children's art

Documenting history in children’s art: Egypt in the late 1970s

We at the Children’s Art Foundation were very lucky to be given these extraordinary felt pen drawings by the Egyptian government in the late 1970s. Besides being unusually strong works of children’s art most of them depict a day in history that still resonates: the visit by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1977 to negotiate a peace treaty. Most of these pictures depict the parade that celebrated his return from that visit. Welcome to Sadat, by Khaled Abd Al Jalil, age 12, Egypt Celebrating the 6th of October Anniversary, by Nahed al Majra, age 14, Egypt Parade Marking Signing of a Peace Treaty with Israel, Cairo 1979, by Moustafa Mouhamud Hussein, age 14, Egypt Delighted with Peace, by Wahid Saif Al Nassar, age 13, Egypt The Street, by Aissam Abd al Jowad, age 13, Egypt The Street, by Arfat Mousani Abd Al Azziz, age 13, Egypt Elections, by Ashraf Anwar Ahman, age 11, Egypt Playing at School, by Souad Ramadan Mouhamad, age 13, Egypt Picking Oranges, by Tahal Taher Al Bata, age 14, Egypt Baking Bread at Home, by Saben Hassan El Sharkawi, age 14, Egypt Elections for the National Assembly, by Azza Abd Al Samiya, age 14, Egypt This was an historic meeting. It was a meeting that led to signing of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, two countries that had formerly fought each other. Sadat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in bringing peace between Egypt and Israel. He was assassinated in 1981. Stepping back from the history–just look at these astonishing drawings of crowds! Pay particular attention to the freedom with which space is depicted. The young artists do not try to use vanishing point perspective, the drawing system that makes objects and spaces look three dimensional, that makes them look real. You have a bird’s-eye view, or perhaps you can think of it as a helicopter view of some of the street scenes. In the image on the upper right you see a wall of people. Notice the vibrant colors–the imitative way in which color is used. These young artists felt free to interpret the excitement of the day through an imaginative use of color. In reality, Cairo’s streets look like ours. They are not pink or orange or blue or green or yellow. Cairo streets don’t change color at intersections. But, they do in a couple of these pictures–and none streets are colored grey or black. You can also research these pictures for details of different lives and cultures, in specific points of history. Look at the second-to-last last picture, ‘Baking Bread at Home’. Note the details in the kitchen: a wood-fired bread oven; a kerosene light that suggests the house doesn’t have electricity; and the wash on the line. Look at the dress of the people in ‘Picking Oranges’, and how much manual labor is taking place. And get an insight into an Egyptian schoolyard in the 1980s in ‘Playing at School’. How different is it from any other school yard? You can order any of these images as prints from the Children’s Art Foundation’s Stone Soup store. Just search for Egypt to bring up the full selection.

Art Activity: exploring the power of strong colors with ‘Fishing’ by Halima Said Ali, 6

Introduction to This Stone Soup Art Activity Halima’s colorful picture is made in felt pen. It is so completely colored in it looks like painting! But because it is made with felt pen, it is the kind of painting that is easy to do at home or at school. What makes this picture so wonderful to me are the colors. Halima approached the task of coloring her scene with great courage. She said to herself, “I am going to make a bright, strong picture, a colorful picture that makes me think of cool water and the bright hot sun shining on fishermen at the beach.” And then she went ahead and did it! Look at the picture closely, and look at it from a distance. Notice the effect of the bright colors. Look carefully at the black lines—at the faces and fish and nets. One might say that, with colors, Halima tells the story of the bright hotness of the day. And, with lines, she tells another story—the story of the fishermen and the fish they caught that day. Project: Make a Picture That Tells Two Stories Using lines, tell us what some people are doing outdoors on a clear bright hot summer day. Using color, tell the story of the weather, the story of that brightness and hotness that make certain summer days so special. Using pencil, lightly draw the basic shapes of people, some details of their faces and clothes, the buildings, cars, trees, whatever you need to tell the story of what your people are doing. Then, using felt pens, colored pencils, or paint, boldly and courageously transform your sketch into a brightly colored painting. Use color to tell the story of heat and brightness. You may discover that in some cases the “right” color to use is not the real color that you seem to see with your eyes. For instance, let’s say the day is very hot and the sky very blue. What color sky will best give the idea of a hot day? It might be blue, but it might also be red, orange, or some other “hot” color. So, in choosing your colors, be brave, and experiment! Go with all your senses! Follow Halima’s example and make your picture exciting as a carnival! From the May/June 1986 Issue of Stone Soup Fishing, by Halima Said Ali, age 6, Oman

