We started with this very fun project where the kids created pillows using canvas bags. I sure wish I could take credit for the genius idea of turning a plain canvas bag into a pillow but alas I cannot, I found the idea from Meri Cherry (yes that's her real name), a teacher I met through Instagram.
Seriously this world gets smaller by the day and you meet people in the most interesting ways. Meri Cherry has a studio in California and she does some very exciting things with young children. One of them was this very simple way to create decorative pillows.
You literally take a canvas bag, stuff it with some filling and iron it shut with sewing adhesive. Doable even for me, a woman who struggles to thread a bobbin.
I decided to have the young artists create an acrylic painting on a canvas bag instead of a traditional canvas, once the paint was dried gave the finished works a once over with a hot iron to set, then stuffed and ironed.
The kids LOVED them. They asked to do it again. I heard from all of them how much they enjoyed doing something other than painting on paper that they could use to decorate their rooms. Evidently their walls at home are getting too full to display more artwork, we should all have such problems....
I created a printmaking project where the kids created change pouches.
Each artist created a linocut to use for printing. I put out a variety of inks and let them have fun. Interesting to watch how they decided to use their printing plate differently on each side of the pouch. Again, they all seemed very pleased to have a project on something other than paper. Who knew?
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We used dyes and resist to create one of a kind t-shirts
And I introduced an artist I had seen at the Albertina Museum while traveling in the summer named Eduard Angeli. It was a retrospective of his work in honor of his birthday and these pastels on a hemp like fabric just about did me in, this bridge in particular. Is it not stunning?
artwork by Eduard Angeli
I think the security guard was equal parts concerned I was going to stick my nose right on the piece and amused at how smitten I was as I tried to figure out the process. If only we each had spoken the others' language, I'm sure he would of enlightened me much more on the process.
I find the security guards at the Vancouver Art Gallery are a wealth of information as they hear us touring adult and school groups through them all week.
Anyway, I had the kids create pastel drawings on linen. They couldn't resist adding some stitching since I 'framed' them in embroidery hoops. I think they came out lovely.
Love this abstract the youngest child created inspired by Angeli's work. She stitched some lines in with thread and then just enjoyed experimenting with the process of adding pastel on top. She began playing with adding some water with the pastels to see what would happen and the rest was magic.
And finally I gave the children the opportunity to paint with thread. Each child drew a picture onto their fabric and then began to fill in the drawing painting with embroidery thread. This was so popular they did not want to do anything else. Other than threading needles when they got frustrated with trying, there wasn't a whole lot for me to do other than enjoy time laughing and talking to them while admiring their artworks. Once in awhile they would ask me to show them a new stitch which at least let me feel like I was earning my pay!
And finally no week is complete without some kind of clay project and so I had them create a loom out of clay so they could try their hand at weaving. Pretty simple process, the outside could be any shape they wanted and the only parameters they had to adhere too was (1) to make sure the clay wasn't rolled out too thin.
(2) They all used the same circle template to cut the middle out and they had to add either 15 or 17 holes- no more, no less.
(3) And they had to have a fingers width between the opening of the circle and the weaving holes and a finger width between weaving holes and the outer edge of their clay.
After we threaded the weft, I gave each young artist a variety of different textured white yarns to weave. Once finished they could add watercolor to paint the weaving. I should mention the kids were also able to paint their clay prior to wefting too.
As you can see, some chose to paint their yarns and some did not, but they all had fun and really enjoyed weaving. We could of made those clay frames double in size and I still think they would of wished they had more room to weave.
It was strange at the end of the week not to have the kids walk out the door with piles of artworks on paper. But like I said before, the feedback I received from several of them was they would like to do more textile and paint projects in the future. It was an interesting perspective to hear these kids desire to have more unique items to decorate their rooms with other than the tried and true paper.
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