CLOVERHUNTER // KATI DRISCOLL

Varia Spell print via Twamies

Thanks so much to our good friend Kati Driscoll for her kind words about Make/Believe on her excellent blog. Kati is a talented artist and crafter (See: Twamies, Cloverhunter), and a digital marketing/social media analyzing WIZ. Check out her blog, shops, Pinterest page and more for inspiration and thoughtful advice about running your creative business. 

SUMMER "READING": ART21

from a Gabriel Orozco segment

Not all of the videos in PBS's fabulous art21 series are 100% appropriate for kids of all ages, but a lot of them are, and they're great little gems for exposing young people to so many fantastic contemporary artists and unexpected approaches to creativity. Check out the archive online.

MIMA Y NENA

I posted about artist Bonaia Rosado recently, and how she has started collaborating artistically with her 3 year old daughter, Taylor. The two of them (Mima y Nena) have been hard at work for the past month making works for the Fun-A-Day art show that's opening this Friday, and I really wanted to share a few glimpses of the work and process that Bonaia has posted online so far. The pieces are gorgeous, as you can see, and I'm so impressed with how well the two have worked together. About their process, Bonaia says:

"Collaborating with Taylor is a very organic process. I set up the paper and the table for her. For color ratios, I either have her pick three to four colors or I pick them, and if I want a certain color to be prominent I give her a bigger brush for that color. She uses separate brushes for each color. I want her to be able to work on her life drawing skills during these sessions, so I always give her reference to work from. A plant, a coffee mug, a shape or animals. She's three years old, so the first couple of paintings she really looks at the image or item and after a while when her attention span veers, she uses it as a starting point and as she's painting she says 'Oh there's coffee in the mug' or 'The doggy has seven legs and he's a princess so he needs a tiara.'"

Bonaia then inks on top of Taylor's painting, or cuts shapes out of it to add to an existing illustration she's started. So rad. If you're in or near Delaware, go see Bonaia's work at Fun-A-Day this Friday, and follow her here and here for more!

That's Taylor's painting at the bottom in the left image (!!), cut to make the leaves in the hair at right.

Above: Taylor painted the leaf shapes, Bonaia painted the dinosaur, and then inked the linework on top.

TEACHING ARTIST REUBEN BRESLAR

Reuben Breslar is an artist, musician, and teacher. He received his BFA with Honors from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2006, and specializes in making conceptual art that includes a wide variety of media. I've been a fan of his work since I went to the Corcoran with him, and am so happy to have him teaching Art Brains classes this Spring! To view Reuben’s complete artist portfolio, exhibition profile, and CV, please check out his website: www.reubenbreslar.com.

*Fun fact: In June 2012, Reuben was hired by the prestigious Sol LeWitt Estate to install one of the famous artist’s “Wall Drawings” in the lobby of a Farragut North office building. This 50-foot-long by 10-foot-high installation took 3 weeks to complete. You can read the Washingtonian review here.

Reuben also works with ArtReach in Southeast DC, and AIDAN Montessori School in Woodley Park, DC.

TEACHING ARTIST AMY BRADEN

Reference Material by Amy Hughes Braden

Amy Hughes Braden, a DC area artist who teaches Art Brains classes for Make/Believe and who was recently described to me by a parent as "the magical Amy" was interviewed by ArtSee about her artistic practice. Her work is thoughtful, layered and beautiful, "[utilizing] imagery readily available in the public domain as an entry point and [coupling] it with personal experiences." Click click to read more about the magical Amy! We love having her as a teacher, and we love her work, too.

A WRINKLE IN (CURRICULUM PLANNING) TIME

I was pulling together some reference pictures for an upcoming Art After School project related to book covers, and now all I want to do is curl up and re-read all of these!

Looking forward to the upcoming Make/Believe Winter 2013 session, which will see the aforementioned book cover project, bug collections, spirit animals, recipes for imaginary people, "glow snobes", and more.

MONDAY INSPIRATION: AMY HUGHES BRADEN

Amy with her work. photo via

Check out artist Amy Hughes Braden and her work in this great write-up and interview at Arte Fuse. Amy will be teaching a few Make/Believe Art After School classes this Winter, and I am so happy to have her on board.

