The Children's Art Carnival at the Art Barge

On August 31, I visited the Art Barge located in Amagansett, NY at the end of Long Island. It felt like a pilgrimage of sorts to find this beautiful outpost dedicated to artmaking and education. I traveled to see the Children's Art Carnival in action. The Art Carnival was developed by Victor D'Amico for the Museum of Modern Art in 1942; it was held at the MOMA and also traveled to Italy, Japan, and Spain. The concept combined a room of motivational "toys" for children to manipulate to explore shape, color, line, and form, followed by studio time with stations set up for painting, collage, sculpting with clay, and creating mobiles.
Victor and Mabel D'Amico founded the Art Barge and the studio continues their legacy of innovative art education and a dedication to learning. In recent years, the Art Barge has recreated the concept of the Children's Art Carnival and I was eager to see it in action.

Colored gels on the windows demonstrate color mixing and show another way to appreciate the great view.

In the motivation room, this velcro shape felt board, allows children to explore shape, color and practice creating compositions.

Here elastic string over a peg board created a series of parallel lines. Children created designs by placing pegs and stretching the string over them, creating interesting angles and intersections of lines. This line exploration was popular in the motivation room.

Moving into the studio, this mobile making station provides a frame above to hang works in progress with a variety of materials for twisting, tying and hanging to create interesting sculptures. Seashells seemed fitting for the setting.

The classic paint set-up D'Amico suggested for students included caster cups with red, blue, yellow, white and black paint, a cup for water and a sponge to dab the brush. Here the child has mixed pink in her white and is painting on a piece of glass to make a monoprint.

Thank you to Thomas and Wesley for showing me around and allowing me to visit their afternoon class.

The balcony and view outside the Children's Studio and the motivation room for the Art Carnival.

Thank you to Art Barge Director, Christopher Kohan for showing me around and sharing so many wonderful stories of the Art Carnival and his work with Victor and Mabel D'Amico.

Coming soon...a visit to the D'Amico home and studio.

BIG CHALK DRAW

Thank you to all who participated in our first annual BIG CHALK DRAW.
To view more photos, click the title above.

Exploring Character, Story and Artistic Media

Children often enjoy the ability to move from one media to another while continuing to explore the same subject. Here, a character that began through play with clay, evolved into a drawing, then a painting and finally a story. Throughout the clay Pokey Pokey remained in the studio (or was reformed as needed) as a playful character in his own right.

It seems this clay sculpture was the original beginning of the "Pokey Pokey" character and story which evolved over the course of a few days work in the studio and was explored in a variety of art media. Pokey Pokey had personality from the moment of creation and would say hello to friends in the studio.

Here, the artist completed a drawing of her sculpture.

A day later when we began a painting, Pokey Pokey was still on her mind and she began with a similar drawing which was completed with paint and the telling of his story.

"Pokey Pokey playing with his friends and they are playing in the grass. And then they got lost and then there was something pointing to each of them and they couldn't see it very well and it was magic and it was black. It was a connection. It points to everyone. There was a swirly sun and there was yellow all around. And there was lots of light pink around them too." The story was recorded and displayed with the picture as well as becoming a part of a class book of paintings and stories.

Emerging Vocabulary

One of our goals in the studio is to use artistic vocabulary and to build community through talking about the creative process and explorations with materials.
In this class, we began with mandalas on both black and white paper, exploring how the colored pastels looked different on different backgrounds. This young artist noticed that the lighter colors "camoflaged" with the white paper.

Other color combinations created a contrast or seemed to "pop" off the page.

The kind of mark making also contributed to qualities of camoflage or contrast. Layering and rubbing the color on the paper created more blended and camoflaged colors (the lower circle)while there was more contrast when marks were made directly as in the concentric circles.

We also explored different kinds of mark-making, beginning with making direct lines with the point of the pastel.

"Indirect" marks were created using a stick on the back of a colored paper to transfer color to another paper.

