Making Snowmen

Last night Art Clubbers successfully completed snowman wall hangings!

Magic Potion Bottles

On September 22 Arc Artists enjoyed another Art Club session. This time we made magic potion bottles. Everyone was given a bottle and we all glued colored tissue to the bottles. Then, we all thought up magic potions and made up labels. Then everyone further decorated their bottles with stickers and jewels.

Denis made a Sleep Potion.









Danielle Made a Puppy Potion

Brian Made an Extra Hours in a Day potion to give to his mother for her birthday

Dorothy made a Bird Potion

Kenny made a potion to get a recording contract!

Matt created  sports potion

Leanne made a pets potion

Eric made a success potion

Kate made a Teletransportation potion

Karen made an invisibility potion

Princeton Art Museum

This trip to the Museum was an Art Club event but, anyone in ARC could sign up. We had only 7 people sign up, so it was quite manageable. We had 2 docents waiting for us when we arrived, so we split up into 2 groups. Our docent was very knowledgeable, but I think we spent too much time on too few pieces of art. I would have moved us around more, but, I wasn't in charge. I did spy a large collage in the gallery with modern art, so I asked if we could see it. She allowed us to go off course a little, so that was good.  In this gallery there was one of those Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe prints.  I had shown everyone a Marilyn on the first day of Art Club (along with the Mona Lisa and American Gothic and some other very famous paintings) so it was cool to see it in person at the museum. I think at least some of the Art Clubbers remembered seeing it.

I want to resume Art Club in September. I'm thinking that I will have everyone write and illustrate a book. More info on that coming soon.

Collage Class Wrap Up

The final Art Club class was Tuesday, May5th. Everyone mounted their collages onto black presentation board. Some Art Clubbers could not attend due to Special Olympic schedules, and one Art Clubber was ill. No problem, we mounted their collages for them. Then we put them up and had a critique. That went better than expected; sometimes it is hard to talk about your own art. We managed to come up with names or at least descriptive words for all of the collages.

Patti Johnson asked us to send the collages to her so they could be hung in the ARC office.

At this point we had special, art opening style snacks, apple juice, cheese and crackers and oreos. (Thanks for shopping, Kate!) See a picture of the staff relaxing with their snacks.

I spread a large piece of paper over the table and set out buckets of magic markers and once again, everyone got creative.

On Saturday we will be visiting the Princeton University Art Museum. Check the blog to hear about this adventure.

A Way to Make a Collage

I used these images in the Art Club class on collage to help get the students started.

When I make a collage, I usually start with an interesting image. The image might come out of my collection or I could search through magazines for something fresh. I found this pumpkin in a Martha Stewart Magazine and I really liked it. I already had this goat that I really liked, and I put them together.

In picture #3, i just wanted to point out that everything looks cool with wings. You can put wings on almost anything and make it look magical.

Ultimately, I did not keep the wings on my goat. I found a lot of nice pictures of fruit that I decided to use, including and apple that was grasped in a hand. A lot of my collages have kind of surreal look to them. I just get a kick out of that.

At this point in the process, I've made up a story about what is going on in the collage. Sometimes I will add words that help explain. Here, we just have a goat that likes fruit. Maybe the goat is having a dream about fruit!

The April 28 Class

The Art Clubbers really seemed to enjoy themselves as they assembled all of the pictorial elements they collected the week before. Today's pictures are of Josh's collage and here is Tory with her "Mantini" collage. (We had a lot of Men's Health magazines around!) Click on any image to enlarge. They are very clever.

The first thing we did was have everyone come into the kitchen for a demonstration. I went over the posters I had made to remind everyone of a way to assemble their collage. I collected some images and made a collage for them. I had a little cup with Modge Podge, and a foam brush and painted the back of my elements and glued them down. I think this way is better than everyone using a bottle of Elmer's glue. Those tips are forever clogging up.

