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Kohl Children’s Museum Artist-in-Residence: A Conversation with Rachel Davis

by Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist

I am glad to share the Museum’s Art Studio with artists! It is such a fantastic opportunity to share a new perspective and art making style with the visitors. As an added benefit, I get to ask them about their art making, ideas about working with children and collaboration.

This past February, I was able to work with Rachel Davis while she shared her practice of monoprinting with our art studio visitors.

Tim Abel: You brought a lot of great natural materials from a nest to shells to shed antlers for the visitors to explore during the residency. It was great to see a child interact with these items and draw their own conclusions about them or to see how surprised they were when they figured something out, like how to put the lobster claw back together. There was care in the selection of objects you brought to share, so I guess I have two questions.

First, do you have a favorite item of your own that you have found from the natural world?

Rachel Davis: A favorite item from the curiosity box:

I collect objects from nature all the time, whether I am on vacation and am beach combing or just on a stroll in the neighborhood. I like to pick up things that catch my eye. I choose things based on their texture, color and shape. I am drawn to the lumpy, organic shapes of dried seed pods, oyster shells, snail shells and the texture of snake skin.

I have some stones at home that are special for their markings: gray with white stripes. One stone I shared at the residency, I found in Montana. It has beautiful lichens covering one side.

And second, a larger question: how does the natural world inspire your own artmaking?

These materials are important "supplies" in my work in the same way that paint and paper are supplies. I look, draw and study these items when I begin creating a new work of art.

I grew up in a rural area in upstate New York and played in the woods and in creek beds and loved building forts. I think of this open ended playtime as similar to my art making process. When I make compositions in a print or painting it is a process similar to play and often begins with objects I have found in nature.

Rachel Davis’ artwork, clockwise from top left: shellcave, horn, fishnet and hillside. All are Ink and paint on wood, 4 x 6” and made in 2014.

I have asked the past teaching artists that have visited the art studio about collaboration, so I wanted to get your take on it too. How do you prepare for a collaboration?

I think of collaboration, whether between myself and another artist or a larger scale project like Kohl artist-in-residence, as a conversation. There are pauses left for the other to speak and contribute. There should be spaces where we can contradict or disagree with each other. When this happens through the formal process of art making the result is more dynamic and engaging. It becomes a problem to solve. Instead of a linear process I like to embrace a process where the outcome is not predetermined. This insures spontaneity and playfulness in the process.

For my residency at Kohl I knew I wanted to capture the experience the children had making marks painting on the plexiglass. I have been working on these four inch round blotter papers and thought the material lent itself to capture a partial print that kids had created. This way the process was completely open ended and we were not confined to making a thing. Just collecting favorite marks, colors, and brush strokes. My prep for the residency at Kohl was to create a few formal constraints (for example creating interesting colors of paint not just red, blue yellow, but teals, pinks, grays, metallics) and the four-inch round paper stock. The process was very much open within those constraints.

The monoprinting workshops during the residency were so process-driven, in that they invited the visitors to explore:  mark making with the monoprinting tools, color mixing or just to have fun squishing the ink across the plexiglass. These playful investigations are what the printed image became, like a snapshot of the action and experimentation. Do you have any advice to anyone who is new to art making with children or is trying something at home that would help embrace this style of art making?

I think it's important to let children use real tools and not toy tools. For example during the residency we used brayers, and decorative painting tools and real textile relief blocks from India. I think this authenticity is important. Though kids are playing, their play is their work and it is real.

I also like to use common household objects like a toothbrush, comb, Q-tip, cotton balls, paper bags, whisk, or spatula for art making. 

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To see photos from the full residency, follow this link to our Flickr Album!

And spread the word: We are looking for our next artist for our upcoming Summer Residency period (to take place at some point July to August 2016)! If you are interested or know of a Chicago-area artist who loves to collaborate, work with the community or just has great ideas that should be shared, check out the link to our application for more details.

Also, check out the beautiful monoprints that we have been able to produce in conjunction with our Art Across Oceans: South Africa project! This video shows some of the South African participants’ creative work!

If you have any questions about this project or the residency, don’t hesitate to contact me!

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Kohl Children’s Museum Artist-in-Residence: A Conversation with Suzanne Sebold

I was able to talk to Suzanne Sebold, a recent guest Artist in Residence here at Kohl Children’s Museum, about her background as an artist. Her residency brought us a fantastic chance to experiment and investigate different ways to make paper!  We played around with embedding found materials in single sheets and collectively made a large collaborative installation of paper circles made from pulp painting with fibers dyed with beets, yellow onion, purple cabbage, hibiscus flower petals and other natural dyes! Here is a link to an album of the residency project. Please take a look at it, and watch our website for our next Artist in Residence! 

