the idea: make paintings using squeeze bottles and gravity I actually can’t take credit for this idea, it was thought of by someone else in the education department at the MFA, but seeing as I’ve already spent two full days teaching it and have two more to go I thought that I would include it. As …
the idea: teach about Egypt by making pyramids out of paper I’m sick. It sucks. But life goes on, classes have to happen. Today I dragged myself out of bed to go teach. To lessen the amount of time I was going to spend dragging my germs all over Boston, I decided not to go …
the idea: make an interactive piano curriculum I’ve taken classical piano since I was about five years old. I had a wonderful, patient teacher who worked with both me and my sister through the tough years of family divorce and elementary school. She even dealt with the two of us in middle school, which can’t have …
One of the last classes that I taught before taking my holiday break from Boston was on watercolors. The problem with doing watercolors with kids is that they often finish them really quickly. Then they see you have more paper and want to make more. This problem was compounded by the fact that we were …
Little mosaic paper tiles spill all over the floor. “Can everyone help clean up this spill?” “I know how to clean it up!” Grabs glue stick. Covers hands. Proceeds to pat hands all over floor. Cutest, best idea of the year goes to a little girl in one of my after school art classes for …
Last Thursday I took a group of children to the MFA for a late night visit. By 6 o’clock, which is only the time that we get there, the children are typically already hungry and antsy after having been at school all day and then at the club for three hours. Despite this, they normally …
Like any good artist/thinker, every once in a while I have an existential crisis. Is there any point? Does looking at pretty pictures ever actually matter? Am I making any difference? Why should we do anything when in the end we all die and the earth gets blown up by the sun? That sort of …