Colorful Carriage

This young artist began at the light table stacking colorful cylinders, enjoying the balance and the color in the light.

Dad, working beside her began a construction with the interlocking pieces.

She quickly adopted it, adding her cylinders to the structure as people on a carriage.

The carriage and its colorful riders.

Power Lines

This young artist was an energetic painter working with a blue and yellow palette to create rich shades of green and diligently covering the paper.

For his third painting, he moved to making marks in the paint with popsicle sticks.

Then moved to using a blue pastel to carefully add power lines, moving throughout the page and connecting back to each other in careful loops.

Finally, he added additional paint over the power lines. Mom shared that the family lost power for 16 hours in the snow storm so power lines were clearly an important subject of conversation at home and now their importance is also recorded in this painting.

Coils, Glorious Coils!

For this young artist, long thick coils were pure delight as he wrapped them over his arm, calling it a snake.

The coil moved and bent with the movement of his hands.

Finally landing in an ever-growing sculpture of coils.

Favorite Color Mixing Quotes

"It's almost officially changed!"

"I am going to do the most daring thing ever and mix this...."

"I made light pink, dark pink and middle size pink."

"Yellow, orange and peach - I call it yorch!"

About using oil pastels:
"I rub the side and the color falls off!"

Color Wheel Inspiration

A color wheel is one of many visual references posted in the studio. This young artist was exploring collage and oil pastels when the color wheel caught her eye and she decided to make one of her own.

She asked for a circle and began with one traced in pencil on a small square of paper.

She was determined in her work, making her way around the edge of the circle arranging sections of color.

She used her fingers to go back and blend some of the colors.
The completed color wheel - in recreating it, this young artist has made it her own while also reflecting on an important artists' tool.

Internship: Light the Night 2010

Internship: Light the Night 2010: " On December 21st, the longest night of the year, Art at the Center held their second annual Light the Night community..."

A Class Portfolio of Trading Cards

We ended our Wednesday After School Studio class with an artist trading card exchange.

Artist trading cards are small works of art about the size of a trading card (2.5 by 3.5 inches).

The photo above shows the assembled collection of cards on the light table before the trading began.

What was so exciting to watch was how many variations on technique the artists explored.

A communal work table allows for lots of sharing of materials and ideas.

Collage and water-color crayons.

Paper weaving, stamping and paper sculpture.

It was fun to see techniques that “think outside the card” and push the boundaries of the small 2-D format.

Also lots of affirming messages and a broad range of experimenting with technique. The small format seemed to lend itself well to experimentation, inspiration from friends and trying new things.

A bonus at the end, each artist got leave with a small portfolio assembled of classmates’ images.