Dear You Art Project

Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project

Ahja

Koomiks

5 years old, 2015, Dear You Art WorkshopsArlene TuckerComment

Evelyn Müürsepp, artist and workshop leader, gives great tips on how to make a successful comic workshop.  It seems that her group of 5 year old in Estonia are natural comic artists.  I'm sure their friends in Berlin will enjoy reading their stories!

Evelyn said,

It was a really good experience and I loved seeing how intuitively kids grabbed the idea and started producing their own stories :-)

I did now know where to start- as I have always struggled myself with visual storytelling- somehow I end up complicating things to fast. This time I just prepared few things and then kids got it from the air.

Things like:
- got couple of 3-4 image comic strip examples from internet (with and without text)
Then asked kids to tell what do they see. Everyone told it their way and then i told the version what was written on "bubbles"- It gave them example that there are many ways to interpret visual story...

- got some comic books for viewing (Just when waiting for start and afterwards when some got their work done earlier they were looking these)

-  printed out some ready made comic "boxes"- just in case

- prepared some themes and draw them some examples, themes like: "my expressions", "things I like to do", "my favourite foods", "my dear ones..." Themes seemed to be good just to have (mostly for teachers who were helping to give instructions for youngest ones). 5 year olds started immediately making their own, pretty complicated 3-6 image stories. It was interesting to see how kids who do not read yet follow the story line. It is not from left to right, but seemed to be that starting image was in center and then story was kind of evolving around that image- it never followed the same path, but went one way in the beginning and for next round just image sequence switched and story could go on like that forever- ie story wasn't linear, it was spiraling :-)

I do not know about others, but for me it was great lesson and I really enjoyed it, so seemed the children and teachers (they were actually also surprised how well kids got the idea and how creatively they interpreted it)

Candy Talk and Candy Art in Estonia

2014, Estonia, Dear You Art WorkshopsArlene TuckerComment

Evelyn Müürsepp, the Dear You Workshop Leader in Estonia, shares a bit about their artistic approach to October's project.

Evelyn said, "We made candy pouches, drew candies and tasted some candies.  From the discussion we had it came out that candies are not such a special thing- kids can have them when they want and refuse them when they do not want them.  Too much candy is not good.  We fantasized about different possible and impossible candies when making our project.  We used scrap paper and leftovers to try to have the same principle (re-use, recycle) also in the future projects."

The candies will soon be posted to their friends in Berlin at Felix and Friends School.


Dear You Summer Visits to Estonia and USA

School visits, Dear You Art Workshops, Estonia, USAArlene TuckerComment

This summer was extra great because I got to visit two of the Dear You participating schools and even got to create with the artists. The first visit was to Lasteaed Illikuku in Ahja, Estonia and the second was at Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA.

Thank you for making my summer extra goood :)