With CCA, screen time in 2021 may surprise you! Videos which encourages Imaginationand exercise +Quality Art Materials, for your ‘At-Home’ Art Studio! Weekly live engagement classes(optional) will keep your kids active andinspired to work each week…OFFLINE!
Meetingand drawingour favorite penguin, Sweet Scarlett and the animals she encounters, travelling the world.Building icy coves & igloos in theSouth Pole Even make-your-own snow STEM activities! Kidsdraweach animal family, various scenes, landscapes, igloos and lots, lots more! Each week is filled withnew ideasto start them off running and creating, even after class- all week long. They’ll love using their hands, brains and bodies in Story Adventures: An interactive 3-D Art Adventure kids watch, learn to create & build themselves whilereadingand hearing stories of friendship adventures across many countries and cultures.
This class takes off February 1, 2021. Virtual Live & In-Person classes begin February 4 @ All Souls Church, 1157 Lexington Avenue on the UES of NYC!
What is it? A Social Emotional Learning program based invisual arts,cultural exploration, literature and dance!
What will my child be doing? Divinginto a new story adventure every month. Creating the characters and sets in the storythroughvisual art classes.Moving their body and developing a love of movement and coordinationthrough dance technique videos.Building confidencethrough art, theater and musical games.
What will I gain? Art heals and unites. The Story Adventures program builds the language ofresilience, empowers kids with character, gainsconflict resolution problem-solving skills along with a love forliterature, art skills, fantasy and travel!
How do I access the program? Create aschedule that works best for your family’s needs. Live zoom classes are available once a week for students to create it together!All pre-recorded drawing videos are available through Google classroom, accessible anytime. Exercise is also included through story-related movement and dance videos!
Watch your child’seyes light up as they receive exciting CCA Art Kits,filled with art studio materials that willlast for years.Heartswill soar as your child creates amazing art projects. Sharejoyin yourentire householdwhen you have an alternative to screen time. If you need to make a call or get work done, put on a Story Adventures video to keep your child moving and creating!
“She seriously loves it all… the art and the dancing! This is a great program. She is dancing all over the house.” Theresa’s mom Alison“Lilah’s “favorites” are; getting the boxes delivered, unpacking all the art supplies, Using watercolor pencils, I really know how to draw penguins and whales now and all the characters in the book.” –Lilah’s mom Brina
The past year has been challenging but we have been able to grow in so many new ways. Congratulate yourself for making it through this year! We couldn’t have made it without you, extraordinary parents!
Thank you for continuing to enrich our community with your remarkable dedication to CCA’s mission and values. A year-in-review of some of our favorite moments helps us to focus on the positive, during this up & down rollercoaster of a year! Enjoy!
–Toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art with all classes (2.5-10’s) to see the amazing exhibit Making Marvels, the Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe and making clocks (pre-Covid19)
-In March, smoothly transferred all programs online without missing a class, keeping sane with empowerment and humor… starting with creating the virus as a Pac-Man & a Crunch Berry! “Crunchatize me Captain!”
-Age-appropriated ART KITS grew to include all of the unique materials we would have used at school, shipped to each new home… including STEAM projects, like how to make your own Lava Lamps and snow!
–Jonathan Levwas a visiting artist to ourArt Adventures STUDIO Online Class where students 8-15 years learned how to draw landsccapes, architecture, perspecitve and portraits, including virtual studio tours of contemporary artists!
-Partnered with Central Studios (STL) to bring to life Penguins, Polar Bears, and Mermaids with 2D drawings, 3D set constructions, movement and dance for summer’s debut of DanceArt Camp (via Zoom) with fully-packed, weekly art kits
–Built our famous snow globes
–Explored Chinese Artusing new art materials: Bamboo brushes, ink and rice paper
-Celebrated Holiweek and created our own colored paints
-Dove into color mixingwith transclucent vellum and Elmer the Elephant in Mini-Art Adventures
-Created a stain glass mosaicforMother’s Day
–Made our very own2D-3D FROZEN translucent collage posters inArt Adventure Class
-Made haunted houses, painted foam skulls and bones, and createdspooky necklacesin our FREE Halloween Kids Art Event! (in collaboration with Blue Bus Project held at the Culture Lab in Long Island City)
-Designed and Celebrated a 5 and 3 year old unicorn and construction birthday partyduring Covid-19
-Toured the newly-opened Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall with families: 2 boys, ages 8 & 11 with their grandparents, metal embossing + projects exploring Impressionism and color theory!
Be ready 2021, we are coming for you with new joy and inspiration in our hearts!
Despite the pandemic, we are very THANKFUL for the family or friends that we are able to connect with either in their homes or by a phone call. We also want to take a moment to be thankful for the things that we do have this fall season: A warm bed to sleep in, a warm meal on the table and art supplies in our cabinets or strewn across the table!
What do Matisse, Eric Carle, Claes Oldenburg and Wayne Thiebaud have in common?
Answer: Food Art!
An Art Adventures blast from the past for Turkeyday fun: PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD! Create food art, inspired by Thiebaud and Matisse and remembering Oldenburg from MoMA’s 2013 exhibition. (We LOVED placing our works on the Thanksgiving table to try to fool the family!)