Experimental painting, with pulp dyed with beets and yellow onion skins.

TIM ABEL, MUSEUM EDUCATION SPECIALIST: Papermaking is such an awesome process! I feel like with every papermaker I meet I learn a new thing about paper. It was great that you were able to come to the Museum to share your take on working with the materials, especially how you combined natural dyes and materials with non-traditional materials like plastic mesh. There is something about papermaking that reflects each maker’s personality. I would love if you could share how you developed your experimental approach to papermaking.

SUZANNE SEBOLD: I am the daughter of second generation printers, and quality of paper was a dinner table topic. My childhood weekends were spent at my father’s print shop choosing paper to draw and assembling books. It wasn’t until I was in college at the School of the Art Institute that I had my Aha moment. I realized as I was stitching a book comprised of my own handmade papers that I really learned this when I was a child sitting in my father’s shop. That’s when I realized my family’s influence on my choice to study and learn papermaking.

Suzanne Sebold’s own experimental papers, made of gold chain + abaca and cotton + gum Arabic + pigment + plastic mesh 

I love how much wonder and surprise was built into making paper with our visitors.  Do you carry over this to your own practice? If so, how?

I have always been drawn to nature and natural materials. Natural dye was one of my studies during my undergraduate work at SAIC as well as in Senegal, West Africa. I found it fascinating that natural dyes could have permanence and be used on so many materials such as paper, clay, leather and metal.  I even make my own paints using natural dyes. I always look to my immediate environment for inspiration.

I love asking this as a follow up: Are there any materials that you have worked with in the past that have surprised you?

There are so many predictable and controlled environments that we operate in I really enjoy adding the element of the “unknown.” I am always amazed with plant-based natural dyes. One trick I have learned is how to preserve the color, through trial and error.

Left: Prepped pulps for papermaking

Right: Dried pulp painting with dyes from purple cabbage, hibiscus petals, beets and strawberry leaves

I am very interested how other artists approach collaboration and collaborative projects, so how do you prepare yourself for collaboration?

I believe collaborating and connecting are a way of life - with the intention of sharing knowledge. I think the most important aspect is to remain open and receptive to new techniques and traditions.

Examples of experimental single sheets with embedded buttons, mesh and sequin ribbon created by Museum guests during the residency

Since you have been a brief visitor to our art studio space, I would love if you could leave us with a go-to art project that you could suggest for any parent or teacher to easily undertake as a way of inviting wonder and surprise into their home or classroom? 

Take a nature walk in your community. Find plants and flowers that you can press into paper. Observe the colors and interactions. If you have a garden, harvest some of your material to create a natural dye. The dye can be used to paint on paper or add color to your own handmade paper. You can make handmade paper in a blender from recycled paper in your home.

--Interview with Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist

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Project Approach: A Valuable Classroom Experience

You may have seen the words “project,” “project-based learning”, or “the Project Approach” in recent articles and news relating to education. These are current buzzwords in the education field because of the way curriculum and standards such as Common Core can be integrated into a project. Since it is used so frequently, there are many definitions and philosophies on project based learning.  

My go-to reference on the topic is Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years by Judy Harris Helm and Lilian Katz. In the book, a project is defined as an “investigation of a topic worth learning about.” The goal in the Project Approach is to find a topic in which students are highly invested. Then use children’s questions on that topic to develop an in-depth study that involves investigations, authentic activities, and observations so the children have a deeper understanding on the world around them.

The teacher takes on multiple roles in this process: facilitating and guiding the learning process by providing materials and resources (such as artifacts, books, and art supplies), bringing in experts on the topic, and going on a field site visits to answer questions posed by the children. The teacher is also there as a documenter, demonstrating the growth of the children throughout the project and showing how the children are learning, not just what they are learning.  

There are countless reasons why the Project Approach should be done in the classroom. I believe the Project Approach shapes how a child learns and naturally fosters a love of learning in a child for their whole life. Here are a just a few of the big reasons on why the Project Approach is important:

1)      Children are given a reason to practice academic skills. In the Project Approach, children are highly invested in a topic and it becomes something they WANT to learn about. When they want to learn, they will naturally want to read, write, count, and solve problems on that topic. For example, if a child is studying fire trucks and wants to know how many lights are on the fire truck, they will practice counting and then tallying the number of lights. Or if a child is trying to label something on a fire truck, they will look up how to spell and then practice writing the word down.

