is too small for a real dog, unless it was teeny teeny tiny. Once, I saw a lady at a store, and she had a dog that could fit in her purse! 'cept I think that this is smaller than her purse. But! I have a toy dog that can fit in this little house."

"Ha ha. This is funny, know why? Look, there's a picture of a baby's head right there. So, this is like a big tall guy, only he has a little baby head. Yeah, that makes me laugh."

"Oh, okay, so first I was drawing shapes, like we were talking 'bout today. I drew rectangles, and then those triangles, and I used different colors too. And now, it looks like a castle, almost! But maybe it's a big house. I seen big houses before, have you teacher? Yeah, those live up in the mountains, those houses. No, I think this is a castle, and I can live there and be the king and fight the bad guys. Nope! No girls in this castles, or princesses just boys [talking to the cluster of girls gathered round to admire his castle] 'cept my mom, and maybe my sister. My grandma could come to visit too. But NO OTHER GIRLS!"

"I'm just cutting lots of shapes, and making a design with them."

Collage!

These first graders were happily gluing for the entire hour!

"It was hard to make the yarn stick, so I pushed it down hard. And that's a picture of a watch like my uncle wears. The pink yarn is part of the dragonfly's tail, and the other yarn is to hang up the picture in my room."

"I used a hole punch, well, different hole punches. A regular one, and then ones that did shapes."

"This is the street, and the green things are houses. I live there, and I put my friend's house next door. 'Cept she doesn't really live next door, I just pretended. And these green poofyish things are the trees."

"I glued, and cut, and I drawed on stuff too."

"Look teacher! I made it stand up!"

"Okay, well, this is a boat, and it's supposed to go on the river, but then a bad guy tooked it away. So then, I made it so the good guys could get it back, 'cause there's a secret tunnel to it."

"I used the pastels to draw pictures of flowers, then I glued them on this paper. This orange paper is like the sun."

Kinders and wire

The kindergartners worked with wire and drew their creations. It was interesting to see them replicate the

3-d sculpture onto a 2-d piece of paper.

"Mine's a necklace. I think I'll give it to my mom, after i wear it a while."

"I traced around the stuff."

Construction center

"It's a teeny flower in a vase. The vase is a lid from a water bottle. It was hard to make the flower stand, I had to hold it a long time."

Fiber

Two second graders made matching purses, collaborating on the design. "We copycatted each other!"

In the same class, another boy created a wallet, "I made paper dollars and a pretend ID."

One of the best things about TAB is seeing students create art about the things that interest them.

"This is a family. There's the mom, the big sister, the little sister, and the boy. The little sister is going to swim, and the big sister is going to church."

"I made my name into a picture."

"She's a mouse, with a flower in her hair."

"This is batdog. He's batman's dog. And look! Batman's riding on his tail!"

"Yep. It's a finger puppet, I sewed it, but it needed a stand, so I made this hand out of cardboard."

"It's a ferris wheel, it goes to our amusedment park, and it really turns! The people go upside down, even."

"This is the ice cream stand."

 "This is a safe house. It protects you from the bad guys. There's a lock on the doors."

It's hard to see from these photos, but this safehouse shows a great deal of engineering ingenuity. The artist came up with different attachment techniques.



The 2011/2012 school year has begun!

It's the fourth week of the school year, and most classes have the collage, drawing, construction, and fiber centers available.

I was very impressed by the tower created by a second grader using no tape! Below is a close up of how he attached the flag pole.

The beauty of young children is that they can create without the stifling self-conciousness that the rest of us suffer from. This was created at the construction center.

The first grader that created the two pocket tooth fairy pillow seen here is now a second grader with even more ambitious sewing aspirations. He created this multi-sectioned wallet after drawing up a detailed plan.

Having found a random letter in the collage box, this first grader added details using a ruler, markers, scrap paper, and a "string that was just there on the ground! It was just sitting there, teacher, so I 'accided to glue it on my page! It looks great, dontcha think?!"

I love what this first grader created using only glue, paper, and markers.