or “What Teens Taught Me This Summer”
By Michelle Cate
First, the internet rules supreme. They bond over favorite songs that have gone viral.
Memes. Reddit. Something about Jeffery Bezos.
But what Greg and I were teaching in Studio Arts Basics was how to use their hands to do something creative maybe outside of internet, IRL. (IN REAL LIFE) They all were more than ready to spend time with their peers it seemed after being in various levels of quarantine throughout the last year.
Greg made sure they got their hands literally dirty with clay. They started with pinch pots and then their imaginations took off from there. Mushrooms appeared as a popular item to form.
After two days of Polaroid Emulsion lifts with me each week, I invited a guest artist to speak to my classes. Since I noticed that anime was an extremely popular part of their popular culture. We had Christopher Troutman of Lamar University’s Art Dept. to speak about comics and the various ways they are developed. The group took to it right away since visual communication is second nature to them.
The second week, with several repeat attendees, we explored collage with artist, Jane Silvernail, who assured them, there was NO WRONG WAY to collage but to think about where the eye will go and consider having a main point of interest.
These are a sampling of the results from the collage day. These teens have an innate ability to form produce interesting visuals from themes, or by using color theory, or repetition without us lecturing them about any of those things. A bird cage became a hand grenade bursting with rose.
We were able to use a wonderful donation of art magazines to give them a rich visual vocabulary to begin with. Silvernail even shared some of her personal stash of ephemera and papers with the group.
The main thing I learned from the teens in the workshop was that they were primed to make surprising connections and bursting with creativity… if we were able to keep pushing materials towards them and foster the ideas, they were already deeply interested in.
The Art Studio is currently planning with Jane Silvernail to hold a one-day collage workshop, October 17th, for adults interested.