Thank you so much Catherine…lovely. Let’s all plan to add
Art at ESA
* Art materials can help children “come back to their senses”, and thus serve as a wonderful presencing agent. See if your speech can help children use the materials in this way by making basic verbal observations that orient all who hear to the sensual experience before them.
* Art-making can serve to connect artists to themselves and world. It is a wonderful tool of discovering who and what our experience is in this moment.
* One brilliant truth of art-making is that it really does access many parts of ourselves beyond our thinking mind. You really don’t have to have any ideas or pre-conceptions when you go to make art. Coming to the materials from a place of open curiosity is best. You can encourage this by asking children to take a breath and simply allow their sense impulses to guide them, rather than their head: “I want orange, big brush, etc.”, rather than: “I will make a horse, a horse is brown. I will go get the brown.”
* By emphasizing process versus the product, you can help bring the children into this moment of being with themselves in relationship with the art materials.
* Invite their present experience to guide them when they doubt.
* Becoming comfortable with not knowing really presses us into life, and brings us to the place where risk-taking must occur.
* Art can become another way of knowing.
* If a child asks you to show them how to draw a horse, it is good to take a moment to feel into where the child is coming from. Is it time to encourage them to connect with the horse-ness that lives inside her/him in this moment? I will often encourage children who don’t know how to render something to “invent.” Or, is it time to go practice the art of seeing by observing a real horse? You can feel the difference between the internal and external orientation. If they asking for more technique, is it a bypass or a genuine developmental need?
* Art products can be viewed as living psychic material so as to remind us to respect/relate to art products as a living process. This means, we don’t praise or blame, or in any other way objectify the art product. I like to work with the art products as living psychic material come from the depths to deliver important messages. From this vantage it is easy to come to the art with curiosity and a desire to get into relationship with what we have made.
*When speaking about art with children, see how immediate and present you can be. Try not to extrapolate from what you can see, and avoid laying concepts onto what you see. If you say, “Wow, I see you made a green one,” this tends to invite children to speak about the intimate creation they have given rise to: “Yes, that is the big Oak tree in my grandmother’s back yard….” Versus saying, “You made a tree,” which tends to shut-down the sharing process. Assume nothing! Cultivate big, open, curious mind!
Painting Space
Can we have the kitchen space for working with small groups of children (1:4 ratio max)? Lynne doesn’t have an issue with this, liability wise, but we need to talk about staffing and need more details. Could this go in the 4/5 room down there? Can we talk more about this at the next mtg?
Making Art Guidelines
Thank you so much Catherine…lovely. Let’s all plan to add
Art at ESA
* Art materials can help children “come back to their senses”, and thus serve as a wonderful presencing agent. See if your speech can help children use the materials in this way by making basic verbal observations that orient all who hear to the sensual experience before them.
* Art-making can serve to connect artists to themselves and world. It is a wonderful tool of discovering who and what our experience is in this moment.
* One brilliant truth of art-making is that it really does access many parts of ourselves beyond our thinking mind. You really don’t have to have any ideas or pre-conceptions when you go to make art. Coming to the materials from a place of open curiosity is best. You can encourage this by asking children to take a breath and simply allow their sense impulses to guide them, rather than their head: “I want orange, big brush, etc.”, rather than: “I will make a horse, a horse is brown. I will go get the brown.”
* By emphasizing process versus the product, you can help bring the children into this moment of being with themselves in relationship with the art materials.
* Invite their present experience to guide them when they doubt.
* Becoming comfortable with not knowing really presses us into life, and brings us to the place where risk-taking must occur.
* Art can become another way of knowing.
* If a child asks you to show them how to draw a horse, it is good to take a moment to feel into where the child is coming from. Is it time to encourage them to connect with the horse-ness that lives inside her/him in this moment? I will often encourage children who don’t know how to render something to “invent.” Or, is it time to go practice the art of seeing by observing a real horse? You can feel the difference between the internal and external orientation. If they asking for more technique, is it a bypass or a genuine developmental need?
* Art products can be viewed as living psychic material so as to remind us to respect/relate to art products as a living process. This means, we don’t praise or blame, or in any other way objectify the art product. I like to work with the art products as living psychic material come from the depths to deliver important messages. From this vantage it is easy to come to the art with curiosity and a desire to get into relationship with what we have made.
*When speaking about art with children, see how immediate and present you can be. Try not to extrapolate from what you can see, and avoid laying concepts onto what you see. If you say, “Wow, I see you made a green one,” this tends to invite children to speak about the intimate creation they have given rise to: “Yes, that is the big Oak tree in my grandmother’s back yard….” Versus saying, “You made a tree,” which tends to shut-down the sharing process. Assume nothing! Cultivate big, open, curious mind!
Painting Space
Can we have the kitchen space for working with small groups of children (1:4 ratio max)? Lynne doesn’t have an issue with this, liability wise, but we need to talk about staffing and need more details. Could this go in the 4/5 room down there? Can we talk more about this at the next mtg?