Riff Raff

Riff Raff

oil and charcoal on canvas

24 x 24 inches

© 2012 Morgan Johnson Norwood

This painting always gets interesting comments when I share it with people.  One couple at the Reston Market saw rabbits leaping in a field; another saw ghosts and faces.

A few months ago I was asked to present my work to the students at my former school, John Adams Elementary School in Alexandria, and I was so excited.  So I showed up to present last month with a mini-show and all my gear, and some fabulous students helped me set up.  It was during this time that I received The Best Comment Ever about Riff Raff.  It came from Leila, a rising fifth grader.  She said, 

"I like this painting.  It looks like Spring, mixed with danger."

You really can't beat that.

For Riff Raff, I laid layers of paint over scrubbed canvas that into which I had drawn, pushing and pulling texture and details forward and back, and enjoyed the playful splashes of color in a more quiet field of gray tones.  To me, this painting seemed to have some childlike mischief.  And as Leila said, some danger. I couldn't agree more. 

So I was excited to include the piece in my presentation to the real riff raff.

For six years I enjoyed teaching art at John Adams before I made the decision to stay home with my young children.  While at John Adams, a Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA, sponsored by The Kennedy Center) school, I was most proud of the annual arts festival, which my team and I spent countless hours organizing.  The 2-day festival included a student-written and performed opera and a circus, a whole-school framed art exhibit and frame sale, and a scholarship program to help send every kid’s art home in a professional frame.  In addition to the show and performances, we invited various artists and performers in the DC-area community to teach and share their art with the students.   

But THIS year I was so happy to participate as a presenter**, allowing the students to peek into the head of someone who makes art in real life outside the classroom. 

I had a ball presenting to the kids at John Adams for their annual Festival of the Arts!

My talk was basically a Career Day for artists.  I talked about my inspiration from my regular nature walks with my kids and my love of contemporary art, and shared several pieces of my past and present work before I demonstrated a bit and answered questions.

Demonstrating a bit of my process while I introduced oil painting.

And of course, being a former art teacher, I had to give them all homework for the summer: draw something every day. It doesn't have to be an in-depth detailed drawing each time, but it should give you a chance to see your world a little differently, a little more closely. 

Want to participate in my little assignment?  Try it for a week.  A month.  The whole summer!  And don't forget to show me your drawings!  I'd love to see what you came up with.

And speaking of which, you too can participate in The Sketchbook Project 2013.  Have you signed up yet?

** DC-area artists and performers who are interested in presenting to the students at John Adams should contact me, and I can get you in contact with the right people. 

Thanksgiving turkeys

Doodle and I had some fun making these cute turkeys together to celebrate the holiday.

I precut turkey bodies from a cereal box we scavenged from the recycling bin, and let her paint them. While they dried, she free-painted on butcher paper while I cut out feathers of different sizes, waddles, and beaks from construction paper.

Later she assembled the layers after I helped apply the glue. A final touch was gluing tail feathers in an arc from the back and adding wiggly eyes.

Last step was cutting a 3 inch strip of extra cardboard, folding it in half, and snipping a slit into both halves.

These will look nice for Grandma's table setting, don't you think? Check out our handiwork:

Starting small

Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. -- Pablo Picasso

Doodle turned three this month.  I love three.  Love.  Three is the age when those pudgy little fingers start finally helping in the kitchen instead of making a bigger mess than mommy or daddy.  Three is the age when conversations about what strangers’ footwear is like (“I have birdie shoes on, but he has toes on”), among other such charming observations of life.  And three is the age when art gets to be really super fun.

Drawing of a "skinny bug (stink bug)", 3 years old. 
Yes, it's that time of year again when those evil creatures invade the house....

I have been waiting for this moment since she was born, and now that it’s here I am beside myself with possibilities.  What can she do?  What does she understand?  What can we MAKE??

Now that my classroom has transitioned from 600+ elementary kids a week to 2 kids, I'm always looking for ideas, and I have lots more ideas brewing.  One of my favorite blogs lately is A Little Learning for Two.  Her project and learning ideas are all geared for young hands and sensory issues that are perfect for this age.  Please feel free to share some of your favorite preschool art projects!

Where did we begin?

I get this question from new moms who are ready to start artmaking with their young children-- How can I get my kid interested in art when all he wants to do is chew on things?  What materials are good to start with?

My advice: start as soon as you want!  I chose the 1-year mark as an age when she could sit well, and have good manual dexterity to hold a tool or manipulate toys.  I started with homemade playdough, figuring if it went into her mouth, at least it was edible.  Well, let me tell you, if you try this yourself, consider an alternative recipe to what I did-- whole wheat flour and red food coloring in a no-cook recipe.  The playdough looked like ground beef, and quickly became a not-so-tasty snack for mommy to clean up. For the record, she's a pro at using playdough now, so at least it wasn't a deterrent.

When Doodle was 14 months old she got her first art supplies for Christmas: Crayola jumbo crayons, and their Beginnings line of palm-held markers.  I also got her big floor-sized pads of paper, and brought out an old colorful sheet from my childhood that I dubbed The Magic Carpet.  My one simple rule: art materials stay on the Magic Carpet.  If they leave the Magic Carpet, art time is over.  Here is a video of her trying out her new supplies.

So what about the eating the crayon thing?  Babies love to explore with their mouths, and some babies are mouthier than others.  I'm learning that Scribble enjoys putting lots of things in her mouth, but Doodle was really never that way.  With the caveat that the art supplies you have on hand should be nontoxic, and the expectation that mouthing the crayons is normal and may happen, it is your job to help her transition to drawing for pleasure, as opposed to tasting.  With Doodle, if it happened, I would remove the implement from her mouth and say, "crayons are for coloring," and hand-over-hand draw on the paper with lots of ooohs and aaahs.  Eventually the pleasure of mark making overrides the pleasure of tasting.  I would also color alongside my daughter, modeling for her, and having a super fun time.  

Developmental marks to look out for include big, sweeping side-to-side movements transitioning to circles.

Other materials to try:

Painting with a paintbrush and water on the sidewalk

Fingerpainting, including stamping with foam shapes and/or letters

Sidewalk chalk

Blocks, small empty boxes

Printing various objects (remember potato prints?  Carrots are good for little hands too!)

Where are we now?

This afternoon I focused on getting Scribble to nap longer than 30 minutes, so I didn't even pretend to try Doodle's "quiet" time today (it really is no wonder my youngest's naps are so screwed up, she has to compete with Little Miss Volume all the time).  Instead of insisting Quiet Time in solitude, I made her year by letting her spend time with me in the downstairs play area, where she got to paint with brushes of various types, including rope, sponge, fringe.  When we ran out of drying space, we cleaned up and transitioned from 2D to 3D, rolling and cutting out a billion (okay, not really) stars from playdough.

I love Three because of the elaborate stories that come with the art, especially the art that the casual observer truly has no idea what the masterpiece resembles.  I do my very best not to impose my own interpretation until she tells me all about it... and usually her description makes mine incredibly weak.