art class [west of the moon, 22 february 2018]
So, art camp. Declan did art camp for a week last summer at this studio in our neighborhood. It's a little expensive, but a friend of his was going, and "art" is one of those big undeveloped yearnings in my life, so why not give it a try? The friend ended up cancelling on art camp, but Declan had one of the best weeks of his life.
Well, I think he did. We'd ask him how art camp was, and he would say things like IT WAS AMAZING and I LOVE ART CAMP. We'd ask what he did at camp, and he couldn't tell us a thing. But he had his own sketchpad, and he referred to himself as a very good artist.
(If I could pause for a moment here: I love my child and I think he is brilliant and he is very good at many things. He is not, by any objective standard, very good at art. I think it's partly a motor skills thing, and partly an innate talents thing, and, well, whatever. I do think he has a great color sense, and he has that beautiful lack of self-consciousness. But he doesn't, like, draw things that look like things, mostly. But I would never tell him this. I'm one of those "encourage his heart and his creativity" kind of parents.)
When art camp was over, he kept asking when he could go back. He loves this art studio. He loves everything about them, with his whole heart. And I really desperately wanted to know why, and I want to encourage him, etc etc. So for Christmas, we bought him some weekend art classes. They do this thing on weekends called "family studio", it's a drop-in class for kids age 2-6, the kids do an art project and the parents get free coffee. We've been three times now.
Here's what I have figured out. He loves it because there are a bunch of other kids there and he always wants to be with other kids. He loves it because he loves the teachers. (In particular, he loves one young woman who goes by the name of Smalls. She has a sort of pink-ombre thing going on with her hair and a sparkly nose ring, and she often wears rainbow tights. Sometimes Declan talks to her and she listens enthusiastically. She's nice to me, too--when I apologized to her because I'd forgotten her name, and she cheerfully told me a story about having forgotten her own name the night before, so it's okay. Mostly, though, when she's around, Declan hovers near her and stares, intently and adoringly.)
I think the biggest thing he loves, though, is that the art studio seems to be a space where anything goes and no one is putting limits on his ideas. It's not the kind of art class where they're teaching technique, it's the kind where they're messing around with different media and exploring creativity and all that stuff. (Lest this sound too ridiculous, I'm pretty sure the teachers are all working artists, or working towards being working artists. And the kids are happy, I'm not arguing.) Their approach reminds me a little bit of improv; any dumb thing the kids want to do, the teacher response is "yes! and!" He wants to build a block tower instead of do the art project? Awesome, how about you build it in front of the window and try to draw the shadows it makes! He wants to stick his whole hand into the paint instead of a brush? Fabulous, and what would a handprint look like if your fingertips were in a different color of paint?
I spend so much of my life telling him no, and this is a space where they just say yes. So I can see the appeal.