Betty Woodman inspired acrylic and clay mixed media

A couple of months ago I completed a week art camp focused on Contemporary Art. The children ranged in age from 6 to 10 years old.

Contemporary Art basically means any art created in the last 30 years and I think it is important for children to understand that all artist are not dead or lived a long time ago. That there is a vibrant and exciting art community today for them to discover.

I tried to highlight some artist that they and probably their parents have not heard of before too. Also trying to spice it up a bit for me as I would have to create new projects and learn some new facts about some artist I have been interested in but maybe didn't know a lot about.

I do try to highlight a large variety of mediums in art camps and of course one is clay. I began researching some contemporary artist working in clay and kept coming back to Betty Woodman.

Especially the works where she is incorporating paintings with her ceramics.

9 year old

The work was colorful and full of pattern. I had a sneaky suspicion that these two things would really resonate with the kids. She also had some very interesting work that highlighted negative space, you can see one of the young artist also found it interesting too as he created a mirror image of his ceramic using negative space.

7 year old, "windowsill sillies"

We looked at a series of her artworks together and the kids all had an opportunity to really look and discuss what they saw in the work. We then talked about some of the elements they could use to create their artwork inspired by Betty Woodman.

7 year old "dill pickle"

I was so impressed with how the young artist interpreted what they saw in Woodman's art in their own original creations.

10 year old "wall sconce"

They embraced the use of vibrant colors and created all their own colors using a primary palette.

7 year old, "where did that butterfly go?"

They enjoyed playing with pattern and repetition too.

9 year old, "garden vase"

And they fully committed to adding clay elements to their artworks and enjoyed solving the puzzle of how to incorporate clay into a painting.

It was a fun project that the kids seemed to really enjoy. The icing on the cake was the marvelous results they all achieved in the end.