The paper on top with direct marks was used to create the indirect transfer design on the paper behind it.

Talking about our artwork provided the opportunity to reflect on the process, share our intentions and discoveries, and ask each other questions.

Exploration and Intention

In observing this painting process over two weeks, it was interesting to see how the artist explored so many different techniques the first week and created such an interesting abstract composition. By my observation, the whole thing seemed to evolve and grow as she went along. In contrast, her second week painting seemed much more planned from the beginning and I thought it was interesting she incorporated many of her mark making tools and experiments from the week before into this painting. Below are the artists' comments on her process.
I wanted to make an abstract picture with a bunch of shapes.

I was trying out different techniques using different brushes.

I wanted to make craters in a thick layer of paint. I blew on it to achieve this.

I got a bigger brush and decided to make thicker lines.

Kathryn wanted us to fill in as many spaces between the lines and shapes so I began to do that.

My picture turned out more colorful than I had expected at the beginning.

When my dad saw the picture, he held it upside down and thought I had made colorful trees. I didn't realize that my stalactites could also be seen as trees.

Sunflower picture: When I started this picture I was thinking about how our sunflowers in our garden were not growing. I knew what I wanted it to look like before I painted it. It was not an experiment. I had a plan in my head.



I used some of the same brushes from my first picture and I especially liked the small brush and the big, thick brush (looks like a BBQ brush that you would put sauce on the grill). I mixed fewer colors than the first time because I wanted to use less colors.

I like the way it came out because the sunflower is the main idea and pops out of the picture without you focusing on the smaller background details.

Asking the artist to comment on her process provided an opportunity for us to learn more about her intentions and ideas. Prior to reading her comments I had forgotten about the conversation about stalactites as she was exploring dripping paint in the first picture and had not know the motivation for her very purposeful sunflower picture. The story of the creative process and the stories that motivate it enrich the viewing of the picture.

Risk Taking and Happy Accidents

Observing new painters of all ages, it seems to be common to put colors down in distinct areas on the paper, leaving some white space in between. Filling in background and in-between spaces seems to be a risky step, what if my original intention is ruined or covered over? What if I don't like what I add? In parent child classes I have watched adults sit with the same dilemna as young children, resistant to adding something new and unsure if it will work.
It is an opportunity to witness a courageous moment to observe a new painter considering the in-between spaces in their compositions and to paint them for the first time.

The stories children tell about their paintings and materials bring great joy too. Here the paint ran because there was a lot of water in the brush. Rather than be upset, the young painter was delighted. "The water is drawing too!" he announced and indeed it was.

Eric Carle and his Caterpillar Share a Birthday

My family and I visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts this summer. In the main hall are four large sheets of Tyvec stretched on frames and painted by Carle. Beside each is a description of how they were painted, laid out on the floor using a variety of materials including brooms and carpet squares to brush and stamp designs. Viewers are encouraged to try to find places where each tool was used. The fields of color are very vibrant, Carle is an artist who clearly enjoys playing with his materials and with color. In an interview excerpt, below, he advocates for giving children opportunities to make choices in their work and to play with color, texture and materials.

Eric Carle is celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and his 80th birthday. This excerpt comes from an inteview posted on the National Education Association (NEA) website.

If you were an art teacher, what would your class look like?
"When I was an art student, we painted colorful paints, all kinds of colors on sheets of paper, and that way we accumulated a nice collection of color. Then we tore out shapes, cut out shapes, made collages. It's not so important that right away you go ahead and do houses and animals. The children could make birds or elephants, if they like, but I'm not saying to do anything. If you just do abstract shapes and squares and you play with them, it would be a wonderful thing.

Some schools I've been to, they collect all kinds of discarded things -- wools and papers and sticks and stones. They make collages out of that and I think that's wonderful, rather than sitting a child down and saying, "Now draw a tree!" Maybe the child is not in the mood to draw a tree!"