2)      Children develop positive dispositions towards learning. A disposition is a frequent and voluntary habit of thinking. Being curious, taking initiative, and accepting responsibility are all dispositions that can be nurtured in project work. Children are more likely to continue using these dispositions outside of the classroom if they are frequently used in the classroom. 

3)      The Project Approach enhances brain development. In the Project Approach, children develop mind brain capacity because they are using all areas of the brain. They use their senses through different experiences and authentic activities. When discussing a topic or reading a book, children connect what they are learning to what they already know based on past experiences. They analyze, hypothesize and categorize their learning. Finally, there is opportunity to practice what they learned and demonstrate their new knowledge through writing, drawing, presentations, and representations. 

4)      The Project Approach connects naturally to curriculum and standards in an authentic way that is meaningful to both the teacher, students, and administration. Topic selection from the students allows buy-in, and then with the correct teacher planning, authentic activities can easily be tied with the standards. It is important to mention that standards are being met in project work. The project gives children a connected way of achieving these markers for educational success. For example, in a spider project, the students wanted to create a museum to share all the work they had done; this relates to Common Core English Language Arts Anchor Standard that focuses on conducting research projects as a way of showing proficiency in undertaking different types of investigation. This was a totally student-directed and ingenious way that led to them making advertisement signs, display panels, sorting their work, reflecting on what they had done, and collaborating together to make the perfect museum. 

One of the reasons I love working at Kohl Children’s Museum is because of the strong belief that learning should be engaging, inquisitive, investigative, and self-directed. These key ideas are seen throughout the Museum exhibits and teacher outreach programming, including our own Early Childhood Connections flagship outreach program which brings educators, parents, and children from underserved neighborhoods together through the use of the Project Approach.

As we continue to blog I will be posting more on the Project Approach and samples of projects that have been done in our Early Childhood Connections program. 

-- Sarah Salto, Museum Education Specialist

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Embracing Empathy through Purposeful Play and Art

Let’s face it, it takes a lot of empathy to share.  Even with siblings, and especially with strangers. This is part of the magic of the Museum: all kinds of kids who don’t know each other work side by side daily here and yet through cooperation and teamwork make big things happen without chaos. Do stuffed animals in the Pet Vet get treated by an impromptu team of child vets daily? Yes. Is our Whole Foods Market pretend grocery store pandemonium? No.

Setting up the environment to foster these everyday moments of empathy plays a big role. Providing opportunities of implicit “otherness” allows for curiosity and genuine wonder. What happens when a visitor is introduced to lullabies from all around the world or confronted with the word “read” in a dozen different languages?  Both these instances force dialogue and create wonder through inquiry.

As an art educator, this thought-journey about collaboration takes me back to art creation. Making art is essentially about making a place: temporary, in the moment, imaginary, or celebrated over time as a prized masterpiece. It is a place made possible by becoming engrossed in the making.

What better way to confront community and empathy by opening up this art place to another person? Working collaboratively forces us to navigate encounters with another person.

It can be messy trying to negotiate working that closely, in general. That is why I like collaborative projects so much. Even though the fright of making art with another person looms large, when a single goal is announced, it somehow becomes much easier.

This is not to say that art is the great equalizer, because that would be selling the process short. Contradiction and conflict are mainstays of artmaking: they are just called juxtaposition and sublimation. Freud famously reminds us that learning requires frustration. That is exactly what purposeful artmaking does by confronting the maker with a controllable amount of frustration, and the support of an adult when needed. Collaborative projects can happen in a frenzy of activity (like painting a cardboard deer sculpture) or become quiet and contemplative by trying to weave fabric into a large loom made out of construction fencing. The materials are simple for both: cardboard and paint or recycled construction fencing and upcycled fabric. The thing to shoot for in collaborations is to provide space for all participating, so the scale of both projects are larger-than-child-scale.

So be brave and introduce collaboration to your learning environment. In fact, it might already be happening implicitly. Here are a few tips that could help you dive into the messy world of collaboration or strengthen your collaborative moments:

1.      Set boundaries: think about the good questions and help a discussion happen about sharing/working with each other.  “How can things be changed? How do we respect other people’s art? What are the ground rules for painting in close proximity with each other?” (Trust me, this will help minimize chances—or at least provide a future framework—for the inevitable paint splattering on a neighbor or her contribution to the work.)