Flying under the radar

When you want to get something done, is it better to just keep your head down and go a little underground, or is it better to make some noise and get all that attention and potential support? Danged if I know. One of my jobs is as an Artist In Residence, teaching fifth graders at one school about how to make clay tiles for an installation in their school. The other one is as Assistant Coordinator for a district-wide art program called Art Heritage. Art Heritage has been in existence for 33 years in the Grand Valley. We teach 150 or so volunteers (parents, grandparents, passionate community members) to bring art instruction units into 23 schools, to over 9000 elementary students. We train them and give them resources they can use to teach about the artist, their genre and their historical context, as well as to present an art project for the students to do, inspired by that artist. But often even parents whose kids have received the benefit of the Art Heritage Program, really have no clue what we do, especially if they have never volunteered for us.  Then there are people who politely ask what exactly do you do again? It’s something like art? Do you teach kids? I work at saying it all in just a few words, so I don’t see their eyes dart away, already not really listening. It’s okay, I don’t really listen when my computer guy tells me what he did so my laptop will run again. It’s my job to make the projects and supplies accessible not only to the volunteers, but to the students they will teach. At times, it’s a little like that old game of “telephone.” I say something in the training class, our volunteers hear that and take it back to the classroom, where sometimes it comes out, well, a little wonky. So part of my job is to be very clear, without insulting anyone’s intelligence, when I present a project. Give them specific directions but give them leeway to use their own ideas. Spark an inspiration that will fire up in the classroom. Check out these Picasso faces–all different, all completely individual, and all totally valid answers to the challenge. Art Heritage’s original format was lengthy, very wordy, and used slides (you remember slides?) to show students the work of great artists.  My predecessors worked out of their homes, storing supplies in a tiny closet and handing out mimeographed sheets to the volunteers. Over the years the program has developed into something quite a bit larger and more technologically adept. We now use Powerpoints and videos embedded in our website.  We inhabit an office and about 250 square feet of warehouse space, plus our “Shed of Wonders” that houses a seemingly endless supply of paper (we are very good at scrounging donations from printshops.) I have been the Assistant Coordinator for eight years, and my supervisor has been the Coordinator for nearly 20. In that time, we have grown my job from simply putting the necessary supplies in boxes to send out to schools and speaking for a few minutes at Training about the art project, to a “real” job. At first I was a contract worker. Now I am paid a reasonable wage as a Paraprofessional, sometimes known as an Artist in Residence. Which sounds like I live in a warehouse, with boxes of oil pastels, colored pencils, markers and glue surrounding me. What I really do is spend a lot of time researching artists and resources to develop a project around those artists. Here’s my Audubon project, some credit to Pinterest, but mostly down to getting my hands painty and grubby, trying to think like a 7-year-old. Some days I feel like I’m being paid for something I love to do anyway, and other days, I know I’m seriously underpaid. The days with paint and paper and oil pastels, I think maybe I’m having too much fun. The days I move several hundred pounds of paper, markers, paint bottles and glue, I think I’m either underpaid or overage. We see about 150 volunteers, six times a year, for an all-morning training meeting in which we present all our labors of love, the units of study on significant and important artists. We present them with a fully-developed art project that honors that artist’s vision. Each volunteer needs to bring only a heart for putting more art in a child’s day, an understanding and passion for how important that is to each child’s development, and a willingness to try. We provide all the information, the support, the supplies, and the permission to experiment and think like a child again. One of my behind-the-scenes jobs is to procure, inventory, maintain and distribute all the supplies we need for those lessons. We train those volunteers, but they bring the lesson to about 9000 students. Six times a year. Do the math. Many, many reams of paper, lots of pints of paint, big class sets of oil pastels…it is a physical job, shifting all that into and out of each school’s supply box. We almost never see administrators in our corner of one of many school support buildings, where we plan and organize and brainstorm and bang out biographies and art projects around Dale Chihuly or Mary Cassatt. I see them even less than my supervisor does. She is half-time,  I am barely 30 hours a month. I keep my head down most of the time, though. My job is not to shmooze with admin, but to figure out how much paint we’ll need for thousands of kids to paint birds like Audubon did. I like it that way. Sometimes I really want all our administrators to come to Training and see what we do. To watch these amazing volunteers talk about students who mob them in the hallway when they know the Art Heritage cart is coming to their room. I want them to hear about the kids