Drawing Together: Site Specific Installations

Last spring, K.I.D.S. Art Education teaching artist Ruth Wetzel led local children and family members in an art making exploration at the Kentler International Drawing Space. In response to the installations of Mary Ting and Ilene Sunshine, participants created their own installations. After examining the work in the gallery through inquiry and observational drawing, partners worked with post-its, twigs, ribbons, tape, toilet paper rolls, pencils, Styrofoam meat trays, oval-cut mats, and phone cords to change the materials and then arrange them in an assigned section of the room. These site specific installations were terrific displays of collaboration and imagination and were poetic reflections on materials, the space and the artwork by Ilene Sunshine and Mary Ting that was already occupying the space.  Everyone had a great time!

Pictures Come To Life! This Saturday at 3 PM!

Artist/storyteller Jeff Hopkins will be transforming our blank white walls into a story-mural that you and your family will participate in.  Its going to be fun- don't miss it!!

If you DO miss it, please join us next weekend for a follow up DRAWING TOGETHER workshop with Jeff.

Please NOTE: the performance on Saturday, September 11th does not require a reservation but the follow up workshop NEXT weekend does.  See below for details.

For more information on Jeff Hopkins: http://www.picturescometolife.com/

Architecture Appreciation Comes to Kentler!

This video is the result of our once-a-month family DRAWING TOGETHER workshop co-hosted today by Open House New York: everyone's drawing was lined up to create a new "built environment" based on Red Hook architectural inspiration and suffused with each artist's individual creativity and imagination!

Today, as a warm up, kids and parents explored their local built environment by drawing from memory a map or floor plan of their apartment.  Families next expanded their exploration to include the gallery's local built environment in the historic neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Families created booklets to fill with drawings of architectural details they noticed walking along Van Brunt Street, right outside the gallery. Then, back in the gallery both drawings and floor plans were cut up and each artist, ages ranging from 4 to 60+, worked on connecting their parts to create a larger, imaginary skyscraper / building / skyline!

Thanks all for your eye for detail and your enthusiasm for testing out new ways to make drawings! And thanks to Open House New York for co-hosting. 

Drawing Together Spring 2012

This spring, Kentler is hosting our free, family Drawing Together programs on the first and third Saturdays of each month. These programs are now a part of our Brooklyn Community Foundation Challenge Grant and we are so thrilled about the response we've gotten so far. This year, over 60 children and caregivers from all over Brooklyn have shown up to make collaborative art projects based on Kentler's current show, The Influential Female: Drawings Inspired by Women in History. Teaching artists Meghan Keane and Ruth Wetzel have been taking turns leading these workshops and both have come up with some really exciting, hands-on activities.

On February 18th, Ruth had the group create bodily adornments inspired by the drawings of Anyssa Ng. Participants used poster board, ribbons, tape, glitter, rhinestones, and other materials to create unique, wearable art objects. Children (and parents!) crafted functional crowns, belts, shoes, sashes, and jewelry of their own design. Once finished, they marched around the gallery in a sparkly, colorful procession! Here are some photos of their creations:

Last Saturday, Meghan created an interesting project based on the qualities of hair--as a tool for mark-making and as a symbol of female identity. This project stems from the drawings of artist Jono Vaughan as well as Meghan's own hair-inspired artwork. She gathered up hair extensions in different textures and colors for participants to "draw" with, yielding some fun results! Parents and children were open to the experience as a new way to construct formal qualities of line, dimension and color. Their compositions were large, abstract and quite lively:

The next Drawing Together workshop will be held on Saturday, March 17th (St. Patrick's Day). If you and your family are interested in attending, please contact Sallie@kentlergallery.org with your name, child's name/age, and contact information to reserve your spot in advance.
We hope to see you soon!

School Programs Spring 2012

We are four weeks into our 2012 school programming here at K.I.D.S. Art Ed.! We’re so excited to be working with Kindergarten - 5^th grade at P.S. 15 and Brooklyn New School again this year, and have been getting excellent feedback from our teachers and students so far.