“Matisselived during France’s Belle Époque. Café culture was at its height, and cafés were where artists came together to exchange stories, discuss new artistic styles, and eat good food*. What a way to live, discuss and create together! We can do the same today, by making pastries and creating food art out of play dough or cutting newspaper, magazines and colorful plastic bags. Eric Carleand Matisseliked to make their own painted patterned papers (or markers)… THEN cut them up to collage onto cardboard with a glue stick! Make patterns or paint from cool colors: greens, blues and purples, because Green Beans are so fun to cut! (and eat.)
Check out our dinner table collages and dessert sculptures from our Art Adventure Classes:
MoMA’s exhibition ofClaes Oldenburg: The Street and The Storewas displayed in August of 2013. This was one of our favorite tours to lead! Oldenburg is known for his depictions of everyday objects, here as sculptures. The Streetis comprised of objects made from cardboard, burlap and newspaper (Playdough/Model Magic) and The Store is made up of brightlypainted sculptures and reliefs.
How would you build your own food sculpture? Will your turkey be blue or purple? What would you use?
In past Party Adventures, Claes Oldenburg has inspired bushels of fun!
We wish you a very happy & creative Thanksgiving! Enjoy your holiday:)
*Gomez-Rejon, M. (2014, Update 2017) Cooking Art History: Dining with Matisse. Website retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cooking-art-history-dinin_b_5339438
The pandemic has provided for more “home time” than ever before… which has lended new emerging artists (+ kids!) to “think outside of the box” as they have been “inside a box” (house) for way too long. See below to use household items in drawings & papier-mâché:)
An example is the “Ode to Helen Rosner’s Roast Chicken” by Agnes Barton, 39 from Corvallis, Oregon. She has been crafting with the things around her house during the pandemic. Barton-Sabo used “flour, water, masking tape, two issues of the New Yorker and acrylic paint” to share the joys of Helen Rosner’s viral video of “drying chicken skin with a hair dryer.”She wants her artwork during this time to evoke emotions of laughter by her ridiculous imagery(Cavna, 2020).
Another young man, Kristián Mensa in 2016 (before the pandemic), also reimagined “every day objects” to talented pieces of artwork! “To create these whimsical compositions, Mensa pairs…items with minimalist drawings that incorporate the 3D elements among bold lines.” He takes half of an orange (peeled) to use for the back of a turtle or a row of paintbrushes and draws a man mowing over them (Barnes, 2016).
Thankfully, we have outlandish artwork like these due to the work of the impressionists in the 19th century who wanted to go against the “rigid and carefully finished images of the Académies des Beaux-Arts (historical subjects, realistic themes and portraits)” and instead pushed for color, emotion, personality, and imagination in landscape and still life. It also opened the way, for a new modern medium, photography– which at first impressionists thought it “devalued their art skill” until they curved their perception and “sought to express nature and modern city life” in their own pieces (Lumen Learning, N/A)
Here is a painting from Dina D’ Argo, 56, from Springfield, Tennessee, whom used acrylic paints to paint “In the Void.” The painting shares the emotion of “stepping into the unknown.”As humans, we can’t see what is up ahead and so we move with uncertainty into the future. “The veil symbolizes not only the unwillingness to accept reality, but also our cultural preoccupation with covering or uncovering one’s face, and what it represents or says about who we are as a society…” The floating finally reminds the viewer that we must accept the chaos and go with the flow of life(Cavna, 2020).
How creative have your kids been during quarantine? Share with us! Email your images of artwork: claire@clairescreativeadventures.com with the subject line reading, “Quarentine Artwork” or tag your artwork on your social media accounts: Instagram: @clairescreative OR Facebook: @clairescreativeadventures and send us a quick instant message saying that you sent your artwork.
CCA ‘s repeat attendance enabled us to search for brand new art to teach each year. In January 2011, we explored exciting ways that regular old paper can be transformed into fantastic art. We studied a variety of artists and their techniques including: Mia Pearlman, Andrea Dezsö and Betrice Coron. Here you see the first stage of our cut paper mobiles project inspired by Mia Pearlman. Students each made at least two drawings with one featuring curvy shapes and one with angle shapes. The next step was to cut out some of the shapes created. Choosing which shapes to cut out, which to leave and just how much negative space to keep around the shapes were important decisions each student had to make about their artwork.The next phase included assembling the pieces into a paper mobile. Here are some end results!
We know there are a lot of activities for your children and are excited to make Art Adventures, an early enrichment league, on the top of their list.
What do we have in store? Learning from the masters, Multi-cultural art and Contemporary Artists. Children will learn how to paint, draw, sculpt, mosaic, work with plastics, wood, metal and wire.
As well as ART IN THE PARK this spring and a little French along the way!
Each class will take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art per semester for a Museum Adventure.
New to Art Adventures? CCA (Claire’s Creative Adventures) programs have a 3:1 or even 2:1 student-teacher ratio, myriad material exploration, optional French, as well as lunch & art + after-school programs since 2001 @ All Souls Church.