Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 5

This week as I have been contemplating my age appropriate art for the creative blog assignment and reflecting on this week’s reading and videos, I have been inspired to experiment with creating an expressive memory journal. The cover would be a collage of drawings, photos taken by the young adult patient or found on the internet, specialty graphic paper and other materials. The idea of the book would be to create a collage on the cover that represented who they are: memories of their life, their family, things they like to do, how they view themselves now, questions they have, what makes them unique. They would use colors, textures and graphics to create an expression of them self.  The inside of the journal would have a combination of lined pages for writing and blank pages for drawing or adding more collage through the course of time.  This would be an ongoing journal they would add to daily or weekly. So they would stay active with this journal, snapping photos with their phone, drawing, writing stories, poems, letters, etc. in their expressive memory journal. Schneider says in the book, Writing Alone and With Others, why keep a journal? Your life has significance. A journal helps you remember, it saves the perception of what you have this day as you are living it (pg.66-68).

During this week I have been on a cruise ship and have had very limited access to technology resources. All week I have been taking photos with my phone of scenery, signs, art, painted graphics on walls, carpet etc.   Inspired while reading Schneider’s, chapter 4 The Journal, I decided to create the journal to be appropriate for a teen male ages 13-17yrs. This project can be altered for young adult patients, by having them use more age appropriate graphics that have meaning for them. Since I was limited on the ship, I used on board photos I took from the teen section of the ship. There were daily arts and craft workshops on-board, so I learned how to make paper craft cards and scrap-booking, to help with my journal collage. I decided to make my own scrap-book male teen adolescence kit from my photos. Some of the photos were used like specialty paper and some were used like photos and stickers. I used the paper cutter scissors and other tools and ideas I had learned at the workshops. 

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 4

Scribble has been highlighted to me recently, in the wall paper in hotels and even in the metal of bathroom stalls as a design. 

I have been contemplating the idea of what scribble is, the idea that everyone is able to scribble and is scribbling the same as doodling? One usually does not have a preset idea of what they are going to make when they begin to scribble, however once you begin scribbling an idea for a drawing can emerge from the scribble. Or one can color or pattern the different shapes created from the scribble, to make an abstract drawing. To scribble is so easy and simple, anyone can scribble, young to old, even all the patients and students that tell me they are not artistic when I invite them to create. 

Artists use scribble to create works of art.

Lowenfeld’s Scribble Stage; 0-4 years, scribble is the first form of artistic drawing in development.       

I believe young children can learn to communicate/express themselves creatively through scribble drawing before verbal language develops.  I believe this is why scribble is known to children and is easy for a person through all the stages of development.  

I have created a 2 works of art using an art scribble process that I believe would be developmentally appropriate for a child. The Scribble Art Card is appropriate for a child 3-6 years and the Scribble Art drawing is modified with geometric shapes, circles, appropriate for a child 7-9 years.  Both were first painted with watercolor paint and then color pencils and markers were used to scribble and color.

Creative Practice Blog - Art and Human Development - Week 3

From the childhood stage of development, my earliest and most significant childhood memory was at the age of 4-5 years.  I remember lying in bed at night and being fascinated with my hands.  I would stare for hours at my hands, making gestures.  But what I remember the most is how I would think about how the art I loved to make came out from my hands.  I can remember contemplating the thought that all I had to do was think (meditate) about the art idea I wanted to make, the idea would go through my body and come out through my hands and I would make it.  I would lie in bed thinking about this, think of art ideas and could feel the creativity go through my body and to my hands waiting to be released into a creation.  To this day when I receive a creative idea, I can feel it go through me and out my hands when I am creating art.  At that young age I did not know that I was going to be a potter/sculptor that requires a sensitive touch and I would work with clay on a potter’s wheel and make sculptures. 

Here is a drawing of a brain and my hands connected by creative idea brain waves.  We have been studying about creativity, childhood and the brain this week. The drawing was created with black scratch art paper and a wooden stick.  I love working with this paper, it is fun to draw with and reveal the rainbow of colors. I use this paper in my tool kit for patient bedside art, it appeals to all ages and it is a favorite with the male patients.

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 2

This week while reading about Urie Bronfenbrenner’s economical perspective of human development  I read how “The ecological environment is conceived as a set of nesting structures, moving from the innermost structure, outward. The idea of a set of nesting structures inspired my week 2 creative blog assignment; Make a work of art titled "Human Development." 

The art piece I created is called “Nesting Vessels in Human Development.” 

I have created 5 vessels out of clay using the pinch pot hand building technique.

Each vessel represents a stage of human development starting with infancy vessel as the inner vessel moving outward through the phases of human development. This is the order also that I created the piece. Below are pictures of the creative process and stages of the nesting vessels. I tried to capture side views and direct front on pictures. When it was finished I found it interesting that the all 5 vessels nested inside each other looked like a flower.

Infancy - This vessel I created it to look round with a small opening, just beginning.

Childhood - This vessel I tried to represent a child by a triangle symbol, thicker straight walls that were cut at the top.

Adolescence – This vessel was created thinner a less structured with bumps and in places broken through for the road bumps and challenges in this stage.

Adulthood – This vessel was created thin and flared out to represent reaching going through the other stages and reaching an expressive peak in our journey to give out in our daily lives.

Late Adulthood – This vessel was pinched from a slab of clay instead of a ball to keep it low and wide to represent entering the final stage of development and also to hold and contain the previous 4 stages of human development.