Stop Motion Photography

Hi! An art camp group from two weeks ago was introduced to photography. This group of eleven 9 to 11-year-olds were immediately intrigued upon learning about F-stop, shutter speed, aperture functions, negatives and emulsion, etc.

After studying the Poloroid photo collages of David Hockney and creating their own collages with images, they decided as a group that they wanted to do a project that involved more than just still photography - stop motion.

We got to work right away, preparing costumes, dialoging about ideas and themes, and the kids even composed their own songs using Garage Band to accompany the photo slideshows. We looked at some original "stop motion" photography by the photographer working during the 19th century, Eadweard Muybridge, to get a better idea of history and possibilities.

Enjoy the short slideshow and music while keeping in mind the involved process the children were so engaged in to create these pieces in only four days! (Also, I was only able to upload one video for now, but please feel free to view the other two on the Kidstreet Flickr site in the right hand column of this page).

Camps are growing! Trees are being created!

Last week, Jenny and Angela's camp conducted a Tree Study in which they first gathered natural materials during a walk around Lillstreet, then used printmaking and painting techniques to create large-scale trees. Enjoy the colorful pictures!

Please visit our new Flickr site for more images!

"The Magical Mango Tree"

Last week, the 7 to 11-year-old Clay & Multi-Media camp created their own screenplay and a feature film (only about 4 minutes long though). Their movie was shot on Thursday and premiered on Friday. I am so impressed with the children's unlimited imagination and motivation behind the making of this beautiful film, "The Magical Mango Tree."

Because one of my goals as an art teacher at Lillstreet is to help the children engage in community outreach, I invited a friend and filmmaker, who studies film at Columbia College Chicago, to bring a video camera, some lighting equiptment, and film knowledge to the kids. He enthusiastically agreed, and helped the children make their screenplay a movie! It was a huge success - about 40 people attended the premiere (thanks to all of you who were able to support our budding filmmakers' and actors' careers!).

If you're interested, please visit this site http://actionart.ning.com/ to see a new Community of Practice (CoP, or on-line discussion forum) I've developed to engage people in dialogue about children's art-making practices as a form of taking action in their communities. I was actually asked to create a CoP for an Erikson Institute school assignment, but I hope the discussions will continue to grow and advance well beyond the course semester. On this site, you'll see some new discussion forums, a few photos, and the children's screenplay for "The Magical Mango Tree."

Don't forget to check out our new Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/40063406@N07/

(lots of "Production Stills" have recently been posted!)

Quinn