Photo by Julie Downey-Hoglund
Esplanade Sensory Art Class showing off their work at the Art Show Mini-Gala
In June, the Esplanade’s Sensory Art Classes for Tots and Preschoolers celebrated the end of the spring session with the first Discovery Centre Art Show and Mini-Gala. Each class had a one-night-only display of artwork created by the 2- to 5-year-old artists during their eight weekly classes.
I thoroughly believe children’s art is something to be celebrated and we celebrated their artwork in style! Each individual child had a 48-x-96 inch piece of giant white cardboard to display their work. In addition to having their art on display, the young artists were invited to Dress to Express, meaning whatever the parent and child interpreted that to be. These amazing little individuals made some wonderful fashion choices, including sequins, crowns, cowboy boots and unicorn horns. The event also had an awesome art-themed photo backdrop for families to take some great event photos. Art-Show Mini-Galas’ will be running every Friday afternoon of the Esplanade’s 2019 Summer Art Camp. It is an ambitious undertaking, but the huge smiles of pride on a young artist’s face when they get to show their hard work to friends and family make it all worth it.
The Spring Sensory Art theme was the Element of Art – SHAPE, with a focus on a different geometric shape each week. Many different mediums and materials were explored, with emphasis this session on painting, printmaking and collage. Painting materials included everything from traditional paintbrushes to brayers, toothbrushes, marbles and hair combs. We explored printmaking and stamping using materials like carrots, wooden blocks, foam stamps, and recycled plastic containers. These young artists sculpted and built with playdough, learning through play about colour mixing and different ways to create shape. Children were given ample opportunity to play and explore during various sensory-stimulating art activities. It got messy. We were busy, but mostly we just had fun.
This year, Summer Art Camp themes also centre on the elements of art, with a different element as the focus for each week. I believe elements of art are like ingredients to a recipe. Line, shape, value, colour, texture, form and space are used in different amounts to make up almost any piece of art. Knowing what goes into a recipe is not necessary to enjoying the food, but knowing the foundational ingredients to art can help young artists understand artistic techniques and approaches. We will be serving up information in tiny bite-size pieces, and reinforcing the concepts through hands on projects and the study of how famous artists have used the elements to create their work. I am super passionate and ridiculously enthusiastic about children’s art programming and helping children find their joy and expression in creating. My hope is to introduce foundational art skills and concepts in a way that makes participants smile, and celebrate and share the art that is made.
Lastly, three cheers for the Discovery Centre children’s art program volunteers – Hip Hip Hooray! Amazing Esplanade volunteers make classes and events like this possible! Thank you volunteers!
Julia Downey-Hoglund is an art instructor at the Esplanade.
