Paint, Song, and Stories

Bobbe and Sue had their very popular"Paint, Song, and Stories" class where process-oriented, messy painting led by Bobbe took place, a story was read to the families, and songs were sung in Spanish and English while Sue played her guitar. One of the parents took wonderful photographs during the class. You can see a few in this post, and the rest on our Flickr site!



Bobbe was remembering this great class, saying...

"I gave the children shaving cream. They chose liquid watercolors, and began to mix the colors and play with the colored shaving cream on paper. One little boy was so involved in the process, he was up to his elbows in shaving cream. Many of the children speak Spanish and one girl described her painting as the "oceano." The final paintings are beautiful, however, this is a project that was focused on tactile exploration."

Hi Everyone!

We're so happy that Kidstreet was able to participate in the Ravenswood Art Walk this weekend.

Below are a few images of young artists and their family members working with various art materials in the studio.






One studio was open to the public to be used as a process-oriented space to play with art materials, and our Yellow Room studio functioned as a work space for kids and caregivers to help create art pieces that will be part of a permanent display on our new cupboards.





Thanks to those of you who contributed part of your afternoon and creative ideas to Lillstreet Art Center!

Quinn

Our Last Week of Camp?? Already?!

It's hard to believe it, but we're nearing the end of our Kidstreet Summer Camp (sniff), but we are very excited about starting a new school year, because that means beginning our new Fall classes at kidstreet!

It's been such a wonderful summer, so good in fact, that this last week was added as an extra camp due to the extremely popular weeks of camp we've had already.

Thanks to all those who joined one week or many weeks of camp this summer. I really hope you enjoyed all the fun projects, dedicated teachers and assisstants, the old friends you re-connected with, and the new friends you made. If you're able to sign up for an after-school class during the year, it would be great to have you all back at Lillstreet again.

Please feel free to look at the newest photos posted on our Flickr site!

...And if you stop by Lillstreet this week, you'll get to see the newest installation piece constructed by Gary and Brian's class (near the water fountain), and the outer space scene made by my class.

Thanks for a SPECTACULAR summer!!! See you in the Fall!

Quinn

Very Very Busy, But Having Fun!

Hey Everyone!

Sorry it's been so long since our last post...just goes to show how busy we've been at camp this summer...

This week, one group of campers has been working on a photography project. After talking about parts and function of an old Canon SLR, looking at books of children and grown-up photographers, writing and sketching ideas, just this morning each child was given their own disposable film camera, and we all set out to photograph the community around us. The negatives are being developed now, and we're all eager to see how the images turn out. In preparation for their 4x5 prints, the children have made simple photo albums/scrap books out of paper and yarn, to be assembled with the pictures tomorrow morning.

There are so many other awesome projects being created all throughout Kidstreet this week, such as the large-scale clay work done by Gary and Brian's class, and the monotype prints in Amanda's class. In fact, camp this summer has been so popular, we've decided to add a whole extra week! If you'd still like to sign up for next week, check availability at Lillstreet's front desk.

We hope to be posting more pictures on our Flickr site of this week's fun activities.

(Remember, there's a link to Flickr on the right hand side of this page).

Thanks for reading,

Quinn

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