TRUE STORY: ALUMINUM FOIL IS MAGICAL

Tom Friedman

James Hampton

I've been thinking a lot about aluminum foil, and different ways to use it in upcoming Art After School winter session projects.

Pictured above: Tom Friedman's Aluminum Foil Thing and James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. From the Smithsonian American Art Museum's website, where you can read more about  Hampton and his work:

"James Hampton's entire artistic output is this single work which he called The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton worked for more than fourteen years on his masterwork in a rented garage... Hampton's full creation consists of 180 components—only a portion of which are on view... His work also includes plaques, tags, and notebooks bearing a secret writing system which has yet to be, and may never be, deciphered."

What's going down in YOUR garage these days?

MONDAY INSPIRATION: GROWN UP KID ARTIST ALAN BROWN

I had the good fortune to meet artist Alan Brown (aka Medusawolf) during my second year of art school, and he's been a good buddy of mine and a serious source of inspiration ever since. Alan imbues his skillfully rendered illustrations of other worlds and other-worldy characters with a sense of magic, mystery and discovery that makes each new work he shares an exciting new experience. You can see his work on his blog, or his Etsy page, where you'll find paintings and prints, each accompanied by a clever caption suggestive of a larger narrative.

In addition to the abundance of drawings, paintings, etchings, and prints he turns out on a regular basis, I am never surprised to hear on any given day that he's busy carving action figures from wood, building a work table from scratch, making his own t-shirts, or fashioning masks and costumes resembling the creatures in his illustrations. Alan has a killer sense of humor, a cinematic imagination, and a seemingly endless desire to learn, try, and create new things. For all these reasons and more, Alan is one of my most favorite artists and grown up kids. He's currently finishing up a comic titled Ovoyyamar*, and I'm psyched to post a few excerpts from that here, along with his answers to a handful of questions that might be of interest to creative kids and grown up kids alike. Click the "read more" link below to see the full post. (*Parents: please note, some of the topics in this post and illustrations on the Ovoyyamar blog page may be slightly spooky to younger kiddos). 

An excerpt from Alan's comic Ovoyyamar

M/B: I've seen you note in several places that you "grew up near the woods and discovered the world was a weird mystery." Can you speak a little more to that, and/or any experiences you had as a kid that persist as influential forces in your work today?

AB: The small neighborhood I grew up in along the Chesapeake Bay is surrounded on one side by shoreline and on the other side by forests and fields.  Standing by the water, exploring the rocky beach, looking out across 7 or 8 miles of water toward the opposite shore, which at times in the winter would become completely iced over creating enormous drifts of snow and tall spiky hills of ice, it was all pretty wondrous.  

CAINE'S DIY CARDBOARD ARCADE

A friend sent me this video, and I am STOKED about it. The spirit of Caine's arcade is completely exciting - the kind of thing I always hope to inspire in the kids I teach, and the kind of thing that makes me want to be a kid again myself. Or at least a grown up who spends her time doing stuff that is half as cool. It's always refreshing these days to see young people (or anyone, really) sans Smartphone and working patiently and passionately on tangible, analog pursuits like this. And I guess it's also pretty cool to see that people on the internet/on their Smartphones made the gathering at the end of this short film possible. Keep up the good work, Caine (and Nirvan)!!

More info about the project, the "flash mob" who showed up to support it, and the short film here.

YAYOI KUSAMA'S "OBLITERATION ROOM"

Check out  Obliteration Room, a rad, interactive children's installation by Yayoi Kusama at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.

From the Queensland GoMA blog:

"This space has been transformed into a series of domestic—style rooms, reminiscent of the average Australian home, filled with furniture and objects painted entirely white. This functions as a blank canvas that becomes ‘obliterated’ over the course of the exhibition through the application of brightly coloured dot stickers."

If there's one group of human beings I would trust to obliterate anything with thousands of colored dots, it is definitely KIDS. I've shown my Art Brains classes one or two pictures of work by Kusama in the past while discussing installation art - I think they'd be pretty excited about this one, too.

More here, here, and here.