By Ellyn Parker
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
–Pablo Picasso
There exists, in all of us, an inert level of creativity. As a parent, nurturing this in your children may become more than a fun after-school activity. It may become a duty, like making sure your child brushes their teeth and ties their shoes–eventually teaching them to do these things themselves.
Making Time
As parents and creative people ourselves, we often must work harder to make sure our children learn to blossom creatively in our crazy world. Sometimes we set expectations too high, or find ourselves entrenched in daily lives of school, laundry and commuting.
It is difficult to fit in creative time for ourselves as parents, much less find fun and inspiring activities for our children. Add the challenge of finding activities that rival the cost of a week’s worth of groceries, and we’ve got ourselves quite a challenge.
But by using our creative instinct and being resourceful, we can find the tools for our children to be creatively vibrant and productive for now and for the rest of their lives.
Learning to Listen
The Bay Area is home to some cool and kid-friendly bands who host regular Saturday afternoon post -nap shows. The SippyCups (www.thesippycups.com) gig at reasonable afternoon hours, charge low covers and rock out some all ages sing-along favorites. But this ain’t Raffi. The SippyCups manage, impressively, to get the young ones bouncing to a nice rendition of The Ramones “Elated.”
Recently, Cafe Du Nord hosted a tea-time performance of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” performed by a group of 8- to14-year-olds from Paul Green’s School of Rock (www.schoolofrock.com). There actually is one, just like the movie.
For amazing inspiration in a natural environment, check out summer-long free concerts at Stern Grove (www.sterngrove.com) in San Francisco. You can pack our own lunch and a bottle of wine, and hang while the little ones dance in the grass.
If you want to cultivate the improv musician in your kids, head down to Cafe International (508 Haight Street at Fillmore Street) (www.cafeinternational.com) on a Sunday from 4-8 p.m. This Lower Haight coffee shop hosts free Sunday afternoon jazz with local favorites Top Cat and Miles Ahead. For the improv portion of the afternoon, the band plays backup to anyone who is brave enough to face the crowd. There are always a couple of small wonders getting the buzz of fronting a band. Bring an instrument for your budding Coltrane and set them loose.
Stuck in a Red State? Create your own music. The old pots-and-pans jam in the kitchen is as tried as it is true. Let them sing loudly and play the same line over and over on the guitar. (I mean really, did you learn “Wish You Were Here” on the first try?) Kids are surprisingly more porous when it comes to learning. But you will only squelch the creative process by telling them to keep it down or stop repeating themselves. Ignore it, applaud it, but let them rock.
Explore Together
Play Barney in your stereo and they will learn Barney. Play BB King and they will sing you the blues. Challenge the usual suspects in their CD player or iPod by sneaking in a little Miles or adding some samba to their playlist. You can both explore new music together. You never know, you might just have something in common.
Nothing will destroy a creative streak in a kid like a coloring book. Chuck them. Blank paper, crayons, markers and cheap watercolors can be all you need to encourage your developing Picasso. Grab one of your old art school textbooks and pick an artist’s style to mimic.
You can talk about Picasso’s cubism and drawing in abstract forms. Use Georgia O’Keefe’s use of close-ups to look at backyard flowers in a whole new way. Get crazy and let them Jackson Pollock an old T-shirt. Dr. Seuss mobiles, Van Gogh’s starry nights, a Seurat dot-painting … the possibilities are limitless.
Beat the Budget
Low on supplies? Look no further than your own kitchen. Use the bottom of a cut celery stalk for vegetable prints. Paint with the juice of a beet.
SCRAP (834 Toland Street, SF, 415/647-1746, www.scrap-sf.org) is an inspiring outing for child and adult artists alike. Let your kids wander and fill a grocery bag with items for sculptures and 3-D pieces. You will be amazed how delighted they are at getting to choose their own materials.
Once you get the goods home, store them in clear mason jars or see-through bags so that they can clearly visualize the materials. A trip to SCRAP and a new container of glue can fill an entire rainy weekend and yield you some cool new art. Old cardboard makes a nice matte board when painted and covered with old buttons and glitter.
Let it Grow
Let your children process. Let them create freely, with no judgment. Don’t give them art projects that have expectations. Allow them to flourish and create at their own pace. Let them take their time when visualizing the masterpiece. Think about how many times you stared at blank canvas for days before the first brush stroke.
Naomi Rifkin of Bay Area Brush Fire (www.paintbrushfire.org) says, “We have made artists out to be some kind of exotic, rare and sometimes crazy people. The idea of creating to express oneself is as old as cave paintings, when someone put stick to stone, or whatever materials they used, and declared ‘This is how I see the world.’ Process painting takes us to that primal creative urge. I think the need to communicate our experience lives within us. So if everyone has this impulse, then everyone is an artist.”
There are plenty of amazing online resources for children’s art. Google any artist and you can find examples of their work and biographical information. Let your kids know about other inspirational and influential artists. Explain why it was important that Picasso drew a lady with three eyes. Then let your child get to work on a three-eyed monster.
Let them dance to their own rhythm. If you are a punk rock fan, they might only love jazz. Let your children explore their own art. By exposing them to new inspirations they will grow as artists and as little people. By encouraging freedom in creating, you will push them to choose creatively in all aspects of their lives. The choice to use more yellow or blue crayons translates into creative decisions about how they choose to eat, the process in which they deal with every day stress, and the manner in which they choose to vent the struggles of every day life as they grow into adults.
We can easily overwhelm our children with our own artistic opinions. Our most precious creations need to find their own creative voices.
Ellyn Parker is an event producer, arts advocate, educator, and the proud mother of seven-year-old tae kwon do champ, Alia Anaya. She ran the now shuttered underground arts gallery 691, and is co-owner of Olao Records, www.olaorecords.com/.
Tags: DIY Library
