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Teaching Preschoolers How to Draw:
Putting the Monart Art School Techniques Through the Paces :
Mona Brookes developed a system of drawing techniques based under a notation system of marks, which she determined were the basic elements of design: dots, circles, straight lines, curved lines, angles—visual components into which any object one might wish to draw could be reduced. This, as opposed to the Classical European system, based upon geometric forms like circles, squares, the Golden Triangle, the Fibionacci spiral, etc., and rules of perspective, which Brookes claimed were imprecise, or, perhaps, overly abstracted so that children cannot readily see them in objects, or too complicated and confusing. She claimed her system was more logical, obvious and simple, easier for children to understand and apply. I decided to try it out.
Using Freestyle Painting Methods to Introduce Toddlers and Preschoolers to Art
Second in a Series on Teaching Art to Toddlers and Preschoolers
Initial attempts to learn any skill are gestural and inchoate, but small children gradually acquire self-control and hone their perceptions so that the process of making art eases up. Any number of physiological, emotional and intellectual barriers can impede their learning process, but bear with it even while that process is messy and chaotic and the results are ugly, for they move through these limitations in their own time. Some notable milestones are described in Teaching Art to Preschoolers: Understanding the Different Stages, and it’s possible to refer to them when considering whether it’s time to refine the child’s motor control, expand their visual perception, and increase their vocabulary of notation. Although it’s a temptation to step in when we notice they are experiencing problems, sometimes it’s more important to let young children freely play. Children learn a great deal while they seem to be fiddling around, achieving nothing. If play-time is always interrupted by an authority, the child feels oppressed and the activity is no longer fun. They stop engaging in it freely and with joy. This article deals with the first stages of art creation and when to introduce new techniques and ideas.
Tivoli, 27th June, 2015: Villa D’Adriana, Villa D’Este and the Tivoli Gardens.
Villa D’Este and the Tivoli Gardens — the Mannerist Palace and giardini delle meraviglie conceived and commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este in 1550 (so as not to be confused with the Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park in Copenhagen) — lies about 35 kilometres from Metropolitan Rome in the ancient Etruscan town of Tiberti, now Tivoli. Its many fountains, ponds and grottoes are fed from an underground cistern, supplied by the Aniene River (formally Teverone), which had been diverted about a kilometer from its original flow as a Renaissance era flood control program, and by the Rivellese Spring, site of Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl who predicted Augustus Caesar’s deification.
Rome, 26th June, 2015: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica
It felt like a sprint to the finish. A half-hour before opening, our tour guide met us below the entrance to the Vatican Museums, and whisked us through the doors. Antiquities, statues, frescoes, paintings, furnishings, candelabra, curiosities and maps swept past as our guide skimmed over the names of dead popes, cardinals and European (but mainly Italian) aristocrats, and rattled off a running list of materials which sounded like jewels in a genie’s cabinet: marble from Aquitaine, jasper from Sicily, alabaster from Syria, acacia wood, oak, gilt bronze. Occasionally, she dropped an interesting oddment of information, like a pearl into the surf—Ignazio Danti’s Panoramic Map of Venice, which shows that the city hasn’t changed all that much in 430 years, or an embellishment of gold ripped from the heart of Montezuma’s palace.
The Surprising Artistic Capabilities of Children
(when they have your full attention)
Because of my upcoming tour of Europe and workshop, I’ve been prompted to write about my experiences teaching art to children in the hopes of inspiring others to kit up the kids with smocks, paint and brushes and let them go at it.
I’ve worked with some amazingly talented youngsters. The following image, for example, is a mural that was designed and painted in the mid-2000s by K. Smith, a (then) seven-year-old girl:
Her sister, L. Smith, was only nine or ten when she painted this one: Read the rest of this entry »
How ironic that Oh, Canada, an exhaustive survey and exhibition of select Contemporary Canadian Art, was originally compiled for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in Boston, back in 2012. As the New York Times Review mentioned, Canada is ” a country that has nurtured numerous international art stars and has plenty of government support for the arts but has not had a coast-to-coast biennial since 1989.”[1]
Three years later, it opened in Calgary with typical Canadian pomp, yesterday (Saturday, 31st January, 2015), just as the city returned to post-Chinook snow and bluster, with line-ups to catch the wood-paneled Bass Bus, where passengers between venues were soothed and lulled with live performances of Canadian folksongs.
The one-hundred selected art works representing 62 artists and collectives from across Canada were too massive in scope, scale and quantity for a single exhibition venue in Calgary; so four major public gallery and museum spaces have collaborated to mount this show: the Nickle Arts Gallery at the University of Calgary, The Illingworth-Kerr Gallery at Alberta College of Art and Design, the second floor art space at the Glenbow Museum and the Esker Foundation.
Yesterday’s openings provided a general overview of the exhibition, but it is too diverse to cover in a single entry, especially since the Illingworth Kerr gallery closed within minutes of my arrival from the Nickle, and the line-ups to view the show at the Esker wound all the way from the building’s fourth storey to the second floor. Ergo, I will return over the next few weeks to spend some time at each venue in detail.
[1] Rosenburg, Karen “Border Crossing Identity Crisis“, New York Times Arts and Culture section, 1st paragraph, August 30, 2012.
“Breathing Life into the Lifeless through Video: Two Selections from EMMedia’s Canola Oil Compression Camp” was written during the Winter 2011 screening at Whole Lotta Love: Critical-Creative Writing in Media Arts, facilitated by Alberta College of Art and Design instructor, writer and researcher, Christopher Frey. It was published in Calgary’s EMMedia Production and Publication 2010/2011 anthology of Critical Texts, Grain; editor, Jennifer McVeigh.
Top image: Still from Pumpjack, Lia Rogers, 2011, video, 3:16 min.
Bottom image: Still from Synthetic Rhythm, Vicki Chau, 2011, video, 5:35 min. Read the rest of this entry »
Written as part of the ARTical Collective, to encourage critical discourse on film and new media in Calgary, and published in Spring 2012, Handheld Media Arts Magazine for EM Media; Editor, Jennifer McVeigh.
A vault of recorded flotsam, the Film and Broadcasting department of Library and Archives Canada (LAC) stores footage that has existed almost since Confederation itself. Most of this material has never been seen in public. These evocative moving pictures of our nation’s people, places, activities and ideas can provide inspiration and raw material for contemporary artists, as much of the footage exists within the public domain, listed as clear of copyright restrictions and free for all Canadians to use.
But is this national treasure truly free and truly clear? Read the rest of this entry »
Since Hilah and I have received many requests for photos of her recent exhibition, here they are. The sculptural component for Hilah’s grant application project is now finished. Here it is on display at the library gallery:
The Rag-Tag Horse, Hilah Eidilon Keiran-Arney, mixed media installation, 2014.
This work is an ephemeral site-specific and process-driven mixed media sculpture and scene installation, and it was a key assignment for her Professional Development of the Arts class in senior high school. The second component of the project — an artist’s statement and photo-essay about the historical antecedents — will be unveiled at the second showing of the work in March. The third component — a video-taped night-time lantern procession along a wooded pathway, in which the horse sculpture evokes a type of archaic sacrificial offering, to a clearing where the sculpture will be burned — is slated for the spring. Read the rest of this entry »
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