2.      Create an area that can grow through individual additions. I call this process an accumulative collaborative project. The scale grows with each addition, and the growing work shows how each part both adds and responds to the overall work. This is great, because each person’s addition remains unique and authentic, but is influenced by the close proximity to other work. The visual dialogue becomes so rich! Also, by creating a project that will allow for all members to initially add something independently is especially good for groups new to the collaborative environment. It acts as a confidence booster, and a way of introductions.

3.      Allow the participants to add to the project, or you can sneakily add their work yourself. In the cardboard structure above, I created the area through gluing and stacking open boxes to create nooks for participants to add and transform. For the wall work below, I slowly added projects that had been left behind in the art studio. This has evolved into a wall of houses, even inspiring a visitor to think about bird houses and adding a chalk drawing with a bird and tree nested into the cardboard sculptures.

4.      Set a project and allow it to change over time. As an educator, you have to set the stage. It isn’t taboo to have an end goal, but keep that to yourself. This goes back to the tip about setting up boundaries for art behavior. You can set initial boundaries with what materials are offered, the original space set aside for the project, or the duration of the project. My limitation for both projects above: the primary inspiration and base material was cardboard. When it comes to collaboration, keep it simple. It is always surprising to see where the project goes.  

5.      Okay, now you are a seasoned collaborator. How about co-planning the project? Listen to your participants: What are they interested in? You can build collaboration into your teaching tools. Child-centered learning is all about collaboration. Do they really love spiders? Okay, do your research: map out possibilities for yourself, then discuss what most excites them. For instance, will they be making a collaborative web sculpture or will they want to focus on making the spider ecosystem? Maybe they love the spiders, and want to figure out what materials to use to make spider sculptures. To follow the pun, be the fly on the wall. Not only that, be the very educated fly on the wall, and be able to help or answer questions when they arise.

Just remember, negotiation, respect, compromise and cooperation become concepts understood through the actual process of planning and making and are concretely represented by the finished project. As an adult facilitating collaboration, be calm, set boundaries, listen to the group needs, then become part of the process.

Here is a link of some of the collaborative projects that have been undertaken in the Museum’s Art Studio over the past year!

Don’t be afraid to get messy! In the end, the outcome is always a surprise and a result of many hands working together.

--Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist

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Kohl Children’s Museum Artist-in-Residence: A Conversation with Shannon Molter

It was a pleasure to work with artist Shannon Molter to create an underground artscape out of recycled and natural materials. I had a chance to chat about the process, her own work and working collaboratively.  Happy reading!

Beneath the Garden Floor - Completed Installation at Kohl Children’s Museum

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TIM ABEL, MUSEUM EDUCATION SPECIALIST: The natural world is a big inspiration for the collaborative sculpture you helped create at the Museum. It was great to think beyond just flowers that inhabit a garden to the garden as an environment above and below the dirt! I know I have big nature memories about exploring as a child, do you have a memory that sticks out as particularly influential on your thinking about creating art as an artist and art educator now?

SHANNON MOLTER: Nature and the great outdoors were certainly as important to me as a child as my house and classroom were. Growing up in the woods of Northern Wisconsin, I used to go for long, exploratory hikes with my big sister through the acres surrounding our home.> We pretended to be animals, wilderness adventurers, and witches. With a clear understanding of boundaries given by our parents, we were allowed to discover special places like ground-fed springs teaming with frogs, wildflower fields, and trees uprooted by storms creating caverns in the ground.

As an educator I feel it is essential to give children an entry-point for learning and exploring new materials and ideas. Then to step back and give support for independent experimentation. It is important to me to inspire, not direct.

Process Work on Wilderness - USABLE SPACE Gallery, Milwaukee

Completed Wilderness Installation with Performers & Projection, 2014

We used a lot of very simple materials during the workshop to transform them into roots. It was surprising to take cardboard, tape and simple papers, then see them become something very new and different as the participants (both kids and adults) created rocks, roots, tree logs and mushrooms to include in the installation. Is there a material that you like to work with in your artmaking practice as a fiber artist?

Paper and rope are lovely, versatile materials. But honestly, most “natural” materials really excite me! I love to use all sorts of paper, fabric and wood to make sculpture. I am especially fond of recycling leather from manufacturing. Natural fibers can be soaked in water and made soft. They can be dyed, woven and sewn, but are very sturdy.

Are there any materials that you have worked with in the past that have surprised you?

Hmm. Okay, pollen. Pollen can be an amazing dye! Last summer I had the great opportunity to collaborate with two other artists, making screen prints about honey bees. I was charged with making the natural ink. I immediately thought of making dye with flowers. Then I happened upon a huge field of goldenrod that was buzzing with bees and thought, “PERFECT!” The pollen from these yellow blooms was so strong, it dyed fabric beautifully!

