Brelyn Loves the Kids...

The kids at the Children’s Art Institute are… interesting to say the least. I really like working with such young creative minds. Its so amazing to see what such little people are capable of, but they weren’t always so sweet. There are two kids in particular that are just off the wall. There’s a little boy who’s sweet, but hyper active. His old sister is also in the program and she treats him like a plague. I try to engage him and treat him like all the other kids because I think he’s really misunderstood, but it’s hard to stay patient with him. He wanders around all the time and almost never finishes any projects. He’s actually made some really nice freehand drawings when I managed to get him to sit down work, but when he isn’t engaged, which is like 70 % of the time, he can be downright destructive. There’s also a little girl who’s just weird. She talks like a senile old lady and she growls at people. She almost never does what you ask her to do and she freaks out if you touch her. I fixed her, though. I noticed how sweet she is in front of Ms. Lavender, so when she started acting up, I got my serious face on and told her that I’d tell Ms. Lavender that she was cutting up and she straightened up pretty quick. At least for a while. But, I stayed strong with both of the little terrors and kept my patience. I never show them any weakness. Naturally, some kids cut up, but others are really sweet. There are three sisters who do nice work and even help out some. The youngest is a little bit of a busy body, but she’s only 7, so that’s expected. There’s an 8 year old girl who’s been at the Children’s Art Institute since she was 5 and she works really well and is really sweet. I think I’m pretty good with kids, maybe I'll be a teacher some day :)

New Sketch Book

This week, Ms. Weiss was absent so I worked with Mr. Barnett. I bought a new sketch book, so I was all ready to draw. My old sketch book was practically filled with fashion design sketches, most of them in black and white, so I decided to try and change things up a bit for my new book. I had made my first sketch at home and I COLORED IT! I’ve also started experimenting with collage in my sketch book. I’m not really into collage as an art form, but I do think it’s a good way to organize ideas and inspirations. Mr. Barnett brought a lot of old National Geographics, which was great because I believe that inspiration for art and fashion should come from the world, other art and fashion. I also looked at some Bird and Flower magazines. They’re sort of boring, but they have pretty pictures. I hadn’t made any realistic drawings in a while, so I decided to draw a little bird. He turned out cute and really…real looking. I was proud that my skills hadn’t dwindled. I also drew some pattern ideas that were abstracted from flowers. I started working on pattern ideas so I’ll be great at everything fashion related. Ms. Lavender asked to see my sketchbook and she said she was impressed. I was really excited because Ms. Lavender is such a prominent artist and it’s an honor to get positive feedback from her. She also told me that she wants me to work on my art when I have some down time from working with the kids. I was really pleased with that and I know I won’t be able to get a lot done there, I can get little stuff like COLORING MY PICTURES done.

First Week at Children's Art Institute

I'm still playing catch up on this blog for the things I've been up to so far with Art Works, so I wanted to tell you what I've been doing at the Children's Art Insitute. I fell in to place pretty comfortably there on Monday because Mr. Burnett works there too, as well as one of my art teachers from Emerson, Deb Weiss. There are two other instructors that work at The Children's Art Institute named Ms. Springer and Mr. Thomas. When I first got there, Ms. Springer showed me how crochet a scarf. I worked on that for most of the morning and then I went help Ms. Weiss, who was helping the kids make sculptures out of clay. As you can imagine, that was pretty messy. Clay got on almost every surface imaginable. Mr. Burnett's kids were drawing from How-to cartoon books. I worked on a drawing of an idea for a dress that I'd had. Mr. Thomas' kids worked on collages.
On Tuesday, I worked with Ms. Weiss making "abstract" sculptures out of recyclable materials like cardboard tubes, plastic bottles, and styrofoam with the kids. We all came up with pretty interesting ideas. Most of our sculptures looked like alien landscapes. Almost all of us used the little plastic googly eyes that Ms. Weiss had found, making our sculptures even more far out. On Wednesday, me and some of the kids painted our recyclable sculptures and the clay sculptures from Monday. The paint was even messier than the clay. We had to start clean-up early that day because painting was such a mess, but I was surprised to find that the messiest kids stepped up and were really great helpers cleaning up their messes.
All of the kids I've worked with, which were elementary school aged, seemed really bright and creative. I haven't worked with the older kids yet, but most of them seem pretty focused on drawing with Mr. Burnett and have made some really nice work. All of the kids have a lot of potential, even though some of them are busy-bodies.

Intro

My name is Brelyn Gerard and I am a student worker for Gary Art Works in Gary, Indiana. Gary Art Works an organization dedicated to keeping the arts alive in Gary by providing opportunites for artists of all ages, like me, and programs to expose members of the community to different aspects of the arts.
I was really excited about working with Art Works. I had to push to get the job because there were so few spots available, but I assured Rudy Williams, the executive director of the program, that I was willing to learn and work hard, so I got the job. At orientation, I found that Monday through Wednesday, I would be working with the Children's Art Institute. Ms. Mac, Art Works' program director, gave me some information about the Children's Art Institute's head, Ms. Murcie Poplar Lavender. I was really impressed. Ms. Lavender is a very accomplished and well respected artist who has done a lot support the arts in the community. She also won Indiana's Governor's Arts Award. I was really excited to learn that past winners of this award were Bill Blass and Kurt Vonnegut, who I respect a lot because they've excelled in my aspiring career goals: respectively fashion design and writing.
I started work on Thursday. I work at Art Works on Thursdays and Fridays since the Children's Art Institute program is just Monday -Wednesday. I really like this arrangement because I reap the benfits of two really great programs. At Art Works, I was really impressed by how Ms. Mac had well prepared tasks for us to complete as soon as we got there. In the afternoon, we work with kids, so in the morning, we prepared some things for them to do. What's really great is that in preparing things for the kids to do, we're learning ourselves. We prepared some acting excercises, skits, and improv excercises for the kids, which allowed us to flex our creative and writing muscles. I'm not a very experienced drama person, but I've been working with the West Side Theater Guild since I was 9 (I'm 19 now) and I really like writing, so I didn't feel left out being a visual art person. That afternoon, we only had one kid, but we made the best of it. We did our excercises with our lead drama artist, Ms. Tabitha. It was a lot more fun than I initially thought and I was refreshed on some of the things that I had learned in the theater. After drama, we went to work with our lead visual artist, Derrick Burnett. Mr. Burnett has a studio at Art Works, so we got to see a lot of his work. His work is centered on issues that face today's African Americans, which is really positive in a city like Gary. I talked to Mr. Burnett about my own work and he gave me a lot of good advise. He also said that he would help me to develop my portfolio over the summer. Although I attended Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts as an art major up to my sophomore year, my portfolio is a bit skimpy because I attended the Indiana Academy for Science, Math, and Humanities (boy, magnet schools have long names...) my junior and senior year. The Academy is a really hard core academic school, so I had little time to work on art outside of my sketch book. I made it into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with my sketch book and some larger work from Emerson, but I probably could've gotten a lot more scholarship money if I had a more current portfolio. I'm hoping that with Mr. Burnett's help, I'll be able to develop a portfolio that will get me some more money for school because the Art Institute is really expensive.
I'm really looking forward to having a positive, productive summer at Gary Arts, not to mention making some money to help with my college bills!