After School Art - Exploring Sculpture

I wrapped up another series of After School Arts at Spork's school!  We are definitely experiencing growing pains at the school for sure, but Spork loves his teacher, and After School Arts is always a bright spot in my week!

This fall, I offered Exploring Sculpture.  This class was named for me as well as my students, because I'm not an experienced sculptor by any means, but I do love the art form.  I took a few pottery classes as a child and didn't produce anything outstanding, but the process was always contemplative and full of promise.  I taught two different groups of children the same class each week.  My Tuesday group was shortchanged a bit due to a snow day and school scheduling, but I had a blast with both groups.

Week 1:  We made our own play dough and worked with clay.  I chose to leave the dough uncolored and unscented this time, so as to focus on the sculpting aspect, but I'm doing Sensory Fun next, and we'll get color crazy then, I'm sure.

I provided a different set of loose parts for both materials (pipe cleaners, google eyes, straws, and buttons for the dough; floss, hammers, credit cards, and bamboo skewers for the clay) and asked the children to compare and contrast the experience of working with play dough vs. clay.  I'm on Team Clay, but the answers varied.

Week 2:  We worked with popsicle sticks, hot glue, and watercolors.  Thanks to Montessori and Reggio, I am a firm believer that you can teach young children (my age group for ASA is K-2nd grade) to use real tools, so I set about teaching them hot glue safety instead of doing it for them, and of course we used cool temp glue guns to minimize risk.  Aren't their designs lovely?  Some wanted their sculptures to hang, so we added a loop of colored wire as they wished.

Week 3:  Paper Sculpting was inspired by this fabulous techniques chart I saw on Pinterest.  I recreated one and went through it step by step with the children.  Their biggest thrill was getting to use staplers, though I might do tape for this age group next time since their hands are not quite large enough for stapler success.  I set out pastels too, and they were able to hot glue their finished shapes to large pieces of donated mat board.

Week 4:  Inspired by this art project, I prepared a sample and had the young sculptors try this more elaborate technique.  They bent wire and hot glued it into the foam block. I helped them stretch pantyhose over the wire and secured it with more hot glue.  I couldn't really get a good photo since my hands were busy, but then oh how they did love painting the prepared piece!  Some artists applied many, many coats of paint.  The paint helps to stiffen the sculpture, and truly, each one was so unique.

Next, I gave more pieces of colored, coated wire to the children with beads and lumps of leftover clay.  One of my great thrills is to have a child who looks at me mournfully on Day 1 and asks what they should make, but then blossoms into a confident artist with vision and/or curiosity enough to jump into their own designs without asking my permission or approval.  I had many such moments that week.

Week 5:  I kicked off the last week by reading Beautiful Oops!  This book inspires resilience and bravery in our young artists.  I'd been intrigued by a large collection of bike tires stashed in the art room, and my boss gave me the go ahead to use them up, please!  I admitted to the children that I'd never attempted a tire sculpture before, so we'd learn together!  First, children arranged the tires into a shape they liked, and the adults (I had parents come for our showcase that day, so there were extra helping hands) helped the children wire them together.  Next, we offered paint, and finally, I wired all the individual pieces together, asking the artists to make recommendations on the points of connection.  This was a bit of a physics lesson too, as they discovered through trial and error, how we had to place the wires to make the tires stand or tilt, or lie flat.

I don't like to give explicit instructions on color mixing, because it is much more fun to let the children make their own discoveries and share knowledge.  "What is your recipe for that teal!?"  "Look, I made peach!!"  I do prompt grumpy painters who wish we had a bottle of orange paint, "Hmm, we don't have ready-made orange, but how could you mix paint to create orange?"

Our finished masterpiece!  I may be a little biased, but I think it's gorgeous.

I'm finding that teaching art is incredibly life-giving to me.  It's an amazing opportunity to share...not my talent nor my skill, but my passion for creation and assurance that individual expression matters.  Our works are different and valuable, as are we.  And I'm remembering that I need to set aside my own time to create; just as an athlete needs to exercise, I need to make.  For so long, I convinced myself that because I didn't enter the work force in the art field nor did I earn an art degree, that I wasn't really an artist.  Art was something I used to do when I was younger.  I was wrong, and I feel so much better when I invest some time and energy into art every week.  So although this may have started out as a volunteer gig, a way to give back to the community, this program has really helped me live a better life.