How do you prepare yourself for collaboration?

I try to ask a lot of questions and let go of rigid expectations. I get in to the creative problem solving mode and consider: Who is the audience? What might they know about the subject? What does each collaborator get excited about and feel strongly about contributing? Then I apply my own expertise and skills, always impressing the need for cohesion.

Is there a go-to art project that you could suggest for any parent or teacher to easily undertake as a way of inviting nature into their home or classroom?

Great question! I suggest bringing something living into your home. Try something simple like a house plant or herbs in your kitchen.  When you are feeling more adventurous or have some time, try making wildflower (native of course!) seed bombs with backyard topsoil or veggie seed infused paper sheets with recycled junk mail. These are both pretty messy, but can easily be cleaned up or done outside.

I have started keeping a list of fun, approachable things to do outside, to empower parents, kids, and adults to spend more time outdoors. This list will be available on the Kohl Museum blog later this summer.

Do you have any exciting projects that you are working on now?

I am currently building several leather sculptures that are very exciting! They are life size illustrations of the forest floor made of recycled leather. Much like the mural we made together in the Kohl Children’s Museum, my artwork is made up of sculpted tree stumps, roots, thousands of hand-dyed leaves and even some real mica, which makes the whole ground sparkle! These pieces will be on display at the Riverside Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this fall through spring of 2016.

Forest Floor - In Progress, 2014 - Present

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To see photos from the full residency, follow this link to our Flickr Album!

And spread the word: We are looking for our next artist for our upcoming Fall Residency period (to take place at some point from October 1 to December 15)! If you are interested or know of a Chicago-area artist who loves to collaborate, work with the community or just has great ideas that should be shared, check out the link to our application for more details.

If you have any questions about this project or the residency, don’t hesitate to contact me.

--Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist

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Finding Inspiration in Chagall for Children: Painting a House

(Images, top: The Blue House, 1917; bottom: I and the Village, 1911)

It was great to celebrate the return of Chagall for Children to the Museum. And of course that meant thinking of an open ended project that would invite children and families into the fantastical art world created by Marc Chagall.

So much of his art is about celebrating color and mixing the real, remembered and imaginary. The Blue House feels very real, like it really could have existed. And I wonder if in a village long ago there was a man with green skin that could talk to animals while women could walk on their heads (like in I and the Village). It is fun to follow these stories. This is why I had so much fun coming up with a big art project to celebrate Chagall’s work.

(Image: America Windows, 1977)

I was immediately drawn to the opportunity of making a structure that echoed the many houses that can be found in paintings in the exhibit; like his Blue House or the row of houses in I and the Village. In addition, I was inspired by the brilliant bold colors of Chagall’s stained-glass America Windows (you can see the original downtown at the Art Institute of Chicago). But how best to combine the structure of houses with the transparent beauty of stained glass?

And perhaps more importantly, how could our guests do something like this at home?

I love working with traditional materials, but with a twist. We used clear vinyl, cardboard and paint sticks. Lots of cardboard, and lots of tape, really. We constructed the walls and roof separately using hollow plastic and cardboard tubes – and even more tape – and when we were done, put them together to make the finished house you see in the pictures below.

(Images: house making in process, photos by author)

If you’re trying this at home, you could easily use a clear shower curtain as your drawing surface. I would highly recommend buying paint sticks too; after years of experience of trying to perfect the always fickle and never reliable tempera and soap combination to prevent flaking, I am a full paint stick convert. Lots of places carry them, but I have landed on Playcolor as a very good brand. Their product does well on vinyl, cardboard, and paper. It dries super-fast, and is washable.

You can be adventurous and try this on a large scale, or work small and hang the finished work in the window. Connect it back to Chagall, be whimsical while painting a fond memory, make something up entirely, or just get lost in the color! The key is, no matter the scale, to have the most fun!

Come visit the Museum to see the world-class Chagall for Children exhibit! It showcases 14 multi-sensory exploration stations, each incorporating a high-quality reproduction of one of Marc Chagall’s works.

Chagall for Children has interactive components that offer hands-on activities and an audio description of each work specifically geared for children ages 2-12. The exhibit will be at the Museum until September 6, 2015.

While you’re here, come visit me in the Adventures in Art studio! I love visitors. If you visit, you will be able to see the completed project, since the Chagall house will live in the art studio for the summer. It is our reading house for now! We have lots of great picture and story books inspired by art to explore.

--Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist

(photo by Nicole Weydert)