Our workshop this spring is based on Kentler’s current exhibition, The Influential Female: Drawings Inspired by Women in History. The group show, which focuses on issues of female identity and strength, has been a rich source of inspiration for the students. More information about this beautiful show can be found at Kentler’s website, www.kentlergallery.org.

Each gallery visit begins with a general class intro, after which the group is broken up into two sections. One half of the class is sent to the front gallery, where students practice observational drawing with teaching artist Lance Paladino. The figural drawings of Clarity Haynes and Viviane Silvera serve as models for the students to explore shape, tone, and detail using ebony pencils and kneaded erasers. Each student chooses a drawing to work from and is given the opportunity to share his or her drawings with the group:

In the back gallery space, teaching artist Meghan Keane provides students with a pile of writing utensils, office supplies, ribbon and other materials for a more free-form drawing exercise. Students are prompted to think of an event or accomplishment that they are proud of and are then asked to recreate that event using the various supplies in front of them. Taking cues from the colorful drawings and hanging installations on view, some students decide to make flat pictures on the floor while others use a more sculptural, three-dimensional approach. The wide range of creativity among different grade levels and within single classes is amazing! Here are some examples of what students have come up with:

After each half of the workshop, the students switch rooms. This gives them a complete 90-minute experience with exposure to both formal and exploratory drawing methods. At the end of the visit, an enthusiastic wrap-up session catalogs what students saw, learned, and created and generates ideas for future drawings.

We still have two weeks of gallery visits left before we start with post visits, where the teaching artists will follow up with their lessons in the classroom. The unfinished drawings from Lance’s segment and photos of the students’ “temporary” constructions are given back to them as starting points for a final project. At the end of the post visit, students’ finished work is hung in the hallways of their school.

Stay tuned for updates on future programs. Thanks for stopping in on the K.I.D.S. Art Ed. blog!

Drawing Together Family Workshop at RHI

Blog post written by K.I.D.S. Teaching Artist Meghan Keane

Today was our first Drawing Together Family Workshop hosted in the Red Hook Initiative space!

Today's workshop focused on creating colorful line drawings that related to a favorite summer activity or summer word.

To warm up, kids and their parent or accompanying adult brainstormed words that reminded them of summer. Then, we made a group list and everyone shared two of their favorite words/activities from their list.

Our fantastic group list of summer activities and summer words (that could have gone on for another 5 pages!)

Next, students were asked to think of colors related to their word/activity (i.e. sun = yellows, reds, oranges). Ready to start their drawings, students, with help from their adult, created drawings using just the colors that they thought related to their word. They worked hard to only use line and to create patterns or designs, but sometimes it was challenging!

Can you guess what summer word / activity each artist was thinking of by looking at the colors in the drawings below? Give it a shot!

Ricky (RHI) and niece with "House" drawings

"Pool I"

"Beach"

"Pool II"

"Grow flowers and plants"

Young artists, their drawings, and their moms : Estelle with Jasmine and Simone, Tiffany with Natalie

Longtime DT fans: Sarah with daughters Chloe (l) and Josie (r). Their artwork shows is about their visit to Connecticut and a pool with a rainbow.

Looking forward to more DT this fall!

Want to join us at our next free workshop for families?

Email KIDS Director Mollie McQuarrie to be added to our FREE Drawing Together Family Workshops e-newsletter! mollie (at) kentlergallery (dot) org

Thanks and Happy Summer!

MK

Reflections: Our first after-school program with RHI

Blog post written by K.I.D.S. Teaching Artist Meghan Keane

"This past spring 2010 I taught the first collaborative Red Hook Initiative + K.I.D.S. After School Program.

I spent six after school sessions with eight young, creative, energetic guys. The program I designed was a response to the current exhibition at the Kentler -- two temporary art installations created by artists Ilene Sunshine and Mary Ting. Both artists created their installations during the month of January, using the gallery as if it were their own studio space.

