Since AVITA had another event scheduled for last week, Thursday, February 22 was officially "week three". Both the participants and campers were busy making more paste paper paintings to use later to cut out the various shapes for the garden. Some of the participants drew designs on the back of the paintings as well. The participants are quite eager to continue painting and designing what will be used to make the mural. While painting, one of the participants even broke out in song with "You've Made Me So Very Happy", by Blood Sweat and Tears, expressing how much he enjoys being a part of the Arstream Harmony Garden project!
This week we began the process for the mural. We had the participants apply thick layers of paint designs on their paper. While the paint was still wet, they carved textures on top of their designs using various tools. The results were amazing! (Check out the picture gallery for Spring 2012!) The participants eagerly accepted the challenge and produced a good number of pieces, which we will accumulate over the next few weeks and use to cut out the shapes to make up the garden plants and flowers. I don't think we will have any problem getting enough material to use for the mural, as our participants are quite prolific painters!
Today was amazing as our new Spring Arstream project got underway at AVITA! While the goal of this ten-week session will be to provide a mural for the facility based on AVITA's last session theme "Harmony Garden", today we focused on getting to know the participants and watching them work their magic with colored pencils and markers on paper. We have a quite talented group to work with! Several of the participants caught on quickly as we taught them how to make different types of flowers and other objects. Others were already drawing birds and people quite well. Even those with a more "abstract" style, made works that showed amazing use of color!
Over the next several weeks, you will see the mural unfold piece by piece as the campers teach the participants how to make paste paper and cut out colorful, textured flowers, leaves and whatever other whimsical objects we can imagine. And I suspect the participants will teach us quite a bit about seeing the lighter side of life! Check back with us each week to see how our garden grows! |