Problem-solving lessons
Like Pablo Picasso, the kids are experiencing blue, not just as a color, but also as a feeling of sadness. “Think of a sad time when you thought you’d cry forever,” says Art on the Edge teacher Ami Manning. “Raise your hand when you have your sad memory.” Slowly hands are raised. Volunteers distribute art materials and creation begins. Using only blue and black crayons, markers, pastels and pens they put their sad memories to paper. Twelve-year-old Larisa Dubree draws four cats. “Me and my sisters are going to have to give them away. We have other cats,” she explains.
Another student sketches a graveyard filled with black and blue tombstones and crosses. His artwork is dedicated to his dog Bear, who died.
Josie Shipcott, 10, draws picture of herself with a casket. Across the top of the paper she writes, “By Daddy, By Daddy, By Daddy.”
Ayrianna Star, 9, bends the rules. In addition to black and blue, she’s using purple. “I don’t really like black and blue,” she says. “It’s not my favorite color. I like purple.”
But that’s OK in an art class where the focus is on self-expression.
Offered through St. Vincent DePaul, Art on the Edge provides children with a safe environment to engage the creative process to develop problem-solving skills and build self-esteem. Although the program is targeted at “at-risk” youth such as latchkey kids, children living in poverty, kids of drug-using parents or children with other problems, the program is open to all children ages 6 and up.
In its 10th year, Art of the Edge has served 700 to 800 children.
“Art is one of the best methods for learning problem-solving tools,” says Ali Shute, the program’s director and founder. “When you’re creating, you have to identify the problem you have to solve and you have to go through the process of solving it. I don’t know anyone that goes through the creative process (who) doesn’t feel a sense of pride at what they’ve created.”
Shute knows the power of self-expression. She grew up in a household where her mother was a fine artist. Shute herself has an associate’s degree in commercial art and works as a graphic designer for North Idaho College.
Eleven years ago, Shute was helping out at St. Vincent DePaul through the Vista program, a kind of domestic Peace Corps. “In the shelter at St. Vincent DePaul I saw children of families that were in a constant cycle of depression. That cycle needed to be broken,” she said. So she started an art program.
Art on the Edge introduces kids to all media: clay, paints, pastels, even music and drama. Besides quick, one-evening projects, students work on longer ones like painting a mural or producing a puppet show from beginning to end.
Most recently, they’ve been exploring color. “Not the technical aspects, but an expressionist’s aspect. As a tool to communicate,” Manning explains. It’s designed to help them “get in touch with how color can represent different feelings.”
One week, they listened to music and used color to express how the music made them feel. In another assignment they worked on their “many color days,” using color to express the way a certain day was going. One child painted a blue snail to represent a slow day. Another painted a smiling yellow sun for a happy day. Still another painted in black for an angry day.
For the blue assignment, Manning first shows the children examples of Picasso’s work and explains that the artist went through a five-year period when he was sad and painted entirely in blues and black. She asks the kids what they notice in the pictures.
They notice that the people are skinny and that their clothes don’t fit and that they appear poor. One little girl notices the background of one painting is more green than blue. “That must have been when he was going out of his blue period,” she says.
Observes Manning: “These kids could probably talk to college-level kids about observation.”
“Introducing kids to art is such a joyful, awesome thing to watch,” Manning says.