Art Studio

Last night Corey and I got some last minute tickets to go to a cello performance at the Tabernacle at Temple Square and thought we'd try to go there for our date night. I perused the website to see if babes in arms were allowed. They weren't, but they did say please, so no cello performance and we just went out for ice cream instead. But as I was on the website of events at the conference center, I noticed an upcoming performance presented by the MuzArt Foundation, and I was intrigued by the picture of the little girl surrounded by paint splatters. As I read through the featured artists, I learned her name, Aelita Andre. I've been thinking for a while about art for our front room, and now with Aelita's inspiration I'm thinking we should do a big family painting together, some big abstract family art piece. Wouldn't that be fun? I agree with some of the comments on this video link below that it's beautiful that she gets to express herself with paint - at 8:14 as she's doing her first painting, the look on her face is just precious. So sweet how carefully she paints there, I love that part. I showed my kids the video today and they just kept saying "Lucky! She's so lucky! She gets to use paint! That would be so fun!" and I had little feelings of mom guilt for stifling their creativity with my desires for order and cleanliness. Although they did admit that she was making a huge mess and that any kid could do that if their parents would let them. Ha, that may be true, but we'd just be copycating her now. We'll have to think of something else if we want to have an art exhibit in New York. Some of those shots really do just looks like a kid making a mess and I'd have to be contained in a straight jacket to sit by at watch it without stopping the mess (see 9:34-9:51 and 12:09). I'm guessing that eventhough it appears her studio is a big mess as are her clothes while she's painting, there is some cleaning up involved afterwards. And as I told my children, if each of you made a mess like that, it would cause my early death. But, I agree it's healthy creativity and beautiful carefree childhood expressed in her artwork, and I'm willing to let them try to express themselves artistically like that. But they gotta go easy on me, baby steps. I'm not ready to just let them go wild since the 9 of them outnumber Corey and I, but I'm willing to take babysteps in that direction if they are able to help contain it all and keep most of our house clean.

They agreed, and so, we've set up a studio in the basement.

Using chairs for easels and just practicing with the cheap dollar store paints and lined paper for now.

Once they've really got their artistic juices flowing we might get some canvases.

Wes doing some pencil sketches first.

 Hooray for unfinished basements, no carpeted floor to ruin!

And I was able to talk these two kids into staying home with me to paint instead of going rock climbing with dad. (I could have some powers of persuasion with this!)