Art Camp, Day 1: Self Portraits

This week I am teaching after-school drawing and painting classes to 3rd - 5th graders for a camp that the DIY Lounge is running at Buckman Arts Focus School, along with the fab Cathy Pitters who is teaching fiber arts to the younger kids (they are making the cutest little monster dolls!).

For the first day, I set up a table in the school's Dance Studio (formerly known as a gym) so that the kids could face the mirrored walls and create self portraits which were colored with oil pastels. It turned out great and I am looking forward to the rest of the week.

Happy Campers - more photos from art camp

Here are some more of my favorite pictures from last week's summer art camp at Buckman Arts Focus Elementary School.




Besides working with clay to make these adorable animals, creatures, and vessels, the kids also did some printmaking...
...and here they are doing the "Surprise Sgraffito" lesson, which involves covering a piece of paper with lots of different colors using crayons, painting over it with black paint, and scratching through the wet paint with tools to create a picture or design.

My awesome summer job

This summer I am working as a ceramics instructor at Art Adventures, the kids summer camp at Oregon College of Art and Craft.

I work in a tent in the midst of a beautiful orchard full of bunnies and blackberries.

The main projects I teach each week are pots and animals. The little kids do pinch pots and the older ones do coil pots. They all get to make clay animals (or imaginative creatures). They are all fired and glazed.

Below are some examples of their finished work. I am so impressed and delighted by the kids' creativity and the beautiful artwork they make. This is probably the most fun I've ever had at a job.