For the after school program, our main theme was exploring color and its expressive potential. However, we were inspired by the exhibition's impermanent, large-scale, architecturally-responsive qualities. Ultimately, the students spent each week talking about, thinking about, and making art that explored positive (colorful) expression and negative or weighty (colorless) expression. We saved the art work at the end of each session in preparation for using ALL the work (drawings, mixed media) in one final installation -- wrapping two classroom desks as an on-site installation! For this final project we not only spent time looking at the works by Sunshine and Ting in the gallery, but also at works by Christo & Jean Claude, best known for wrapping historical buildings and designing The Gates in Central Park.

Our six weeks together were incremental, dynamic and, as you'll see, built up to our final collaborative project...

WEEK ONE: Creating texture, Exploring color

Students explored texture and color through rubbings of hardware supplies: filters, washers, etc. Students noticed that the rubbings that were made only with pencil (graphite) were not as lively or as positive feeling as the rubbings they made with vibrant colored pencils.

<----- sample student rubbing

WEEK TWO: Responding to Haiti devastation

Students were asked to imagine a city before and after an earthquake. They were also asked to use color to help their audience pick out the city in its prime vs. the city after a disaster. We had a good conversation about what sort of colors could not only illustrate (cement gray, rubble brown) but express devastation and desperation (dark, muted colors). Many students noted they were tired of talking about the subject but were intrigued by the challenge of visually representing these hypothetical cities. One student taped piles of rubber bands to paper and flipped it upside down to indicate tremors -- a shakable, quaking conceptual drawing!

WEEK THREE: Drawing to Music

Students made a series of drawings to music -- fast music and slow music. They chose colored pencils or colorless graphite depending on the speed and emotion of the music. At the end of the day we divided the drawings into two piles, thinking of our future installation that would likely be in two parts. The piles were: drawings that expressed positive emotions (usually colorful with fast lines) vs. negative or more brooding emotions (less colorful with slower lines).

WEEK FOUR: Field Trip!!

During our class visit to the Kentler International Drawing Space, almost thwarted by snow and skunky weather, the students glowed and showed off their amazing perceptive skills. They pointed out that this was not your normal picture exhibition: this new art hung from the walls, the ceiling, wrapped around corners, took up floor space, and required your total attention so as not to step on it!

Above: Ilene Sunshine installation, February 2010

WEEK FIVE: Analyzing Color, Playfully

Photocopying a recent art book I had created, the students were asked to revisit the idea of texture through coloring and color designs. Students used artist quality markers on these ready-to-color images, but had to keep in mind which pile they would like their drawing to go towards at the end of the day: the positive or the negative expression pile. Students colored liberally but kept the colors true to the +/- theme.

Taking the dialectic we had been working with all along, we decided to name our forthcoming installation project in advance: during this session we also brainstormed, discussed, and voted on titles for each installation. The guys ended up finally agreeing upon the titles BEAUTY and GORE as the two words that they wanted to describe their upcoming wrapping installation. Quite a busy day with lots of good art-making and art title debating!

Above: Students designed fonts for each of the titles out of wiki-stiks; they decided together that they wanted to include the hand-made titles in the installation the following week.

WEEK SIX: "Beauty : Gore" Final Project, Student-designed Desk Wrapping

Keeping in mind all that we'd worked on and discussed over the past five weeks, the students divided into two groups, each working on wrapping one giant desk (table) with the artwork they had created over the course of the spring. The Beauty installation-wrap used the drawings that had been placed in the "positive emotion" pile; the Gore installation-wrap used the drawings that had been placed in the "negative emotion" pile. The students spent the whole session creating their temporary installation, covering the desks with works from the past six weeks, while I documented the process with guest filmmaker, Michael Keane, who shot video of the process for the students.

Above: Detail of the title GORE, each letter wrapped around one leg of the desk.

At the end we celebrated, took final photos, and delighted in the ephemeral quality of the work by allowing the boys to help deconstruct the installation! A great finale to six weeks of hard work and lots of colorful fun!

I look forward to teaching this coming fall session of RHI+K.I.D.S. After School and to the Kentler's ongoing collaborations with RHI! Onward!"

-Meghan