After the demonstra-tion, everyone got their own cup of glue and a foam brush. They picked from a variety of different papers to use for a background and set to work. At this point I learned that it may not be such a hot idea to let people bring their projects home. Some did not come back to class. It was not a tragedy, they just had to start over and find new images.

Some people finished in a hurry. Twenty minutes into a two-hour class and I had calls of, "I'm finished!" Yikes! I asked if they might like to put words into their collage. Some said yes, so the hunt was on once again. We looked through the magazines for letters, creating our words "ransom note" style. Jimmy's was particularly successful. Leann spelled her name out this way on her collage.

Then the artists needed to decide if they wanted glitter on their collage. I am particularly fond of glitter, and all things sparkly. I think it can make a collage look magical, Not everyone went for the idea, but some did. We went to the kitchen, where I had a glitter station set up. I did my best to keep the mess down, but, you know, its glitter! I would say 90% of glitterers went for silver. Nick's rock and roll cave man collage really came to life when he used glitter. The other choice was white glitter, which ends up looking kind of frosty. People who had previously rejected glitter were now lining up to make their collages magical. Mary Glasser created a great border of swirly lines out of glitter. Amy Coldreck's spare use of glitter added just a little bit of sparkle but did not overwhelm her tiger-stripe background.

The next and final Art Club class for this session is May 5. I'll see if I can get the artists to talk about their choices and hopefully come up with titles.

Art Club Collages

Today I will post the collages. Tomorrow I'll give my impressions of the class. I want to say thanks very much to my 4 excellent helpers, Pat, Doug, Josh and Torie. A special thanks to Pat for cleaning up the glitter!

The First Meeting of Art Club

Hi, welcome to Art Club. I want to tell you how I came up with the idea for Art Club. My daughter, Kate, is a member of the Hunterdon ARC. Kate loves to make art, but she likes to take her time. She would come home from a craft night at the ARC and say, "I could have done this better, but I ran out of time." That made me think about how these programs could be better.

Around this time I came across the web site for an organization called Creativity Explored. Here is a quote right from their website:

"Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. We are committed to supporting people with developmental disabilities to become working artists, and to promoting their work as an emerging and increasingly important contribution to the professional art world. Creativity Explored provides workspace and materials in ongoing studio sessions facilitated by a team of professional artists who provide support and assistance to studio artists. Creativity Explored also operates a professional exhibitions program that promotes our studio artists’ work to a wide array of local, regional, national, and international exhibition venues including commercial galleries, and corporate and public spaces."

Here is a list of their beliefs:

Beliefs
All people are creative, given a supportive environment.
Creative expression fosters personal growth.
Self-worth, a sense of purpose, and community are essential for all people.
Visual art is language everyone can use.
Disability is not a boundary.
Art making is a viable career path.

You see that last one? "Art making is a viable career path?" I wish my parents and guidence counselor had believed that! But anyway, Creativity Explored reflects my vision for Art Club. I can't say right now how far this will go, I'm just leading the first set of 3 classes right now. Our first class was April 14th.

I gave everyone a large envelope to hold their works-in-progress. Then we talked about collage and different ways we could make them. We started by spreading out a number of magazines and letting everyone look through and clip the pictures that interested them. I was really excited about how into the project everyone was. By the time we talked about the project and looked for images, I think we really did need the 2 hours just for this part. Most of my students seemed to go with a theme. Two women have horse themes going. One woman likes witches. A man named Matt was completely taken with a map of Nova Scotia I had out there with all of the magazines. He cut out a bunch of flowers and a man and woman to go with the map. I'm looking forward to seeing that collage finished. Another man cut out pictures of flags, soldiers and diamond jewelry. Eric, known as "Eric Scissorhands," sat down and went right to work doing what he likes to do, cutting out letters and words. He made an art club sign for me! I asked him if he would like to try cutting out some pictures and he very politely declined. I said that was fine because this is Art Club, not Make-Your-Collage-My-Way Club! However, by the end of the night, he was cutting out beach scenes.

In future posts I would like to show completed art work, discuss ideas and ask for help and donations of equipment and supplies. Stay tuned!